Action board crack

[BrokenBox]

I'm sure this must be covered somewhere on this forum but I can't find it. I have what I believe to be a Rock Chidley concertina that I am trying to get into playing order. One hurdle is this crack in the action board. I'm relatively happy about glueing it back level apart from the levers being in the way. I assumed that, with the spring unhooked, the lever and pad would wiggle out.  Having tried this it is not wiggling out easily.  Is there a technique that I am missing or is it just perseverance?

[Tiposx]

As I remember it, you have to remove the pad and the spud to gain enough wiggle room. Also note that the R.C. levers are really tough and won't bend. This means that you will have to use pad /spud thickness to achieve level buttons when you reassemble the action, rather than bending a lever.

 

[BrokenBox]

Thanks Tiposx, that's good to know. What are the spuds and pads made of?

I was also considering wedging the pads in the up position and working underneath them to minimise disturbance so I might try this first.

[Stephen Chambers]

I find the most effective repair in these circumstances (rather than shimming the crack itself) is to unglue the cracked part of the action board from the frame it sits in, and glue the crack back together whilst installing a slip of wood to fill the gap that's then left abutting the frame.

Edited March 26 by Stephen Chambers

[Tiposx]

I have only carried out a similar repair by using a new section of sycamore, as the original wood and sound holes were in such poor condition.

[Tiposx]

12 hours ago, BrokenBox said:

What are the spuds and pads made of?

New pads are a lamination - starting from the bottom there is typically:

 

Thin leather,

Acrylic foam or similar,

Cotton board or card,

A small disc of leather.

 

The spud is a leather tube. 

 

If you just want to get playing then you might want to simply make a pad from available materials. e.g. thin cardboard, felt, cloth. Controlling the thickness would be important to avoid mission creep. I will explain:

 

The case in question has oldish pads which have degraded and become thinner. So a new pad on one or two levers will raise those button heights. Good practice would be to replace all the pads at the same time. You would also find that you might break a spring or two, and that the button hole linings and dampers needed attention. So the whole job might escalate into a full restoration.

 

I don't wish to sound negative! In your position I would give the simple fix a go and learn from it.

 

Regards

 

Tiposx

 

 

[alex_holden]

19 minutes ago, Tiposx said:

Thin leather,

Acrylic foam or similar,

Cotton board or card,

A small disc of leather.

 

Traditionally the padding layer is wool felt (which sometimes gets eaten by moths). It's mostly there to soften the impact when the pad closes quickly so you don't hear a loud 'pop'.

[Alex West]

12 hours ago, Tiposx said:

I have only carried out a similar repair by using a new section of sycamore, as the original wood and sound holes were in such poor condition.

Your repair looks a lot more robust than mine.  I made up an infill section to repair a similar crack on a couple of old mahogany based Jeffries.  I've mixed up the LHS and RHS and the 2 concertinas here to show a little of the before and after, but you'll get the idea.  On 1 instrument I used a rectangular section and on the other, I made a more complicated 'T' section to be more confident of air-tightness.  It worked well, and one of them is my regular squeeze

 

Alex West

[RogerT]

I've just repaired a crack like this (on a tutor Lachenal). In fact i used small strips of masking tape over the cracks then reinforced with PVA (on both sides, and filled the vertical cracks in the holes (more glue, cotton bud). The result is robust and solid and air tight.
I am repadding as well, so remove the pad, the lever drops and then you can also remove the button. On a Lach the levers pull out…whereas  yours are pivoted.

Edited March 29 by RogerT

[Chris Ghent]

On 3/27/2025 at 7:42 AM, Tiposx said:

I have only carried out a similar repair by using a new section of sycamore, as the original wood and sound holes were in such poor condition.

Lovely job Tiposx

[Tiposx]

Thank you very much. I should say that this level of repair is well above that needed to make a concertina healthy again. I do it as an exercise in doing my best, and hopefully becoming better.

[Frank Edgley]

In my years of just doing repairs, I found that cracks were not that uncommon with Lachenals and Jones anglos. I never cam across cracks on Jeffries or Wheatstones.

Edited March 29 by Frank Edgley

[Tiposx]

Interesting. I wonder if Lachenal were intentionally using cheaper timber, perhaps not seasoned properly. The lower end models seem prone to  cracked boards. 

[d.elliott]

I see some over complicated repairs here, requiring dismantling of the padboard casing. I have never had a problem with simply filling both sides of fine cracks in the padboard with glue. Where the gap is too wide for that I run a saw down the crack to open open the gap and true up it's edges, and then inset a small inset piece of wood, ensuring that the pad board is level across the gap. When the glue is cured then I use a scalpel to shave the inset wood down and then as a scraper to flatten the area of pad board on both the action side and the underside Finally I trim any wood protruding into the pad holes. 

 

The wood cracking is a function of the pad board's shrinkage. If there is a crack or split then the wood is now stable so all that is needed is to fill the gap for the sake of airtightness. 

[Alex West]

6 hours ago, Frank Edgley said:

I never cam across cracks on Jeffries

Frank,

My cracks were both in Jeffries.  They had been in the US so cycles of humidity and dryness may have been an issue, as well as lack of care.

 

In response to Dave's point, I accept that I made the repair more complicated than strictly necessary but I was early in my repair journey.  Dismantling of the padboard and hexagon surrounds wasn't really an issue - they fell apart quite naturally with no persuasion.  I had to replace the ebonised veneer as well

 

Alex

[Tiposx]

7 hours ago, Alex West said:

Dismantling of the padboard and hexagon surrounds wasn't really an issue - they fell apart quite naturally with no persuasion.

That is what I found. Since the whole end was apart anyway it invited such a repair.