Jump to content

RWL

Members
  • Posts

    239
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by RWL

  1. Well, my goose is cooked for the bowing / air valves since I have the chamois already, but even though it's over .030 thick I should have enough room for these. When you buy a skin, what thickness or thicknesses do you use for your pads?
  2. I'm considering repadding two instruments, and 56 button Edeophone Tenor Treble and a 48 button Wheatstone English treble. I wanted to try my hand at pad making for my Edeophone's bowing / air valve because it was leaking terribly. This is intended to be a quick experiment so I bought a chamois (.032-.036" thick), a piece of poster board (.017" thick) and have some craft felt of unknown parentage that's about .080" / 2mm thick. Having said that I've also been doing a little looking on this site to find the proper materials. I live about 2 hours from Columbia organ supply so I could run down there and pick the skin myself, but what to buy. Here are my choices at Columbia: https://www.columbiaorgan.com/columbia-leather-home/products/leather-skins/#valve_leather My guess is that the first item in the list CPL Columbia Pneumatic Leather is the type I need, but it comes in different thicknesses. Thin, about .011" thick, Medium, about .015" thick, Heavy, about .019" thick, Extra Heavy, about .024" thick and Valve leather about .030" thick. Is this the right leather? What thickness are you using? I know from some of the posts here that people have gotten away with using chamois from the auto parts store, and in David Pierceall's case, an old leather coat. A skin would cost me $60 to $90 US dollars, so I don't want to buy something I don't really need. Is there a noticeable difference in air tightness between an auto parts chamois and pneumatic leather? Lets deal with the leather first. I also have questions about the felt, card, sampers and beads that I'll ask when I see your thoughts on the leather.
  3. I have not done this, but I would think that if you're careful, you could use the existing end and its pad board as your template and drill directly into the new wood template. Just don't drill the existing button holes larger or tear out the felt. Maybe use a drill that is a little under size, but can easily be centered visually. Wire size drills (number drills) would be your friend here because they change in increments of only a few thousandths of an inch. I'm watching your thread with interest because I'm contemplating repadding a couple of instruments and may face the same challenge.
  4. I needed to make a pad tester too. I wanted the tube to fit into the hole so I'd know I was relatively centered. The smallest holes are the oval ones at .290" x .430" [ 7.5 x 11 mm] so I needed a tube that was 1/4" OD. I had a six inch piece of 1/4" brake line ( a generic commodity available at any auto parts store) lying around so half of that became the tube. The gasket support was a piece of 5/8" dia. aluminum that I cut to 1/2" length. I epoxied those two pieces together and used some 1/16" neoprene sheet (the remains of a tub & shower liner) for the gasket. It works. I have not had time to test all of the pads, but did discover that a major leak was the left end's bowing valve / air valve - more so than the leaks above that I had spotted with the light. Knowing that I would need at least one pad - the bowing valve pad - I bought a chamois and a piece of poster board at WalMart. The poster board is about .017" thick and I picked the thickest chamois I could spot visually in the store. The chamois measures from .032 to .036 thick. I have some felt of unknown type that measures approximately .080 (about 2mm) thick. It's hard to measure the felt because it compresses so easily. Now, none of these materials is optimum, but I wanted to keep moving on my air leak work and local sourcing is relatively inexpensive. I will start another thread on pad materials rather than changing the subject of this discussion.
  5. Here is a photo of the pad leak from the right side. Although I've shrunken the file size, I apparently am at the limit for amount of photos I can upload to this post. If the leather bead weren't glued to the arm I might be able to slide the pad a little to better cover the hole.
  6. Here's where I am at this point. I put two sheets of printer paper between the action box and bellows on each end and tried the drop test. It again took about 10 to 12 seconds to finish. I can feel one tiny spot of air coming from the bellows but can't spot it when I put a light inside, so I'm not entirely sure at this point where the bellows lead is. Although less than optimum, I'm not sure how significant it is since I did the drop test on my Aeola, which to me plays pretty well and the Aeola also has about a 10-12 second drop time. When I find the exact location, I'll repair it, but it's not the main leak. Next I did as David suggested and carefully took the top off the action box and shone a light through the holes from the bellows side. I found three pads that were misaligned. There may be other pads that are leaking but I need to figure out how to make the tester that Theo illustrated. Here's the first leak. You can see a tiny crescent of light along the outer edge of the pad hole. Here's the 2nd leaking pad on the left side. And here's the left end's offending pads with the green dots. The ring of leather (I'm forgetting the name) is glued to the arms or I'd try sliding the pads to try and cover the holes better. I'll illustrate the single leak on the right side in a follow up post in case the appearance of the leak suggests a specfic remedy other than the first two.
  7. Thanks to both of you for your experience and advice. Since I have a lathe I can make the pad testing devices illustrated. What material is on the flange at the end of the tube to seal it against the pad board? Not being "in the trade" I don't have spare pneumatic leather on hand as a seal so I'm trying to figure out what else I could use. I may have some 1/16" neoprene or old cork sheeting somewhere among my automotive repair scraps but I don't know if either would seal well without screw type pressure to hold the "gasket" in place. I may have further questions as I try out the other suggestions.
  8. My Edeophone has never had a particularly good air seal. A "drop test" takes all of 10 seconds. The bellows looks good although I haven't inserted a light bulb inside and looked for pin holes. The valves look pretty straight. I can put my lips to some of the air holes and the pads don't seem particularly leaky although they're certainly not air tight. The one thing that's really different compared to my responsive and air tight Aeola is that the Edeophone's reed pan pulls out of the bellows really easily. I can slip a .015" feeler gage between the reed pan and the bellows gasket for about half of its circumference, mostly in the area of the larger reeds. It's not hard to move the reed pan a little side to side by pushing it. I can slip an .008" feeler gage pretty much the whole way around the periphery, but I think the reed pan is sliding a little bit when I insert the shim. From reading here, it seems the approach is to carefully pry up the chamois along part of the perimeter and put a strip of .008 card stock behind the chamois and try it rather than replacing the chamois. The 3x5" index cards I have are .006 to .008" thick depending on the card. I'm looking for advice from those who have done this. Is there a better way to look for air leaks or something I've overlooked as the source before I try shimming? How to lift the chamois without tearing it? Should I drip or paint a little water at the edge of the chamois and pry up or keep water away from the chamois entirely? How much of the periphery to lift and shim? Can I just shim one half of it and let that push the reed pan closer to the opposite side? Do I put a double thickness of shims on one half and no shims on the other side of the bellows gasket or put the same size shims the whole way around the periphery? I was planning on gluing things with liquid hide glue (in the brown plastic bottle). Another reversible alternative glue is washable "school glue", a clear glue unlike PVA. Are either of those glues acceptable?
  9. Thanks,but not quite what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a staff labled like the one below, but with the C' C'' system that I see used when citing the range of a concertina https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/musical-notes-names-staff-treble-clef-1476389549
  10. I must not be using the right search terms. I periodically see references to c' or c'' but I need a chart to show me where they are on the music staff. Does anybody have a link to a chart showing note names on the staff using the c' a' a'' system? Is c' the same as middle c?
  11. Periodically I browse the concertinas at the Buttonbox to see what they have. Boy is the supply down. I'm sure it's related to the pandemic but I wonder whether it's due to more people buying them since they have time to play or whether it's due to some other business effect.
  12. Thanks. I had missed Doug's tree. It just wouldn't be Christmas here without a concertina tree.
  13. ...... and Diana's harp behind. Aside from being a tasteful Christmas decoration, it shows that most everyone who plays for awhile eventually acquires more than one concertina, each with its own voice and 'personality'.
  14. My guess is that with everybody at home due to the virus, they've all sent you their instruments for tuning and you're busy or they've bought all the instruments you have and there aren't enough for a tree.
  15. Isopropyl alcohol softens hot melt glue. No need to heat the stuff. Just drip some alcohol on it. Keep it soaked "awhile" and peel it off.
  16. I have a friend who has a Model 22. It is a little louder than my metal ended Edeophone and she tells me her 22 is louder than a mutual friend's metal ended Aeola. I don't know if all 22's are loud though. Greg could advise on that. Loudness of course isn't the only quality that's important to the sound of the instrument though. Playing them would be an important way to decide. Maybe Greg could play the same tune on both and send you the recordings if you can't visit his shop. When I was at NESI last year I had a chance to try some instruments that Greg set up. They were all very responsive.
  17. "It is very stong alkaline/ammonia based." There are strong admonitions against using ammoniated products to clean brass in the Pressure Lantern (Petromax, Coleman, etc) collectors community and in the bullet reloading groups because it changes the brass and leads to cracks. This may not be much of a problem for the reed shoes which are relatively thick and unstressed, but if you had brass reeds, this may be putting them at risk.
  18. Here in Pennsylvania, the governor has asked all non-essential businesses to close for 2 weeks. Only grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations are supposed to be open. Restaurants closed - only food places selling take out are allowed. Gyms closed. No gatherings of more than 10 people is what they're recommending. It was hard on the bars which had to be closed for St Patrick's day - one of their biggest commercial times. I haven't left the house to go anywhere for two days, but my wife has to pick up our grandchildren for child care, so she's been back and forth to town. She said there are fewer cars on the road. People have gone nuts buying toilet paper, cleaning products and canned goods so there are a lot of bare spots on store shelves. The stores have finally put limits on how much people can buy so that there is enough product for everyone. They say delivery trucks are still working. The local big hospital in our rural area just announced this evening that they've had their first 3 positive tests for people in our area. I have been playing my concertina as well as my violin and viola.
  19. I think you'll like the Zoom H1n. I'm using a Zoom H4n only because the H1n wasn't available at the time I bought mine. The H4n has more features than most people will use. The H1 and H4 have built in speakers. The H2 doesn't have its own speaker. The H1n is a convenient size to fit in a shirt pocket. The H4n is larger and heavier. I built my concertina cases to fit my H4n alongside the instrument.
  20. If this is a short term/one time thing, why not just swap the D# and Eb reeds around if you're having trouble hitting the Eb button at speed.
  21. The cartoon below was in our local newspaper this morning.
  22. Odd sounding notes - e.g. ones that suddenly go flat or warbly when they had been previously fine. Notes that don't speak as well as the others. Knowing when it's time to replace the pads
  23. I bought the plywood for another case yesterday. The next one will be for my Edeophone. I'm getting tired of the weight of the original case I made for it. The Edeophone is a tenor treble, so it's a little heavier to begin with. I can see why they made some instruments with aluminum reed shoes. Hopefully the new case in 1/4" plywood will be substantially lighter. Another label idea would be to identify it as a doggy doo carrier. I'd miss my instrument if were stolen, but one of the band mates has a violin that's valuable enough that he never lets it out of his sight, including bringing it into the restaurant when we go to lunch after a late morning practice. The Edeophone is pricey, but not in the same league as his fiddle. It stays in the car for short periods unless the temperature is really extreme.
×
×
  • Create New...