Herrington Concertinas

[Harold Herrington]

Greetings.

The Herrington "Blackthorn" concertina

Six months ago I was seriously considering quitting the concertina business and spending more time fishing and playing with my grandchildren. I was bored and burned out. Then John O'Shaughnessy and I hit upon the idea of a new and refreshing approach to concertina construction. Here is the proposition.

Building concertinas of quality is a very time consuming endeavor. If we could somehow eliminate the routine repetitive functions involved in construction, and spend more time on the high skill functions, we might be able to offer a better instrument at a better price. This would be fun and exciting.

For the past year I have been working on a new approach to concertina construction. Actually, new is not correct. My design utilizes a riveted action and a removable or floating reed pan. These are design features of the earliest English made concertinas. How about that.

As part of this idea we wanted to relegate all the routine and redundant parts to a sub-contractor, with the parts to be made by CNC laser or other modern machining and manufacturing equipment. The end result would give us interchangeable parts with a high degree of accuracy and consistency. While this would raise the fixed cost of each instrument, it would also reduce the number of skilled hours required to build and finish a concertina.

The truly important work in building a concertina comes with the setting and tuning of the reeds, and in making all the adjustments to give the "feel and response" that the serious player is looking for.

We have finished the prototype and are very pleased with the results. Next we must do detailed time studies to see if we have actually gained anything from all this work. On paper it looks good, but only time will tell if it can be sold at a lower price.

We also plan to operate from a stock concertinas inventory. I don't care for the idea of a customer having to wait months, or years, for an instrument. We want to offer an excellent instrument with no waiting time. You place an order and we are ready to ship within a week of receiving your payment. We are not taking any new orders until we have a minimum of six concertinas on the shelf.

The same money-back guarantee of satisfaction will apply to the "Blackthorn" as has applied on all of my concertinas. If it does not please you, send it back for a refund. Now this is not meant to be a "trial" service, but rather applies to instruments returned for cause.

We actually expect this to be as good or better than any accordion reed concertinas being offered today.

The only down side is, we plan to limit the number of options that a customer might have. Initially we will only offer the instrument in the Wheatstone or Jeffries C/G with a few standard variations. The wood will be black walnut either natural or darkened. The bellows will be black with seven folds. Ends will be polished stainless-steel in a tree of life pattern.

It is our belief that the lower price for a thoroughly excellent instrument will greatly out-weigh the lack of custom features, such as wood species or some special keyboard.

We will call our new progeny the "Blackthorn". And like the famed walking-stick it will be simple, tough, and able to settle occasional arguments.

May God bless all who read this.

Harold Herrington

[david_boveri]

sounds like a good idea. i can't wait to see the end result! i'm assuming these are going to be done with accordion reeds?

[Alan Day]

Harold by coincidence the floating reed pan idea came up in a conversation on this site from suggestion I made about construction.Geof Crabb came back on the idea and said one was made by Crabb Concertinas and it is still being played now. As far as he knew it was the only one ever made utilising this idea.

Al

[bill_mchale]

Harold,

I hope you realize that any announcements of new instruments, even prototypes and proofs of concepts is only going to cause us to demand Pictures .

 

Actually, I hope your idea really takes off. It would be nice if it helped keep your interest up and lowered the cost of making concertinas.

 

One other thought on the accidental row. What variations of the Wheatstone and Jefferies are you planning on offering? Alternately, you could do a hybrid of the Wheatstone and Jefferies accidentals.. that way players of both systems would find it easy to adapt, and you can standardize even further.

 

Oh one last thought... Great Name for the instrument....

 

--

Bill

Edited November 24, 2009 by bill_mchale

[tombilly]

Sub contractor? What springs to mind is that perhaps you get the main body/ parts of the instrument made up in the far east somewhere and then finish them off?

[Harold Herrington]

sounds like a good idea. i can't wait to see the end result! i'm assuming these are going to be done with accordion reeds?

Accordion reeds, yes. My objective is to produce a concertina that pays well and is affordable. To go the route of using an English type reed is going in the wrong direction. I'll have photos shortly.

[Harold Herrington]

Harold by coincidence the floating reed pan idea came up in a conversation on this site from suggestion I made about construction.Geof Crabb came back on the idea and said one was made by Crabb Concertinas and it is still being played now. As far as he knew it was the only one ever made utilising this idea.

Al

 

I think an accordion reed concertina with a removable reed-pan makes a lot of sense, particularly from the view point of the maker. It adds a great deal of flexibility in construction.

My original design called for the reed-pan to be attached to the action. This would eliminate any problem with leaks between the action and reed-pan. This is the way all accordion reed-pan concertinas are being made today. However, if the reed-pan is damaged in construction you have a big problem on your hands.

I am using a gasket material between the reed-pan and the action that makes a leak highly unlikely. Also, the fact that I use body screws in the corners of the hexagonal body make the likelihood of a leak due to warping irrelevant. Harold

[Harold Herrington]

Harold,

I hope you realize that any announcements of new instruments, even prototypes and proofs of concepts is only going to cause us to demand Pictures .

 

Actually, I hope your idea really takes off. It would be nice if it helped keep your interest up and lowered the cost of making concertinas.

 

One other thought on the accidental row. What variations of the Wheatstone and Jefferies are you planning on offering? Alternately, you could do a hybrid of the Wheatstone and Jefferies accidentals.. that way players of both systems would find it easy to adapt, and you can standardize even further.

 

Oh one last thought... Great Name for the instrument....

 

--

Bill

Bill

I will soon furnish photos of both the outside and the inside. My guess is that some of the other builders will see the advantage of this approach and incorporate it in their instruments.

I too hope this all works out. My original idea was to produce a concertina built to high standards, and at a truly affordable price. That is still my goal.

As to keyboard layout variations.

I already offer a Wheatstone keyboard with a double C#/D# in the first two buttons of the right hand. I do this by shifting the right hand accidentals over and placing a C#/D# and a D#/C# in the first two positions. I drop entirely the original third row note that is in position five. This is no loss since it is never used anyway.

We can also offer a C#/C#, F#/D# in those first two buttons, with the rest being a standard Wheatstone, but moved over.

I hope this makes sense. I guess it would be best to publish the keyboards. But beyond these option there will not be any other "special" offerings. Our economy will at least in part come from standardization. If a buyer want something of his own invention he should go to someone else with my blessing.

 

Harold

[Harold Herrington]

Sub contractor? What springs to mind is that perhaps you get the main body/ parts of the instrument made up in the far east somewhere and then finish them off?

As to "Sub-contracting":

We will not be having any parts made in the far east. We will build and finish the end-frame, bellows frame, and bellows, here in my shop.

It is in the making of the internal parts that greater efficiency will be achieved. Here is the plan.

If one looks down through the layers of parts that make up a concertina they go like this:

Grill, bushing board, button board, action board, and reed-pan. If all of these parts are made using a CNC laser and or CNC machining process, and all are made from an integrated program, everything should line up without a lot of hand fitting.

At the same time the action board/button board are made, the laser will mark the fulcrum locations. Doing this eliminates all the fiddling with the position of the fulcrum to make the valve opening uniform. I expect this approach to save a lot of time. The parts should go together fairly fast and leave a lot more time for voicing, tuning, and adjustments.

Harold

[Chris Timson]

Best of luck with this Harold. The ambition and the general approach (not, of course, the detail) sounds a lot like Morse concertinas. I always thought that a sound approach and I hope this works out well for you too.

 

It's sad but I have to agree that while concertina reeds remain hand-made there's little place for them outside the premium instruments. It would be lovely if someone were able to mass produce concertina reeds. I know Rich hoped to do something like that but I don't know if that ambition died with him.

 

Chris

 

Edited to add PS: Blackthorn is a fairly strong bottled hard cider over here. Stll a good name for a concertina ...

Edited November 24, 2009 by Chris Timson

[Jim Besser]

 

We will call our new progeny the "Blackthorn". And like the famed walking-stick it will be simple, tough, and able to settle occasional arguments.

May God bless all who read this.

 

 

 

This sounds very promising. I like simple and tough. My original square Herrington is a model of durability - even with its original mechanism! I've never had any trouble with it.

[tombilly]

Glad to hear you plan to do most of the work yourselves. There has been the odd controversial thread on the flute forums about makers who use Chinese and other factories to produce keys and flute bodies etc., these then 'finished off' in the West and sold as locally made etc.