kiljoy
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2009
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I needed to vent…
OK, after being on this site for some time now, I decided that I was going to buy a Portuguese floor corker. Up until this point, I have been using screw bottles which I ordered online. I have enough bottles to do my last batch and then plan on switching to corks.
I had planned on using my upcoming Christmas cash to get the corker. As usual, things came up and the $$ didn’t last. I figured that with my volume, the floor corker can wait and I’d go with the cheaper hand corker. So, I had been planning on stopping by the winery today to pick up a double lever corker that I know they had. As I was getting ready to leave, my wife downloaded a very nasty trojan. We spent several hours removing the bugger. I still had time to run to the store before they closed. We went there and I picked up an Italian hand corker for $35. They only had #9’s and I figured I’d wait to buy corks and bottles at a later date.
We got home and I found an old bottle with it’s synthetic cork. Like a typical man, I didn’t bother to find instructions to use this thing and inserted a cork where I thought it was supposed to go. The stupid synthetic cork (which I know I wasn’t supposed to use) got lodged in the corker. Ug! I figured that I didn’t put it in the right spot and tried to hammer it back out. The ring popped off, but I got the cork out. In the process, I broke part of some plastic ring that holds the thing together. You think I’d stop there? But no. I tried a real cork and it was great. “Oh, well, that’s how I’m supposed to use it. I guess I’ll try the synthetic one again”. Now it REALLY got lodged in there. I spent many angry minutes attempting to extract the damn thing from the corker. The now broken plastic ring kept popping off and I was getting rather angry.
I finally extracted the synthetic cork and am epoxying the little tab that broke off the corker housing. So, the moral of the story is listen to the people here and don’t use synthetics in a double lever corker!!
OK, after being on this site for some time now, I decided that I was going to buy a Portuguese floor corker. Up until this point, I have been using screw bottles which I ordered online. I have enough bottles to do my last batch and then plan on switching to corks.
I had planned on using my upcoming Christmas cash to get the corker. As usual, things came up and the $$ didn’t last. I figured that with my volume, the floor corker can wait and I’d go with the cheaper hand corker. So, I had been planning on stopping by the winery today to pick up a double lever corker that I know they had. As I was getting ready to leave, my wife downloaded a very nasty trojan. We spent several hours removing the bugger. I still had time to run to the store before they closed. We went there and I picked up an Italian hand corker for $35. They only had #9’s and I figured I’d wait to buy corks and bottles at a later date.
We got home and I found an old bottle with it’s synthetic cork. Like a typical man, I didn’t bother to find instructions to use this thing and inserted a cork where I thought it was supposed to go. The stupid synthetic cork (which I know I wasn’t supposed to use) got lodged in the corker. Ug! I figured that I didn’t put it in the right spot and tried to hammer it back out. The ring popped off, but I got the cork out. In the process, I broke part of some plastic ring that holds the thing together. You think I’d stop there? But no. I tried a real cork and it was great. “Oh, well, that’s how I’m supposed to use it. I guess I’ll try the synthetic one again”. Now it REALLY got lodged in there. I spent many angry minutes attempting to extract the damn thing from the corker. The now broken plastic ring kept popping off and I was getting rather angry.
I finally extracted the synthetic cork and am epoxying the little tab that broke off the corker housing. So, the moral of the story is listen to the people here and don’t use synthetics in a double lever corker!!