Building a concertina with one kind of wood

[Vitto77]

Hi all. 

Just a curiosity - I would like to build one some day, but not now, I've no time at all at this moment. 

I was wondering, it would be a problem to build a concertina using just one kind of wood? I mean the same kind for bellows, heads, reedplates, lever boards, reed chambers. 

I've got a good amount of old walnut slabs (about 5mm thick) my grandpa left. I suppose that this walnut it's about 90/100 years old, clean and straight (choosing the right cut). 

Thanks. 

[alex_holden]

It should be possible to use walnut for most things, though 5mm is quite thin. You could probably make it work if it's already flat and smooth and you don't need to remove any more thickness.

[David Lay]

If I only had 5mm panels, I would expect to laminate pieces together to get the thickness needed for some components.  Walnut is quite dense, which will affect how you attach lever posts and otherwise detail the project.  I wonder, though, how using only a dense hardwood will affect the sound.

[Marien]

Somehow mahogany seems to be a good wood type to me. 

[wunks]

I have a table leaf and a couple of display case rails of American Chestnut I'm saving for my future Jeff duet build.  Light, strong, decay resistant and a beautiful rich dark brown.  It's probably around 100 years old and the rail pieces have some pinholes so that was probably milled from dead or dying trees ( the leaf is clean).  It's an open pored wood that looks a lot like oak but with more contrast in the grain.  I've contemplated a single wood build ( not by me ) but even though it's properties would seem to be excellent throughout, it's relatively rare and using it sparingly for visual parts only would leave plenty of material for my contemplated line of resurrected JD instruments....😄

[Frank Edgley]

The wood used for the reedpan definitely affects the sound.

[seanc]

On 1/21/2023 at 12:24 PM, Frank Edgley said:

The wood used for the reedpan definitely affects the sound.

 

 

Wouldn't you be better off to use something like a plywood. or other laminated type of thing from a stability point of view?

 

I have heard from many guitar luthiers that single pieces of wood are prone to warpage, shrinkage etc. Maybe the reed pan has enough bracing to stabilize it?

 

But I would think also that using a single log/ piece would possibly have much more variation/ inconsistencies  sonically? You could easily have Hot/ Cold spots due to the nature of a single piece (knots, graining and such) .

 

Or, you could easily end up with  a "good" sounding piece or a "bad" sounding piece.  But, you would not really know either way until the build was completed.

 

 

[Anglo-Irishman]

If a comparison with stringed instruments is permissable, then a "one-wood" instrument would not be optimal. Bowed and plucked instruments (at least, those in the European tradition) use a straight-grained softwood (mostly spruce) for the belly - the component that takes up and amplifies the vibration of the strings - and a hardwood of some kind for the load-bearing elements and the enclosure of the resonance chamber.

Yes, panels of the same wood do differ. However, I've heard that a good luthier can tell the quality of a piece of wood by just tapping it, so the quality of the finished instrument is not just hit-or-miss.

As to laminated vs. solid woods: as an Autoharpist, I have experience with both. In general, higher-quality Autoharps have solid spruce (or someties maple) sounding-boards; the less high-class ones are laminated. I personally had a favourite Autoharp that was 50 years old and had a solid spruce top. It sounded wonderful, although the sound-board was slightly wavy. Then, one day, it gave way under the tension of the strings! My replacement gigging harp has a laminated top, which (after 30 years) is still straight as a die, but just lacks that sweetness of the solid top.

As I said, I don't know to what extent this applies to free-reed instruments.

Cheers,

John

[Richard Mellish]

On 2/2/2023 at 11:03 AM, Anglo-Irishman said:

As I said, I don't know to what extent this applies to free-reed instruments.

Cheers,

John

In a stringed instrument, energy is coupled from the vibrating strings to the air by vibration of some of the pieces of wood, so the properties of those pieces are very significant. In a concertina the sound is generated by the reed modifying the flow of air through the slot that the reed moves in. The dimensions of the chamber, if any, the material of the ends (wood or metal) and the amount of open area in the fretwork all have some influence, but I would expect the choice of wood to have little influence to the sound, and therefore that the choice should be governed mainly by other considerations, such as resistance to splitting and warping. I'm prepared to be told I'm wrong if anyone actually knows different.

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

Why not use a good quality plywood type of board? Particularly for the ends .. then you could veneer the surface with a thin layer of wood veneer. Ply board can be bought in fine grade of finish, and I have used it as a base for making carcass for decorative boxes over the years, which I later on veneered.  

[Wally Carroll]

Ply is fine for the endplates and I would recommend it’s use to keep the fretwork from cracking. The reedpans and actionboards are more resonant and in my experience, solid woods are better. English Sycamore is traditional in this regard. 

[wes]

On 2/11/2023 at 7:47 PM, Wally Carroll said:

Ply is fine for the endplates and I would recommend it’s use to keep the fretwork from cracking. The reedpans and actionboards are more resonant and in my experience, solid woods are better. English Sycamore is traditional in this regard. 

In your personal experience, Wally, do any of the instruments made with ply reedpans develop any character that one would get with solid wood? Or do they remain a bit shall we say "soulless"? And if by some great luck they do improve, just how many years of playing would do that? 10? 20? 

Edited March 23, 2023 by wes
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[SIMON GABRIELOW]

You can easily veneer plain ply panels to give decorative effect; I have used ply board to make boxes and veneered they remain permanently stable afterwards, from my own experience.

I have used veneers like sapelle mahogany, satin wood, and maple.

I used ply as base for an experimental stringed instrument years ago. If too thick for concertina face, I am unsure over that effect for its use.

 

[Wally Carroll]

On 3/23/2023 at 7:34 PM, wes said:

In your personal experience, Wally, do any of the instruments made with ply reedpans develop any character that one would get with solid wood? Or do they remain a bit shall we say "soulless"? And if by some great luck they do improve, just how many years of playing would do that? 10? 20? 

I’m sorry Wes, I missed your question and just discovered it. I have not made an instrument with ply pans so I couldn’t say for certain but my intuition would be that you wouldn’t experience much change over time. This may vary with the thickness of the individual plys and also the wood used. However, elsewhere I have written about my uncertainty that an instrument’s tone improves over time even with solid wood.  Here is that discussion:

 

[wes]

Thanks for your input, Wally. I read that link when it was posted back when. I had a bit of an epiphany when I looked closer at the reed pan of this instrument. I've had it apart many times for this and that and the way the edges are beveled, it always looked like a 3 ply board....but it's not, its solid beech? sycamore? Anyway I feel foolish about it. As to the tone again, it's very loud a bit sharp on the ears. In fact at a workshop I had one fellow ask me with a pained face to please not play it around him. It is in perfect tune. I have a wonderful Crabb/Jeffries, a high end Jones and two very nice Lachenals to compare it to also. I've played it fairly regularly for 13 years and it's a slight bit better than when I got it new. I think. I've always wondered if it's the steel or maybe the dense foam used instead of chamois seal. (Have thought to replace that with chamois).  On the plus side its fast and light great for pipe tunes.  Should I just sell it or persevere...