alex_holden

Hi Doug, what key is your bass Anglo?

They look very tidy for your first set. How do they perform? Mr Wakker's statement seems hyperbolic to me. My own first set is somewhat flawed but still totally functional (they are part of my reed tuning bellows). I feel like I was making consistently pretty decent bellows after around half a dozen attempts. I haven't given up on improvement though: I keep experimenting with minor changes to my process or material choices. One problem I've run into is that as the quality has improved the amount of time I spend making them has increased.

Thanks to all who worked on preserving this very useful resource. Incidentally most of the images in the "Additional Information and Images" sections are very small, on the order of 250x250 pixels. I just noticed that if you right click on them and select "open image in a new tab", all the ones I've tried so far were actually much larger than they appeared on the page.

It depends whether the leak is due to a hole in the leather or from a glue joint that has come partially unstuck. Have you tried holding a bright lamp inside the bellows while in a dark room and looking for light spots?

Thanks for the useful info, I hadn't come across John Keatley and the supplier I used in the past has stopped selling NS. Incidentally I think NS103 is only about 10% nickel, so not highly corrosion resistant. I sometimes do nickel electroplating on new instruments but I've never attempted to strip and replate an old set.

0.3mm sounds too thin, and stiff leather is hard to work with. In particularly getting the top runs to bend neatly around the corners is difficult if the leather won't stretch. I once bought a goatskin that felt like it had been coated in plastic and I didn't like it at all. Soft leather requires an extremely sharp blade to skive well. Some razor blade brands are better than others, and (in my experience) even the good ones don't stay sharp very long before you have to change them. I expect to use several disposable razor blades per set of bellows.

I don't think you need a particularly fancy pair of pliers. Preferably use a pair with smooth jaws so you don't get serration marks. Something similar to these would work: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jewellery-Miniature-Hobbies-Creativity-Crafting/dp/B0BMZPK1C2/ I like to round over the corners of the jaws slightly with a diamond file so they don't dig in so much. Hold the wire firmly in the pliers and rotate them while pushing the free end against a hard surface (e.g. a workbench). The difficult part is putting the bends in the right places so it ends up the right size and the ends meet up. You might need a few attempts so buy more wire than you think you will need. I usually cut the wire a bit too long and then trim it after bending. I think brass wire is usually supplied "half hard": that ought to be soft enough to take a 90 degree bend without breaking. If you find it is too hard, you can anneal it by heating in a flame until it's a dull red and then quenching in water.

In that case, zoom in and drag to select the section you want to practice, do Effect->Change Tempo... as before, then do Effect->Repeat to insert multiple copies of the selected region. (Incidentally Audacity also has a feature called "audio loops" that never totally made sense to me so I would ignore that feature and just use the repeat effect.)

To change the tempo of a full track you do Select->All then Effect->Change Tempo... Enter the percentage change or the old and new beats per minute and then click Apply. To me it sounds pretty good if I tick the "Use high quality stretching" box (it's a bit distorted without it). I've never tried any of the dedicated tools.

Yes, "width across flats" (often abbreviated to AF) is an engineering term that means the distance between two flat parallel sides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Width_across_flats

The fretwork looks very crude to me. Maybe DIY replacement end plates?

D3 or D4? The problem you might have, depending on the reed pan design, is the existing chamber might not be big enough for the reeds you want to use.

Are you sure that is only 92mm wide? This is a 10 button 92mm miniature: http://www.apjmusic.co.uk/apj_miniature_anglo.htm

Going by the calendar, the writeup: I published it about a year after finishing the instrument.

https://www.holdenconcertinas.com/a-one-handed-27-button-bass-hayden/ I designed it so the hand rails can be reversed to make it right or left handed.