Jake Middleton-Metcalfe
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Posts posted by Jake Middleton-Metcalfe
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It's a little known fact that some of the early manufacturers kept specially trained hamsters to gnaw out the fretwork. Having discovered that the hamster was quite capable of memorizing the pattern of a maze, if there was a food reward at the end of it, it was but a short step to devise a maze in the form of a fretwork template, rewarding the industrious creatures only if they gnawed as they went. Occasionally, however, a hamster would go rogue, chomp through the walls of the template, and produce fretwork with no discernible pattern or symmetry. This appears to be one of those cases, and one can only sympathise with the maker. However, on a more positive note, this kind of occurrence did give rise to a small but profitable business in the production of warm and fashionable hamster-skin gloves.
coh this forum is so great for accurate historical information! I am going STRAIGHT to pet-smart to get myself a selection of young vigorous looking hamsters to help me in the workshop.
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The other mod I have carried out is to make the air key lever actuated, people seem to find this easier on the stiff and aching thumb joints. Also faster to actuate.
Dave
I am very in favour of this I have to say.
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you will find you have to just bend it back to the correct position. The set of the reed usually also affects its pitch to a small degree so you always have have to bear that in mind and do tuning and setting together. Try playing the instrument gently and then loudly after you have tuned the reeds to make sure the set is correct. You will normally find you have to go back and adjust the set on some reeds, which again may mean a little bit more tuning but only a small amount, changing the set of the reed never makes it go far off the pitch you are trying to reach. At least that is what I do. Others may differ
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nicely cut fretwork and not all of the old ones were. I have never seen or played a Shakespeare.
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Chris your Accordiaphone is very fun to play
On the subject of weight, this is a small and almost pedantic side note but: the instruments I sell are A WHOLE 40 GRAMS LIGHTER! Than the instruments in this review.
This is due to a tapped brass bar behind the fretwork which allows the hand rests to be removed without removing the whole end (each hand rest is held on with two bolts) so I can put different sized/shaped hand rests onto the instrument for people to try out. These instruments are the only ones to have this feature as they are the display models.
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Concertina valves can certainly be tricky.
With accordion reeds I found in the end that I had better luck with synthetic valves (very very thin plastic) Which gave slightly more volume and slightly better response than the accordion leather valves. Also easier to use.
Perhaps if I cut some of those plastic valves into a suitable shape for a traditional concertina and tried it out in one it might perform well... or it might just be terrible. Did anyone ever try this?
Jake
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I am so happy people are taking notice of this tune! It is a less well known tune and its great.
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Rod I would love to see that anglo one day.
He could only show me his first two prototypes which were quite broken and had been in the attic for like 30 years. If it was one of his last ones you have it is probably quite a bit better than the ones I saw which were only prototypes. It is a shame the bank had to do him such a bad turn, maybe the business would still be around and be making really great stuff now.
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That is The Quarry. A lovely traditional English tune, not widely known. Thanks for pointing that out, the tunes are all titled now.
Hopefully I will see you at a festival this year!
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Sound samples now added to the website, check them out here:
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Thank you for adding me
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Jim, indeed, this is something I have noticed as well. Soon I will have some recordings so people can decide what they think. I was hoping my mate John Timpany could help me with the sound recording as he has an ace home studio. For a short while he also made concertinas in I believe the late 70s
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Hello
I will be uploading some sound files very soon. Hopefully some videos as well.
Jeff - The reeds used in these instruments are Italian hand finished accordion reeds (tipo a mano) they are of a high quality. The reeds are flat mounted in a reed pan made of a hardwood ply for structural stability and strength.
Further info on the reed pans as I experimented quite a bit here: When I was prototyping I decided on fairly deep reed chambers as this raised the volume and make a fuller less 'flat' sound. The chambers are shallower on the highest reeds as this improves response up that end. This practice of smaller reed chambers for the higher reeds is very much followed on traditional concertina reed pans as well.
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Good morning!
After a long period of careful designing and testing I am happy to announce that my small company Wolverton Concertinas is open for business. The instruments I am currently offering are high quality hybrid 30 button Anglo concertinas, in either C/G or G/D with either Jeffries or Wheatstone accidentals. They are clear, responsive, loud and fun instruments.
My personal area of focus has been to make an instrument which is very comfortable to play. As such I am happy to offer two optional extra features:
1: Air levers (as opposed to air buttons) off the shelf.
2: custom hand rests fitted to the players hands. To have these made the player just needs to try out our display concertinas which have a quick release hand rest system. A logical sizing system of different size and shape hand rests can be attached so the player can decide what works best for them. These new hand rests could be applied to any Anglo or duet concertina.
More details are all on here: www.wolvertonconcertinas.com
Have a lovely week everyone!
Jake Middleton-Metcalfe (profile name previously "jake of hertford")
Edited to add! Sound samples now online at: https://wolvertonconcertinas.com/sound-samples/
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very clever and simple, Love it. I will have to try that at some stage, cheers mate.
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blimy. They really did push the boundaries those guys.. I bet there are loads of bizarre experimental prototypes hidden away somewhere.
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yeah, sorry to hi jack your thread
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wait a second, wasn't I in the room when you came to collect this? I was hanging around with another prototype instrument trying not to get in the way too much
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tell you what this post has got me thinking, thank you for sharing your ideas dana.
I am quite intrigued by the technique of bevelling the cards at the top and the bottom to get around the fact the bellows have to stretch to the closed position (given that they were made in the open position)
The way I got around this problem was:
1: put my runs of cards on the mould (individual cards were joined up off the mould ( mould similar to yours but wooden) and join them all up with a strip of cloth glued allong on the top runs
2: let glue dry for 30-45 mins then take the bellows off the mould and clamp overnight
3:put the bellows back on the mould and glue the gussets and top runs of leather and again wait for 30-45 mins before removing and clamping the bellows overnight
this process gave me a bellows that was not acting like a spring always wanting to open.
My question is: does bevelling the cards allow you to skip step 2 on my list above?
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Only hard because you have to make the molds, which are a bit of work compared to the hex or octagon cores or easier yet a piece of pvc pipe. Having done it both ways, the extra support the molds give to the folds when gluing the gussets or butterfly's/papers depending on style, is nice. The down side is the fixed angle at the ridges, which only means you want to allow for the top runs to stretch sideways ( not lengthwise ) so the bellows can close. On a core mold, you can pinch the peaks closed when you glue on the top run which means it is glued in the closed position. I get around the stretch by beveling my card at 45 degrees on both the peaks and valleys so the leather bends around a point rather than a square or v shaped ridge. I leave 2mm of space at the bottom when I glue on the inner hinge so the thickness of the covering leather has someplace to fit when folded closed. Steve Dickerson had a jig to lay out the cards with 2mm spacers between them, but I just use a long piece of angle iron with a couple wood strips glued on the side to support the long beveled card strips when I glue on the leather valley hinge. The side support strips are just low enough so the card doesn't get to the peak of the angle iron ( ^ orientation) which leaves just the right gap after gluing, both edges are beveled with the mat cutter / / so when you put the cards together, the outside peak and the inside peak look the same ( you swap ends ever other piece ). /\/\.
I see, yeah milling aluminium can be a laborious process, looks well worth it though for a very good mould.
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Great looking moulds. Why is this the hard way though? I always thought this was the best way
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oh wow!
Yes this was made for my friend, who wanted to learn some sort of squeeze box for years. Andrew mentioned the project and I mentioned that my friend might be interested, its great this thing happened what a lovely occurrence. She is enjoying her instrument a lot.
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We don't have (so far as I'm aware!) people taking new top-end concertinas and scuffing up the bellows, rubbing finish off the ends, breaking out pieces of fretwork, etc. to make them look like old Jeffries or Linotas or Aeolas. Thank goodness for that.
Ken
Wolverton Concertinas Video Blog
in Concertina Videos & Music
Posted
Hello
In case anyone is interested I have started doing a video blog to talk about concertina design, repair and music. With a focus on whatever I am making at a given time before it gets sent off.
Here is the first video, I hope to make some more at some point whenever there is something interesting to show people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6_EcyEyNM4&feature=youtu.be
Jake