I got a phone call from Craig Walls, Midwest Sales Manager for Steel City (and on a weekend too). He had seen these posts and apologized for the unthreaded hole. He offered a few fixes:Regardless, he was going to compensate me for the annoyance.
- Tap it myself so I can use it
- Wait until Monday so he can ship me a new base
- Try to tap it myself and if I screw it up (or simply want a new one anyways), he'd ship me a new base on Monday.
After talking to him about the tapping procedure. I decided it was do-able. So I headed out to Sears (as many suggested) to get the tap. Unfortunately, they only had singles up to 8mm. I needed a 10mm, but the only one was in a set. So I went to Lowes and Home Depot, but they did not have metric taps. So I went back to Sears and bought the set (I should have guessed that was going to happen). So the idea of going out and buying a few dollar tap turned into a $35 set . Hopefully they are as useful as everyone suggests.
Once I got home though, the tapping process took all of 2 minutes and was as easy as everyone says. I took a picture of the tapped hole. The threads aren't as clean cut, but they held just fine when I put the press together.
Unfortunately, after assembling the press. I noticed 2 things.So, overall, this was a good lesson in that even good manufacturing processes can let mistakes slip by, but good customer service can fix those that do and keep us all happy.
- Woodcraft had forgotten to give me the free laser, which a trip to the donut store (my kids' name for Woodcraft) fixed.
- The plastic housing of the belt cover was cracked a little bit and the housing does not sit level. I'm not sure if the crack (you can't really see it in the picture) is the cause or the by-product of the uneven sitting. I haven't told Craig about this yet, but I'm sure he'll take care of it. Luckily it won't affect any functionality, but it seems to rattle.