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Showing results for tags 'silicone'.
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I and others have written about this process in the past, how older Italian-made concertinas had a clever/cheap system of using rubber linkages to connect the buttons to the lever arms in their concertina mechanism. Over the decades the rubber dries out and cracks and buttons slip down inside the body of the concertina (if you're lucky!) and it's unusable. But broadly speaking most of them can be gotten back up and running by replacing the rubber sleeves. Apparently most folks (including myself back 7yrs or so ago) use silicone tubing that's normally sold to model vehicle enthusiasts for fuel line, since it has the right texture and is available in the right diameters. I looked at some older threads, and it appears the recommended brand (AeroTrend) is defunct. Does anyone have a recommendation as to what is now the preferred brand, and which ID/OD of fuel line tends to be best for Stagi/Bastari/etc concertina to replace the button-lever linkage? I'll say just to repeat it, but at least around 2013 when I did repaired quite a few of these on my kitchen table for kicks, I tried something I hadn't seen many other repairers mentioh, which is I'd cut the linkage a little longer than needed to connect the button and arm, but then cut a small slit partway down it, and in my brief experience that gave it more grip while still allowing it to depress properly, and at least the ones I tried didn't seem to tear any further up the slit. Just an option to try out for anyone else doing kitchen-table repair of cheap Italian concertinas.