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Teacher For Bellows Making Searched


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Hi All,

 

Tring to find who might be willing to share his knowledge with me and others, helpiong to learn to make bellows.

 

I am ready to travel in order to meet with the person, who might be rady to show me.

 

Although I think that the firtst steps could be resolved also in distance.

 

Curious to see if there is any response to this request.

 

Kind regards and thanks in advance for the attention.

 

Joachim

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I found that the best way to learn how to make a bellows is to buy one and take it apart. Don't buy a good bellows for that purpose. Find a conertina on e-bay that has a bellows beyond repair (englishes are usually cheaper). Get a big kettle, fill it with hot water. Hot, but not boiling. Drop the bellows in. It should fall apart in a matter of seconds. Send it through a spaghetti strainer. Lay all of the parts out flat on towels. You will need a lot of room for this. Dry carefully and try to keep things flat. You should have a large number of pieces from which to take measurements. The rest is reverse engineering.

 

Concertina makers are more likely to help you once you take a stab at making a bellows by yourself.

 

Good luck! Keep us posted on your progress!

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Dear Henk and dear Mr. Bellows,

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

Henk, always helpful, I shall take.

To be wise ? Me ? Can the heart be wise ?

 

Mr. Bellows :

Your advice seems to practical.

 

I bought a nice old Anglo Lachenal with a 5 fold bellow, which does not work.

It has been cheap.

 

It looks nice, a pity to destroy. But I guess I shall do so with the result that of a dying bellow may be borne new ones.

 

Kind regards

Joachim Delp

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You might like to contact Don Nichols. I have his email address but you can find it at his web site. DoN is very free with helpful information and has been working towards building his own concertina for quite a few years now.

 

He is probably the most concertina-knowledgeable internet-savvy person not already a member of this list, I wonder why? I shall have to ask him.

 

Chris

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IIRC, Don prefers not to have _any_ cookies set on his computer when Web Browsing. If that is one's preference, this forum is more difficult to use, especially as a member. He is very Internet savvy, always being the first to spot viruses, etc. He is also very careful!

 

You can always find Don on the rec.music.makers.squeezebox newsgroup (I could a while back; I haven't checked in a while).

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IIRC, Don prefers not to have _any_ cookies set on his computer when Web Browsing.

That's part of it. Another part is that he doesn't like services where the only access is through a browser.

 

He wants to be able to download the postings and upload responses. Frankly, I would like that, too.

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That sounds like DoN. For me, this forum serves as a replacement for rec.music.makers.squeezbox, which I stopped subscribing to when I changed my email address. Though my current email address can be found on my web site I get very litle spam, whereas my last email address was getting upwards of 100 a day. This proves (to my satisfaction anyway) that spammers harvest email addresses primarily from Usenet rather than the web.

 

This is wandering a bit off bellows. Ken, perhap you could move this bit to a better location.

 

Cheers,

 

Chris

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This is wandering a bit off bellows. Ken, perhap you could move this bit to a better location.

Not just off bellows, but off concertinas. If it continues, maybe it should go to Forum Questions, etc. I think that's as close as it gets. But digressions are the norm here, and so far this one is short. :)

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This is wandering a bit off bellows. Ken, perhap you could move this bit to a better location.

Not just off bellows, but off concertinas. If it continues, maybe it should go to Forum Questions, etc. I think that's as close as it gets. But digressions are the norm here, and so far this one is short. :)

Agreed. The to-do list is now 4 months and 2 pages long. But school is out in 3 weeks. :)

 

Getting back to bellows, Bob Snope, Chief Technician at the Button Box, did a nice demo of how he makes them at the last Northeast Squeeze-In. Perhaps someone in Europe could be convinced to do a similar demo at one of the big get togethers? Maybe a bunch of us Yanks should come to the next one and help do it!

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For me, this forum serves as a replacement for rec.music.makers.squeezbox, which I stopped subscribing to when I changed my email address

rec.music.makers.squeezbox is almost all accordions or melodeons now. There are a few concertina related posts but not a lot

 

- John Wild

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  • 6 months later...

Bellows Cadaver Available:

 

If anyone desires to follow the advice given in this thread by Mr. Bellows, I can offer a C. Jeffries Crane duet bellows, minus the end frames, for dissection and study. Thanks to the Button Box and John Connor, the instrument has been beautifully restored and has a lovely new bellows.

 

This old bellows is larger than the usual English or anglo bellows. I have received estimates of the date of the instrument (and the old bellows) ranging from 1910 to 1920. There are no symbols or writing on the old bellows, so I can reassure our concertina historians that I'm not giving away any Jeffries data.

 

First come, first.serve.

 

Brian

 

*********************

 

December 20, 2004:

 

The old Jeffries bellows has been "adopted"; it will start a new life as a tuning bellows.

 

Brian

Edited by Brian Humphrey
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