So i purchased a super agata bench capper yesterday and am having a few issues with it. My first problem is with the red stopper. am i suppose to put this at the height i want it at for bottling or is this just a storage lock. while trying to cap just a few test bottles last night it basically broke. another issue is my bottles dont seem to be capping perfectly. they look uneven on the bottle and are almost slightly flared out. i do not currently have it attached to any sort of base (didnt have anything lying around) so km hoping most of the issues will be fixed by anchoring it to something.
Any advice or insight on how to get this thing to function properly would be greatly appreciated.
[quote=“bigunn”]So i purchased a super agata bench capper yesterday and am having a few issues with it. My first problem is with the red stopper. am i suppose to put this at the height i want it at for bottling or is this just a storage lock.
I don’t use it. It sits at the top of the rail.
while trying to cap just a few test bottles last night it basically broke.
How? Where?
another issue is my bottles dont seem to be capping perfectly. they look uneven on the bottle and are almost slightly flared out.
You might be pushing down to hard. Don’t try to crush the bottle.
i do not currently have it attached to any sort of base (didnt have anything lying around) so km hoping most of the issues will be fixed by anchoring it to something.
Mine sits on the kitchen counter. Not “attached” to anything.
Any advice or insight on how to get this thing to function properly would be greatly appreciated.[/quote]
Make sure you are using the 26mm bell for American bottles. Some European are 29mm. Make sure the bell is screwed up/in tight. Adjust the vertical height of the bell so the bottle just fits underneath. With a cap in the bell and a bottle underneath (or as closer as possible), lower the capper until it just touches the bottle. Turn the bottle for self centering, then apply pressure until the cap snaps on.
I have the same model. Not sure what you mean by the red stopper.
I love mine. Had it for years now. I have never done anything with the red thing you mentioned. I just adjust mine a notch above the bottle and let her rip. Sometimes a slight amount of vegetable oil inside the bell will smooth it out.
See if you can rotate a cap on a bottle after capping to check if it is capped tightly enough.
So i used it to bottle a 1 gallon batch this weekend and it did work better now that i had practiced a few times with. what i ended up doing was just pulling down on the lever…rotating it a quarter turn, pulling down the lever again and repeating. 4 crimps per bottle and they looked tight and even. also had what im assuming is the dimple i remember reading about. without rotating them i only had a half dimple. so i will wait and see if this helps rliminate the problem i have been having with bottles loosing carbination over time.
I did not try to twist them but they just seemed uneven. as if one side was getting pushed down better than the others. also one side of the cap seemed to be more flared out than the other as well as only a half circle dimple imprint. i know im prolly going a little too paranoid with every quarter turn but i figure its better than not enough
