Jake Middleton-Metcalfe

Its a commercially available lacquer simply called "ebonising lacquer" I apply it by spray.

At the risk of going too far off topic I have edited the original post. Here are some of the hand rests which were made from the wood, these will be ebonised. Its quite a nice wood to work with actually, the grain is not too deep.

I think its a more obscure spelling though either is correct apparently, I did look it up, it's a bit of an odd word. Anyway I will post some pictures of the other things made from the buro or bureau.

no buro is a correct english spelling, I think bureau is the original french spelling though, which is a nicer spelling. I did not know a Burro was a donkey until now though, if I had one of those the fun would really begin.

An interesting thing happened to me recently: I went to a local auction house for fun (with no actual intention of buying anything) and ended up buying a hideous mahogany bureau. No one else was bidding on it and it was going for £15 "hey that is solid mahogany!" I thought. Despite the nice mahogany the bureau was so hideous that purchased it and I plundered it for wood. You can see in these image how one drawer front was divided up to make blanks for many anglo concertina hand rests. Though I do not finish my concertinas in mahogany these blanks are going to be used for ebonised hand rests. Reuse and recycle! The concertina pictured has some hand rests made from this drawer. It is a Jeffries which had solid metal hand rests (also pictured). The owner of the instrument found them to be uncomfortable so requested some new ones to be made - a completely reversible procedure which caused the original parts no damage. Less can be said for the bureau. Jake

I have been waiting for years for someone to do music like this. Very nice.

great tune

I quite agree about the valves. It is surely the most perishable component. I use plastic accordion valves on my accordion reeds, they come in a variety of sizes and work very well. I do want to try them out in a concertina reeded prototype I am working on at the moment, its something I am very curious about.

This is all very, very interesting.

Though I doubt that this is the reason they did it: It might be that an instrument using screwed down reeds instead of dovetailed ones would be more durable in a climate with extremes of temperature or humidity.

hugely.

This guy has true inspiration for certain.

Hi David I have heard of people trying mahogany but cant be sure of the difference in sound. One would expect a harder wood to produce a brighter tone, sycamore and maple are very hard. Its difficult to prove such things as different tonal qualities produced by different woods used for a reed pan without tests. Do you have any recordings of your concertinas? I would be curious to listen as I am not familiar with huon pine.

Would it really be necessary to harden 6061 I believe both 6061 and 6063 are precipitation hardened by holding them at around 300 degrees F for a few hours depending on thickness. It is not quenched after heating. T6 means that it has already been hardened either by heat treating or cold working as opposed to annealled stock. Hardened here is a relative term, only comparing it to the soft state, not to other metals like tool steel or any steel for that matter. Machining does not affect the hardened state unless it is heated much hotter and rapidly cooled. ( this has the opposite effect to quenching hardenable steel alloys ). I have successfully used my home oven for the work when making my bellows mold bars. Starting with T6 stock, you can ship any further hardening. Dana Would it really be necessary to harden or use the pre hardened 6061 though? I mean its not like those frames are going to be exposed to much stress/abrasion in their lifetime right?

Couldn't understand any of it but the pictures were quite informative. Cool jigs they have

a rather good way I have seen this done is by glueing up a laminate of say 4 layers of thin wood veneer, the bottom 3 being dark in colour (black tulipwood veneer apparently works well) and the top layer being brighter (classically amboyna or some other decorative wood) then the router is passed round the edge to form the moulding which will reveal the dark lower woods, its rather effective I have seen at least one other concertina maker do it this way.

seems legit.

nice one, is that flatworld?

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

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.

I am very in favour of this I have to say.

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

nicely cut fretwork and not all of the old ones were. I have never seen or played a Shakespeare.

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.

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