Clive Thorne

Jesse, I get what you are sying about being able to look at it and work out how it works, and what might be wrong. I am pretty good at that myself. However I know some peolpe who could look at a concertina or a bicycle all day and still have absolutely know idea of how it works! The problem is often that they don't think they understand such things, and therefore , perhaps subconciously, don't really try.

Making your own bolts seems (to me) to be a lot of effort for very little (if any) tangible gain. If it were me I would convert everything to M2.5, probably stainless steel, even if it meant going to allen heads or cheese heads. As for the screws in the above above spost, should be easy enough to get from a serious ironmonger, or on line.

Is this a "Wasted" bolt, i.e. the shaft is narrower tha the thread? possibly to stop it binding in the hole. Or it could have the original have been rolled, which will produce a thread diameter bigger than the original shaft.

very good points.

I did that once, with a melodeon rather than a concertine, and with male nipples. Bloody hell it hurt.

Calling Simon Gabrielow: She holds the concertina like you do! So it's not just you: It's you and a, erm, mermaid.

As long as we think about them with all the right notes (and in the right order!).

I think that you are much too modest about your ability on the anglo!!

So do you actually move the buttons, or simply move the hand rest back and forward ? For my "Small" Crabb/Jeffries (5 3/4" accross the flats) it's around 73mm. For the inside row it's around 50mm. I have smallish hands, but I would struggle with any buttons inside that row, but could handle a few out beyond the 73mm. I guess that what would actually happen would be for every thing to move out a bit to allow for a new inner row of 1 or 2 buttons.

You're certainly not alone in having difficulty. Yours is one instrument in a room of similar sounding instruments, and the sound predominatly comes out the ends, i.e. away from you. Be rest assured that if you are playing something terribly wrong then you will hear it! What I do is hold my concertina up so that it's up at chest/chin level, which does help. Mind you I've never been a "rest it on a knee/thigh" type player, so supporting it with just two hands is normal for me.

Best wishes Dana.

I'll believe it when I see it!

"Beatiful brown colour": I.e. It's brown.

What about a dashpot connected to a sprung centre return displacement measuring device, so that when pushing/pulling the sensor is displaced, but at rest it returns to it's central position. This would have the advantage of allowing some movement in the "bellows", more like a real concertina, although there might be a bit of a lag in the sensor returning to zero. Actually, think about it as I type, have a dash pot with a pressure sensor, which would allow movement, but return to zero instantly when you stopped pushing/pulling. The amount of movement under pressure could be adjusted by altering the bleed rate on the dashpot (you could even simulate running out of air!). You could choose the dashpot diameter to give a realistic total force between the ends, but obviously the pressure in there would be much higher than in full bellows area, and so, possibly easier/cheaper to measure. Addendum: Obviously you'd need some sort of bellows framework to make the two ends move relative to each other in the expected way. OR you could just use a real concertina! No batteries to go flat, no ampliiers to lug around!, but reeds to go out of tune, and no "Dial a key/layout" feature.

Alex, I might be interested in a couple. What sort of price would they be, assuming you reach the required 10 pieces?