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48 Key Lachenal English Concertina


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The end gasket is now fully glued in place and I 'worked' it a little to flatten the nap and the reedpan is now a very firm fit but not ridiculously so. I've now decided to re-gasket the other end too before applying the end binding leather, that way the pans will be equally snug and I won't be faced with problems a few months down the road that are much harder to put right! Thanks for the talcum powder tip Geoff, I'll certainly try that on the next end.

 

Shining a bright light down the bellows highlighted enough problems for me to decide to reinforce all of the gussets as well as rebinding the edges, much of the leather is pretty fragile. It's a fair bit of work but the materials will cost about thirty pounds in total and I should get quite a few years out of the bellows before they inevitably need complete renewal.

 

I've started the re-padding and that will keep me busy until the gusset patches arrive.....

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One end is now re-padded. The old glue was very brittle which made removal and clean-up quite easy. The new pads are much thicker than the original ones and I was quite alarmed at how much arm bending I had to do to get the key heights right before gluing the new pads on. I gave the action board a good old dusting down with a hog brush as I worked my was round and it looks a lot better for it!

 

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Edited by tallship
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Setting the key height is really alarming isn't it? The brass is surprisingly strong and springy and there's the permanent horror that you are going to slip and apply large force to a part that can't take it.

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Re-padding is now finished, bellows patched up and rebound, finger slides re-leathered and new thumb straps made. Amazingly enough the concertina was almost perfectly in tune with itself in philharmonic pitch with the notable exception of of the G above middle C on the pull which was pretty flat. I gritted my teeth and took a diamond file to the reed and VERY slowly brought the reed up to the correct pitch with lots of trials with the tuning meter in between.

 

There's still quite a lot to do to finish the job off; new bellows papers, end gauzes to cover up her private bits and so on, but she's playing and not sounding too bad at all. :D

 

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Edited by tallship
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The old Lachenal label was in bits and almost illegible, so if any kind Lachenal owner feels like taking a close up high definition photo of the label in their concertina and letting me have a copy I'd be most grateful. :)

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The old Lachenal label was in bits and almost illegible, so if any kind Lachenal owner feels like taking a close up high definition photo of the label in their concertina and letting me have a copy I'd be most grateful. :)

 

Oh, oh, oh, has anyone done that before? I´d like to have a labal as well so if this should work could you please let me know how it turned out?

 

Christian

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The old Lachenal label was in bits and almost illegible, so if any kind Lachenal owner feels like taking a close up high definition photo of the label in their concertina and letting me have a copy I'd be most grateful. :)

 

Do the labels change much with time... I can send a picture of the 1930s label from DHs concertina ..much newer than yours! (this is a 300*300 pixel, so I could probably do better!)

 

lach_label.gif

 

Chris

Edited by spindizzy
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That's very similar to the remains of my label spindizzy but mine has a line around it that just shows inside the the oval in the fretwork. Other than that, the actual lettering appears to be the same although so much is missing from mine it's hard to be sure. I'm not particularly bothered about historical accuracy to be honest, I just thought it would be nice to have the name on the 'tina. It would be great if you could pass on a higher resolution version. I'll drop you a PM :D

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If you (or anyone) comes up with a good high-res image of this (or any other brand) of label, I'd be willing to post it in the Museum section for others to access also.

 

Ken

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If you (or anyone) comes up with a good high-res image of this (or any other brand) of label, I'd be willing to post it in the Museum section for others to access also.

 

Ken

 

Ken,

 

I'm going to have another go - the version that I posted was made a few years ago, I'll see if I can do better now.

 

Chris

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When repadding a concertina if you use replacement pads of the same size the key arms should not need 'bending'.

 

You mentioned that the new pads were higher or taller than the old ones. Should the goal be to match the original pad height or bend up the arms to mate well with new well padded pads?

 

I just ran into this myself - my fix was to use pads that matched the ones removed because I did not want to bend the arms. But I must say bending was the first thing that came to mind.

 

Dan

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The USA may be well served with supply houses that sell concertina spares but that's certainly not the case in the UK. Some UK concertina makers may supply spares but none of them advertise the fact so I was quite limited in my options.

 

To be fair the concertina had suffered with insect attacks and none of the original pads had any felt left in them worth mentioning so I had no idea how thick they originally were. This was my first attempt at repairing a concertina and I pretty much relied on information from the Concertina Repair Manual with regard to technique and used stock parts from a well known supplier with a good reputation. Different thicknesses of pad weren't an option I'm afraid, neither were pads of the exact diameter as the originals or valves of exactly the right length etc so I had to go with the nearest sizes available.

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Here's another pic of the Lachenal that I had trouble trying to post the other day. The four fold bellows are very limiting and may well be replaced with a six fold set before too long, leaving the original newly repaired bellows as a donor set for a tuning rig...

 

 

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Edited by tallship
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Tallship - the concertina looks perfect! Especially the bellows work.

 

I'm using David's pads too. I just removed the felt pad from the middle of the sandwich ( Fiberboard | glue | felt pad | glue | leather sealing pad ) and restuck the leather onto the fiberboard portion of the meal. My old pads (from a jones box) were rather thin but the key heights worked well with thin. I skipped the felt middle cuz I thought I would just try it this way. I'm not preaching. Just afraid to bend 100 year old wire. I saved the felt middles in cast the action was real noisy or whatever.

 

I also revalved. I needed to trim here and there to fit them as well. I think we all need to just make it work. Whatever it takes.

 

No concertina parts stores in my neighborhood either ;-)

 

For the buttons I scrubbed them briefly with a toothbrush and a mild solution of dish washing soap and warm water. Then promptly dried them. Much of the grunge came off easily.

 

And I like the idea of scanning the old paper maker tags. They are more like paper Targets for sloppy fingers...

 

Cheers,

Dan

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I hadn't thought of pulling the pads apart and remaking them but I'll file the info for future use. Do your pads work well Dan? I would have thought that the felt was needed to allow the leather face to bed into the hole in the padboard to get a proper seal.

 

I didn't think you were preaching btw, just more experienced than me. ;) The leatherwork on the bellows was mostly down to my other half but she'd be the first to say that the overlap joints on the bottom could have been better, we both had a go at skiving but we're either not too good at it or haven't managed to work out the proper technique. <_<

 

I was delighted with spindizzy's Lachenal label and look forward to the higher res version. When I get chance to do so I'll take a pic of the label on the Wheatstone I picked up recently. I'm waiting for another bag of parts from David to start work on that one....here we go again! :o

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The wood on my action board is in good shape and the pads seal fine. Not having the felt has some other effects on the end of this action arm. It makes for a bit less mass in that spot and provides a bit more tactile feel to the pad hitting the wood. I would guess that your solution keeping the felt would provide for a tighter air seal than mine.

 

And I have no more experience than you - newbee here too - I just move really slowly on this stuff. I'll try to post a pic of my jonesy later.

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If you do fit thicker pads and bend the arms to get sufficient button travel there is one other thing to check. When the pads lift they must not strike the underside of the fretwork. This is most likely with the shortest levers, because the pad is tilted at the largest angle. If a pad does make contact above it can become dislodged from its correct position and fail to seal when it closes.

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