Boy, this sure looks like an italian floor corker... but....

So, I bought a lot of wine stuff off of a lady from craigslist last night--including a floor corker that looks remarkably similar to this.

The question is--what the hell is this? I can't tell if it's an italian floor corker, italian floor champagne corker, or some other variety. It looks like a sturdy unit, with the brass compression jaws, etc--but what can it do? Champagne corks? Belgian corks? Straight wine corks (I'm pretty sure it should...)? 29mm crown caps? Standard crown caps?

Any advice would be appreciated. It's got some surface rust at the base of the jaws, so I'll be tearing it apart to do some maintenance on it. Any idea where I could find some food-grade silicone lube?

Thanks!
jkpq45

Oh, you've obviously got a

Oh that's one of those.. Nice..

Actually if you don't want it, i've been looking to get into wines so I'll take if off your hands. I also think you need the capper adapter for the corker in order to do bottles.. I think it is in excess of $25 bucks..

I have one of those. You can get a clip on adapter to enable it to cap beer bottles.

/Phil.

I looked at it more last night--it doesn't have the little clip on the side that the "champagne" corkers do. But it still looks like this guy sells for over $120.

Anybody have the same model? What are its limitations? Any manuals or something I can get ahold of?

It need some cleaning, looks like some surface rust between the brass jaws and steel body (duh) so I'll get scrubbing.

I have the same one used it last night to bottle 30 bottles of wine. Its an Italian wine corker. Mine didn't come with a manual, its pretty easy to use. Put a cork in the jaws, but a bottle on the stand, and pull the lever down. There is a nut on the part that pushes the corker in to adjust the depth of the cork. So far I have only used mine for wine but I don't think it would work with champagne corks.

Food grade silicone lube- search for keg lube, although some use vaseline.

Just be sure to be a cork soaker...

cork soakers

I cleaned mine last time around. Mine is a Portugal floor corker (plastic jaws). I actually used a wee bit of keg lube to quiet it up. Worked very well.