Bent Roller Hooks

Roller hooks on a kelsey are pretty easy to make, you could take one of the straight ones to any machine shop and have them make one for you. If you remove the bent one from the press you might be able to straighten it yourself. Don’t try to straighten it while its in the press or you will break the part that holds the hooks. You might be better off to fix it yourself rather than trying to put a claim in against the shipper. Good Luck Dick G. ps 5x8 kelsey is a great little press, still have one myself.

now that i think about it, the roller hook won’t come out unless its straightened. its very easy to break the cast iron so you must be careful.

You might be able to pull the hook out, but as Dick says be careful…it is very easy to break cast iron. How was it packaged? USP could deny the claim if the packaging was poor. You might have better luck asking the seller for a partial refund. Perhaps you could ask Excelsior Press if he has one to sell.

oh I’m not worried about fixing it. My brother can do that no problem.

But I didn’t pay for bent roller hooks and I did pay for insurance in case of this situation so I’m just trying to get some money back from UPS for the damage but they want to know how much it’s worth for the damaged parts.

Part of me wants to tell UPS that those parts aren’t made anymore so the whole press is a loss without those parts and see if they’re pay for the whole thing…long shot, I know LOL.

Like Girl with a Kluge says i’d try Excelsior Press in New Jersey, i think he has some Kelsey parts listed on his web site with prices. Good luck Dick G. (shouldn’t it be girl with foil stamping kluge???)

Fritz at NA Graphics lists them, but they’re back-ordered right now (as of Dec. 1), and they’re not sure when their local machinist will get around to making them. Fritz lists them for $13.25 each. The part # is KP482.

Since I needed my 5x8s up and running right away, Fritz told me to put my bent roller hooks on an anvil and hammer the daylights out of them. While that worked well enough for the short run, you have to be able to get them out first, and yours is so bent I’d recommend cutting it off with a Dremmel rather than trying to straighten it enough to remove it.

Perfect! Thank you, Jeff.

I’d get the spring off it by removing its spring retainer. Then TRY Very GENTLY to straighten the arm enough to get it out using two wrenches and a friend. Secure the press first. go carefully. On e wrench above the bend to secure the rod and the other to do the work. Then do as Fritz suggests and hammer it out straight against a steel plate or such like. Be careful not to ‘ding’ the rod. I’ve done this on other machines quite successfully.

If UPS covers the cost, I’m just going to cut the bent ones out and get brand new ones.
Seems way easier and safer for the press.

“Hammer the daylights out of them”!!!!! YIKES!!!!!

If you don’t have a decent vice, try to find a neighbor with one and simply put the bent hook in one of those to straighten it out. Just turn/roll-it-around a few times between squeezes and it will easily straighten out. Be sure to keep the threads out of the vice so you don’t crush them.

Take the nut and spring off, and try to bend it a little straighter with two vice-grip wrenches or channel-lock wrenches so that it comes out easily.

“and see if they’ll pay for the whole thing”???? Shame on you.

Rick

You’re kidding me, right?
It’s UPS. They should pay for the whole thing. I paid for insurance on the whole thing. What happens if something else does break because of the bent hooks? That would technically be their fault. UPS gets away with murder when it comes to lost packages and damaged deliveries.
I figured it’s worth a shot.

Are you really going to try insurance fraud for $13.25?

UPS will inspect the damaged package to determine the cause of damage and verify proper packing materials were used (in accordance with the shipping terms). UPS may inspect the package at the shipper’s or receiver’s site, or may collect the package for inspection at a UPS facility.

If you used paypal you have buyers protection. I still suggest your try and work out something with the person you bought the press from.

buying insurance doesn’t constitute a right to committ fraud, just because they destroy property and often get away with it. Having said that, you do have a point in that if something else breaks due to the bent part, it is there fault. In my extensive experience dealing with UPS/FedEx/USPS/Averrett/Bennett/Yellow Freight, etc. the longer you take to completely file your claim, the less likely they are to pay it out. Usually anything longer than 24 hours is investigated. I’ve filed hundreds of claims in my times, and probably less than ten were not paid. They also only have a certain amount of time to investigate which I’ve been called 45 days later asking for proof, to be politely informed the reasonable period of time has expired and that you are due a refund check by default.

You have the right to file an initial report of damages, and can also request more time to evaluate or better yet, have a professional evaluate the integrity of the machine. Afterall, it took some abuse to bend the hooks, who knows what else could be tweaked or torked out of place. Do what is reasonible, that is the same expectation that they are held.

Somebody mind explaining why it’s insurance fraud to claim that a press was damaged and is inoperable? The cost to have someone else repair this press (fabricating the hook, cutting away the old one, then replacing it) is easily equal to it’s market value. Just because somebody is capable of repairing something on his own doesn’t mean he should be obligated to. I can sling bondo with the best of them, but if you hit my car, you’re still going to pay for me to have someone else do it.

Jeff the replacement part is $13.25. The machine is clearly reasonably repairable to make operable. Where is the proof that UPS damaged the integrity of anything more than that roller hook. I wouldn’t fix my own car either but just because I got into a fender bender doesn’t mean I’m entitled to new motor. Fraud means intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting. Fraud.

So find someone to repair and evaluate the press and turn in the bill. That’s reasonable and honest.

It’s a $300-$400 press. The $13.25 part isn’t available, so Shannon will have to get one made (far more than $13.25) and will have to then ship the press to someone qualified to repair it, and have it shipped back.

If those roller hooks don’t become available, the press is not worth fixing, and it would not be fraud against either UPS or the person who packaged it badly to ask them to pay for its fair value. If the damage to your fender were more than the value of the car, an insurance company will pay you the value of the car.

Shannon wants the money from the press that arrived broken in order to buy a press that works. Sorry, but that’s just not fraud.

If UPS pays the claim for $300-$400 and then she fixes it for $14 to $15 then it becomes fraud. But I bet they won’t even honor it due to improper packing.

I have a number of hand presses and I was going to eventually put a couple of them into working condition and offer them for sale at a reasonable price. If the people out there interested in letterpress printing can’t deal with something as minor as a bent piece of round plain steel without screaming bloody murder then I might just throw them on the iron pile instead.

Foolproof546 & musikwerke are on the right track. I would have been pissed for about 2 seconds then I would have re-bent it back taken it out and had it working again within 3 minutes***guarenteed***

If UPS pays the entire cost of the press, they then own the press and may take it. The same way an insurance company will take an automobile if they pay for a total loss.

Okay wow…some of you guys are just so serious.

I’m not really going to do anything fraudulent. My God.

But Jeff has a point. When the seller first contacted me after filing the claim and asked how much the part was, the first thing I thought was “well, they don’t make them anymore so how do you put a value on that?” What if something else is wrong? What if something breaks while I try to fix it? Should I be responsible for that since if it hadn’t been damaged in transit, I wouldn’t have even been doing the repair to begin with? I dunno, maybe you guys have $400 to throw around. For me, this was my one shot at a press and I want it working the way it was sold to me.

musikwerke, it’s not really about whether someone can handle it. The point is, I paid for straight, working hooks. I didn’t get them. Yes, I can fix them in 3 minutes. Yes, I can replace them for $14 a piece. Yes, there is a solution to this problem. But I paid for insurance so that I would be compensated should I have to do either of those things.

I don’t understand why there is such a hissy fit being thrown because I feel like I deserve what I paid for.

Well then, fix it and and get to printing and save yourself a lot of unnecessary hassle. Then spend the 14 bucks and get a new one if your straightening job isn’t like-new perfect. You got what you paid for, it just suffered a little mishap. It happens all the time. If I wrote and told you how many pieces of machinery have arrived at my door step that needed some minor to major work to make it operational due to rough shipping, you’d be asleep before you got to the end.

If your comment about claiming the entire press was damaged was a joke, it is at least a joke that bespeaks a level of entitlement and impatience that won’t serve you well while operating a decades-old press. I think that’s the feature of your posts to which people are responding negatively. We’ve all had to tweak, improve, repair, and modify. You will have to do the same whether it’s this roller hook or something else.

It’s also not strictly true that “they” don’t make these anymore. Of course Kelsey doesn’t make roller hooks. They don’t make anything because they went out of business, but plenty of people make or sell roller hooks. They’re among the least complicated of replacement parts.

Is there any word on whether the ‘chill pill’ has been invented yet? I feel like they’d make a killing advertising here.

New roller hooks are in the works, but I don’t think they are that easy to make accurately and maybe not out of coat hooks. I probably didn’t quite say “Hammer the daylights out of them”!!!!! but a hammer and anvil of some sort would effect a fix of sorts if the bent hook could be coaxed out of the holders without breaking anything.

These discussions amaze me in many respects—UPS will write off minor claims by paying them, and $14 is minor. I ship by UPS maybe $30,000 in charges a year and half that with the post office. If anything, the post office is more prompt than UPS. It’s when that cute little Sigwalt packed in peanuts arrives all in pieces and a claim for $750 goes in that UPS will shut the claim down.

Fritz