Fanie

When I was nine my parents sent me for piano lessons, but after a couple of months the teacher gave up and told my parents that I have no musical ability. I hated the piano, because I was in a boarding house and when my friends were playing outside, I had to sit and practice in front of the piano. Then I found a harmonica and started playing it a year or two later. Later I played bugle and trumpet in military bands. During the Covid 19 lockdown I started collecting instruments and now I am playing Anglo concertina, melodeon, bandoneon, ukulele, banjo, charango and balalaika.

When you glue it together with superglue you can sprinkle a little bit of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) over the glue. The soda enhances the strenght an drying time of the glue.

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I played harmonica since the age of 12 and later, when I grew up, I played bugle and trumpet in a military band. But here in South Africa the concertina and banjo are king in Boere music and I always wanted to play concertina and banjo. When the Covid 19 lockdown started I decided "now is the time". I ordered one of those cheap red Chinese 20 button Anglo concertinas and a banjo ukulele from China. It took nine months to be delivered. And then it was me and Youtube to learn to play.

Ok, I glued wallnut veneer to the plastic sides. I used contact adhesive. It looks much better.

Thank you Simon

Here it is with aluminium ends. I still need to cover the red plastic sides with wood veneer.

I started working on the plastic concertina. Firstly I removed the set of low reeds and now it sounds very good. Then I made new metal ends for it. I traced some Wheatstone scrolls on 0.9mm aluminium plate and cut it out with a scroll saw. But now it is only flat plates without the raised center. How do you concertina builders bend the sides down to raise the center? Now there is still some red plastic exposed on the sides and I want to glue wood veneer to it. What glue will you recommend for it? Thanks

I decided, instead of raising the pitch by filing the tip of the reeds, to rather lower the pitch by soldering the tip. I cleaned the tips with sandpaper and then melted a small drop of solder on the tip and then I tuned them again by filing with a piece of sandpaper until it has the right pitch. It worked very easy.

Thank you Frank, this is good advice. I will rather solder the tips to lower the pitch than filing them. You are right Malcolm, I cannot think that I have ever played that B. I started filing the A-reed and I am only at Bb and it is already as thin and sharp as a razor blade. I am going to try F#/F# reed. Thanks

Thank you for the help Theo and wunks, I appreciate it. I did experiment a bit with soldering the tips and then tune it, and it seems to work well. Now to make the highest pitch reed on the G-row. It is a B, and my highest accordion reed is A.

Would it be better to select a reed with the higher pitch and then solder the tip of the reed to lower the pitch and then tune it instead of selecting the lower pitch reed and just filing the tip to make the pitch higher?

I want to harvest PA reeds and tune them for a 20 button Anglo. Now, it is easy to tune a C-reed to C/D and E to E/F, etc, but how far can you stretch it for the C/G, G/B, G/D, D/Gb, C/A, E/B, G/E, B/Gb? Is it possible to tune them from a PA reed? Thanks

There is a light in the tunnel: I contacted David Jenkins, the South African Zulu concertina manufacturer and he was very excited to hear about my find. According to David it is hen's teeth. He wanted to trade me for another concertina, but I like the Bastari with the metal ends. So we agreed that I will send him the Zulu-tuned reed blocks and he will send me a set of CG reeds.

I found a beautiful Bastari Model U-8-2-P with metal sides, but when I tried to play it, it seemed that the reeds on the right hand out side and left in side are turned around. Then I played it over the tuner and found the tuning in D# outside and Bb inside. I went to Luke's Anglo Piano page and, low an behold, there it is, a Zulu Squashbox. What a disapointment.