Spent $150 on a lying press from an antique shop and it warped every spine I tried for two months.

Turns out the screw threads were stripped and the metal plate was slightly bent, so now I'm back to using my old homemade press board setup until I find a proper replacement, anyone else had a tool that looked great but secretly ruined your work?

2 comments

2 Comments

troy_sanchez81mo ago

Did you check the antique press for straightness and thread condition before you bought it, or did it just look clean and solid on the outside? I've learned the hard way that old tools can hide major problems under a nice coat of paint. My own mistake was a vintage plow plane that looked perfect but turned out to have a cracked sole that made every cut crooked for months before I figured it out.

the_julia1mo agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, you're speaking directly to my soul here. I absolutely did not check anything - I saw that press and thought "ooh pretty red paint, must be good to go." Classic rookie move. I'm pretty sure if I had actually tested the threads, I would have discovered they're held together by 60 years of dried grease and pure optimism. The funniest part is I even bragged to my buddy about scoring such a "clean" old press, and then spent the first weekend trying to figure out why it sounded like a bag of gravel every time I turned the handle. At least your cracked sole taught you something, my press just taught me that I'm really good at pretending problems don't exist until they physically stop me from working.