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How did Louis make his Reed Pans?


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I'm just in the middle of de-tuning an English Lachenal and each time I push a reed frame back into its housing, I marvel at the precision of the dovetail slot. Does anyone know how they originally cut those slots? I'm guessing they didn't have high speed routers like we do today and yet they can't have been chiselled, much too time consuming. Perhaps they were rotary cutters, geared off a central shaft running through the factory? Are there any pictures of the factory working?

Andy.

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I'm just in the middle of de-tuning an English Lachenal and each time I push a reed frame back into its housing, I marvel at the precision of the dovetail slot. Does anyone know how they originally cut those slots? I'm guessing they didn't have high speed routers like we do today and yet they can't have been chiselled, much too time consuming. Perhaps they were rotary cutters, geared off a central shaft running through the factory? Are there any pictures of the factory working?

Andy.

 

Hello, Andy -

Marvel away - you have certainly picked an interesting subject, there laugh.gif

 

The reed pans were done on a very special router, probably developed by Louis Lachenal himself. Since Lachenal worked, externally, for Wheatstone, it is likely to be one like this (from the Wheatstone factory):

 

post-448-0-63857300-1322569527_thumb.jpg

 

The image a video frame from an archive film about the Wheatstone factory. You can see it here.

 

/Henrik

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Thank you, I have wondered about this for some time. The routing seems so perfect; the tolerances must be very small. I like the way the reed frame just tightens up as it reaches the end of its slot. It would be interesting to see the router that made my 1851 Wheatstone (hand/foot cranked, or a steam engine?).

 

Ernie

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There is a lot we have to thank Lachenal for. As Henrik indicates above, it was his skill as an engineer that enabled concertinas to be made quicker, and in much larger quantities. Originally the reed slots were chiselled. You can see them in the early square end reed Wheatstone instruments like this one . Without Lachenal, the concertina would probably have remained an expensive musical curiosity, built by skilled scientific instrument makers.Early accounts say that Lachenal was bought in because of problems making small screws - probably the reed plate ones - and became more and more involved in the whole process.

 

Edit for Ernie's question: Probably some form of gas engine. Lachenal was making parts for gas meters, so perhaps that was the power source of that time.

Edited by wes williams
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Andy,

There is a world to learn from the Pathe film. You do not have to duplicate the Lachenal pin router but with a little ingenuity you can employ a conventional router and come up with a design of your own

 

I would not, however, endorse the bellow making segment. The woman workers are a wonder of effeciency but the construction design of folded card and butterfles with no underlying valleys was not up to previous Wheatstone standards.

 

Greg

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Wowee! What a fantastic response. And thank you for the video link. I've always been fascinated by specialist machines and during the 70's and 80's made a few myself. I made an 8' x 4' open frame XY CNC router, controlled by a BBC Micro, which drilled a criss cross pattern of 2,000 holes in plastic sheets. They then had nylon loops stitched into them and became a portable dry ski slope! The customer didn't sell many, partly due to the fact that the nylon would take fingers off if you fell on it!

I also made an automatic machine that fed squares of thin ply from a hopper onto a turntable and then cut them into circles and drilled lots of holes round the edge - Cane basket bases, we made 40,000 of them.

Suffice to say that I feel a semi-automatic reed pan machine coming on. Very exciting! Any orders? Cheaper if you buy 100!

Andy

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Light bulb moment! Watching the video made me realise why the big air hole in the English reed pan is off centre! My goodness that man was brilliant!

 

Andy

Lightbulb indeed!

Alright, then we better get the out takes from the film - what they cut away.

 

Reed pan router-wise (new word, eh?) it is much more interesting than the edited film.

Here it is (courtesy "varney" of c.net (because I kept forgetting where it was...)).

 

Have patience with the little fella selling his own newspapers! The Wheatstone out takes start at 9:56 and the lady putting the end plate on is clearly having a bad day; no wonder thay cut it.

 

If I may paraphrase the old "All good things in life are free" to "All well-working things in life are simple"...

 

/Henrik

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