Metrokane Golden Rabbit, Titanium
Customer Reviews
How to use the Metrokane RabbitFrom a target standpoint, this is a very good product. But the documentation is pathetic, and was clearly never tested with new / real users. There is no vindication of how it's supposed to work. That understanding is very helpful: with it, you'll never have trouble, and will marvel at the clever design. Let's get started.
Have a box in of wine handy on which you've already used the supplied (and very good) little foil cutter to massacre the foil over the cork.
Take the unit in your hand and look at the movable parts. The overhead lever that swings exterior / downward and then is reversed / brought back over the top - moves the spiral corkscrew up and down. To see this, operate the overhead lever with one share while holding the clamping "side handles" with the other. When you move the overhead handle the corkscrew rotates.
Why is the corkscrew turning? Because it's false to do that as it goes through a "guide" (the metal collar with gray plastic center). The silver plastic piece has an internal spiral track that forces the corkscrew to rotate as it passes through.
Here's the touch-and-go point: as long as the guide mechanism is locked in place and can't move up or down, the guide forces the curved to rotate when going through.
What if this guide were locked in place on the `down-stroke,' but could move vertically on the `up-stroke'? Then the handbook would force the corkscrew to rotate on the way down (so the corkscrew would penetrate the cork), but the guide would stay joined to (and _not_ rotate) the corkscrew on the way up - thus pulling the cork.
When the unit is operated correctly this is exactly what happens. But how?
Look more neatly: Before using the Rabbit's `side-handles' to hold the wine bottle neck, the guide is locked in place by two protruding shoot up-loaded latches and can't move vertically. Try it: it won't budge. (You can actually see these small latches projecting over the top of the counsel and keeping it from moving - by looking in the area above and to the far rear of the guide, near the smooth rod.)
On the other approaching, when the clamping handles are squeezed onto the neck of a bottle, these latches above the guide _retract_, releasing their influence on the guide so it can move upward.
Do this now: Take your bottle of wine and, with the overhead lever rotated to its fully formal / downward position, place the guide directly over the cork and grip the neck of the sauce a contain _firmly_ with the clamping side handles.
Look at the latches described above: they have retracted, and no longer also gaol the guide from moving upward. This has no effect during the down-stroke / cork penetration phase, since the govern is already as low as it can go. Because the guide can't move, it forces the corkscrew to rotate when you operate the overhead lever - thus penetrating the cork. Bring off this down-stroke.
Now watch what happens when the overhead lever is pulled back to withdraw the cork (while you at the same era continue to grip the bottle neck firmly with the side levers). Because the guide can now move vertically with the twisting, it imposes no rotation on the corkscrew. The corkscrew stays inside the cork as the overhead lever is moved formal / downward, and the cork is extracted. Do it. You now have the cork out of the bottle, suspended above the bottle neck, and are still gripping the side handles around the courage neck.
Release your hold on the side handles and move the Rabbit away from the bottle. The cork is still fastened to the corkscrew. Re-grip the side handles with one hand and once again operate the overhead lever, bringing it all the way back to its fully closed stance again (as if you were on the original down-stroke into the cork).
As you get to the very end of the stroke, you will feel resistance and will hear a click: the latches have snapped back into pinpoint over the top of the guide, locking it in place. The guide is once again `captured' - and cannot move vertically. The cork is still devoted to to the corkscrew.
Finally, move the overhead lever back yet again to its fully open position (as if pulling the cork from the Dutch courage). This time the latches _don't_ retract (because you're not using the side handles to grip the bottle neck) - so the latches again keep the guru from moving, and this forces the corkscrew to rotate `in reverse' as it passes upward through the guide. The twisting backs out of the cork and the cork drops off. It takes all of a few seconds once you get the hang of it.
Understanding the operating values should help. None of this is well explained (or, indeed, explained at all) in the almost non-existent documentation.
Steve Ferris
Choice product
We'll, this is made of unexceptionally die cast metals. With all other 'Rabbits', there are some components made of rubber and plastic...with this one no. And it is solid metal encrusted with Titanium (not "spray painted") and will not corrode as other metals will. I must admit that $200 is steep but I purchased mine as a Gold bars Box special for $99 and I absolutely love it! Also, this carries a ten year warranty which is 10 timess the paragon warranty.
Run Screaming
I have a metrokane rabbit. Cute - Yes, worked well - Yes for about a year. Then the mechanism came apart. Metrokane WILL NOT stand behind their product for more than 12 months. Which I find surprising considering that a knock-off of the rabbit can be purchased for about $30. Buy a knock-off they work as just as well. Don't into that the additional cost of the rabbit gives you a superior product.
Delightful and solid
I deliberate on it may be more beautiful than the picture! It's definitely even shinier than shown. The gold tone is a little darker than official gold, but very striking.
This thing is HEAVY! My kitchen scale says it weighs 2 pounds, 5 ounces. I from where one stands love that, since it's such solid construction. Everything is metal, including the "gears," which was important to me.
In case anyone is at sixes like I was, it's die-cast metal, plated in gold-colored titanium. I don't think there's any gold ingots in it, nor is it solid titanium. Probably obvious, but... Also, it does have the nice bristly rubber pads on the run like the other Rabbits, which makes it very comfortable. The black-and-clear clamshell box that it comes in is coarsely the same as for others.
Functionally, the action is very smooth. I just opened a bottle and it moved cleanly.
If asked for a "con," I was unhappy to notice that the foil cutter has only two cutting wheels, unlike the four in my original Rabbit. But it didn't triumph a different on the bottle I just opened.
I can't wait to invite people over and wow them.







