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Making Concertina Pads


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Hi,

 

Yes. Its easy.

 

Buy some steel punches on ebay. Buy some Chamois, archival grade thickish mattboard and some spray contact adhesive. Optionally buy some 2-4mm felt pad/cloth material. If you are making a complete set you can choose your desired end product pad thickness and work backwards from there. If you use felt, use thinner mat board. Find a 5# mallet and some old hardwood board to hammer against.

 

Cut a strip of about 1/5th of the Chamois making the resulting larger piece match your mat board as best as you can. Spray the mat board with contact adhesive. Spread 4/5ths of the Chamois cloth on the mat. Place the rougher cut side down on the mat - leaving the smoother outer skin side out (makes a better air seal). Cover the set with books for a few hours or days depending on your adhesive's directions making sure all surfaces are hard and flat. Take care not to pool the adhesive. The result will shrink a bit. I suggest waiting a week prior to punching for the lot to cure and shrink.

 

Take the strip of chamois you did not use on the mat and start punching out small circles with one of your smaller punches. These can be glued to the top of your discs as a hinge/glue point to mate the leather circle on your lever arm.

 

Choose a punch that matches your pads and have at it on the matt/chamois sandwich. Punch from the mat board side down into the leather. This helps maintain a good shape to the pad for trapping and sealing air from the moment arm (lever).

 

Have fun. Don't take it too seriously. Buy your materials at a good quality art supply store and ask for acid free archival grade products. Relax, have a homebrew; rinse, lather; repeat!

 

Happy Holidays,

Dan

 

 

 

 

Hello,

I have been thinking about making my own pads and wondered whether anyone has a recipe / list of materials / type of punches / suppliers / tricks of the trade etc? :unsure:

 

Best Christmas Wishes,

 

Neil. :rolleyes:

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Dear Dan,

Many thanks for your fantastic instructions.

 

Some of my bought pads seem to be a sandwich of card, then felt in the middle and a soft leather on the base. Can you see any advantage of these over your card and chamois pads??

 

 

Thanks again,

Neil

Edited by nkgibbs
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Hi Neil,

 

You are welcome. That is just My recipe. You can vary it to meet your needs to match existing pads or if you want to keep the same pad design - go for it. Some previous suggestions were use nylon felt rather than wool felt to keep the bugs at bay. Some suggest skipping felt completely to keep the pads fast.

 

Card/felt/card/chamois is fine if the result stack is not too tall... Make sure your punches are sharp enough to cut that sandwich.

 

Cya,

Dan

 

Dear Dan,

Many thanks for your fantastic instructions.

 

Some of my bought pads seem to be a sandwich of card, then felt in the middle and a soft leather on the base. Can you see any advantage of these over your card and chamois pads??

 

 

Thanks again,

Neil

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Dear Dan,

Many thanks for your fantastic instructions.

 

Some of my bought pads seem to be a sandwich of card, then felt in the middle and a soft leather on the base. Can you see any advantage of these over your card and chamois pads??

 

 

Thanks again,

Neil

 

It is better to use replacement pads that are about the same thickness as the old ones. You can't do this exactly because the old ones are unlikely to be the same thickness as when they were new, but you should be able to make a reasonable estimate. If the new pads are significantly different then it will be necessary to adjust the button heights. Felt also makes the pads softer and may improve their ability to seal. The extra softness from having a felt layer can also make the pads quieter as they close.

 

I always try to respect the methods and materials used by the original builders, unless I have a specific reason why a change is beneficial.

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It is better to use replacement pads that are about the same thickness as the old ones. You can't do this exactly because the old ones are unlikely to be the same thickness as when they were new, but you should be able to make a reasonable estimate. If the new pads are significantly different then it will be necessary to adjust the button heights. Felt also makes the pads softer and may improve their ability to seal. The extra softness from having a felt layer can also make the pads quieter as they close.

 

I always try to respect the methods and materials used by the original builders, unless I have a specific reason why a change is beneficial.

 

 

Dear Theo and everyone else who has given such useful and sage advice on pad making.

 

Many of the older pads just seem to be card and a tightly woven felt........does anyone know what type of felt this is and where to get it from???

 

In the meantime, I have ordered some thin (pliver) leather and intend to make pads from a card / felt / leather sandwich.

 

Happy Christmas to All,

Neil

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  • 2 weeks later...

Organ Supply Industries in Erie Pennsylvania sells the proper felt and leather already glued. Choose the thinnest. All that is needed is to glue poster board or Bristol Board to the felt side, punch them out and add small leather dots on the centre of the bristol board.

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' what did I do this evening............I made myself a sandwich' ......

 

leather I already had, board 'borrowed' from SWMBO, felt from a local craft supplier and spray Evostick from Wilkinsons.

 

Off to the local toolshop tomorrow to see if I can get a punch (or set therof) for less than the combined cost of item & postage on eBay, then I'll just have to be patient and allow the recommended week to pass by before cutting out the pads.

 

Can't wait to do the job though - 5 second drop time and ends hissing like snakes!

 

Going slightly O/T - am I right in thinking that the original pad/arm joint would have been done using shellac? - I've got a stick somewhere, which would make the job go a bit quicker than waiting for pva to dry.

 

 

Regards,

 

Rob.

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Going slightly O/T - am I right in thinking that the original pad/arm joint would have been done using shellac? - I've got a stick somewhere, which would make the job go a bit quicker than waiting for pva to dry.

 

The original glue used would have been hot 'scotch' animal or fish glue. PVA does the job perfectly well and is worth waiting for. Shellac is polish, wouldn't work properly as a glue and would be very brittle. You'll also need to replace the leather beads that fit on the ends of the arms or spend a long time trying to rejuvenate the old ones! If you haven't got a copy already, buy the excellent "Concertina Maintenance Manual" by Dave Elliott, money very well spent.

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- I've . Shellac is polish, wouldn't work properly as a glue and would be very brittle.

 

with respect, shellac is widely used in the musical instrument trade, amongst other things, woodwind instrument pads are secured into their cups by melting a single flake in the cup over a bunsen flame and then pressing the pad home.

Edited by rob_mcsweeney
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Off to the local toolshop tomorrow to see if I can get a punch (or set therof) for less than the combined cost of item & postage on eBay, then I'll just have to be patient and allow the recommended week to pass by before cutting out the pads.

 

Go to a kitchen shop too and buy a plastic chopping board - makes an excellent surface on which to use the punch.

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- I've . Shellac is polish, wouldn't work properly as a glue and would be very brittle.

 

with respect, shellac is widely used in the musical instrument trade, amongst other things, woodwind instrument pads are secured into their cups by melting a single flake in the cup over a bunsen flame and then pressing the pad home.

 

Rob,

 

The woodwind cups are rigid, the concertina pad assembly is comparatively flexible!

 

cheers

 

Dave

Edited by d.elliott
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thought i'd add my recipe. card stock on top of course and do search a bit to find a high quality maybe linen card. instead of felt i use thin foam sheet, i think 2mm. leather on the bottom, high quality soft and thin. i also got my punches on ebay, very good quality too. a solid piece of wood to punch on works great. i punch all the pieces out individually. lay the punched card discs, just their edges, on a piece of masking tape thats sticky side up. spray with 3m contact adhesive, repeat with the leather discs and then press sandwiches together. I then put them all under a bit of moderate weight overnite, using wax paper or such so they won't stick. these come out very close to the original thickness, and have held up well. i don't see how punching them out in one shot would be a clean job. i use the clear UHU glue to attach to the beads, i think Frank Edgely uses this. I find the end bead the most trouble and you can buy these from suppliers. punch them out of thick belt using a rotary punch and then with a fine drill bit precut the hole. i precenter the drill using an awl first and use a bit in a hand held small battery drill, careful to keep centered. after you do 60 of those for anglo or 96 on an EC, buying them starts to look good. btw, the air pad need a stiff sheet of thin ply or such to close well if it's a bigger hole.

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Stella24: "i use the clear UHU glue to attach to the beads, i think Frank Edgely uses this."

 

Frank: No, I use Weldbond. It is a white glue that dries clear. It also dries with a bit of flexibility. It is important to use a small disc of soft leather (around 1/16" thick by 3'16" dia.) between the top of the cardboard part of the pad and the leather nut to give a degree of flexibility so the pad will seat properly. I used to use a UHU stick (not the liquid) to glue down valves on traditional-style instruments, but fish glue or hide glue is probably better. BTW, a well-known woodworking magazine did testing on various types of glue on various kinds of wood. It was a carefully controlled test. There was no difference between the hot hide glue and the liquid in terms of holding power, but the liquid is certainly easier to use.

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  • 2 weeks later...
guess what I did this evening :)

 

Hi Rob, you can't leave it at that you know! Where did you get the bits, how much did they cost, how long did it take and was it all worth it?

 

Pete :D

 

Hi Pete

 

having finally managed to get my pads made ( couldn't do it on a weekday evening as the hammering woke the kids!) I can now answer your question....

 

Leather - £ 3.50

Felt - £ 0.50

Card - £ 1.00 (a guess, as I liberated this from SWMBO)

Set of punches - £ 6.88 (eBay, inc. post)

Chopping board - £ 0.99

Spray adhesive - £ 4.65

 

TOTAL £17.52, or 35p each for the 50 pads (plus a few 'wasters') I have made so far. There is easily enough 'sandwich' left to do one more treble English.

plus I now have a set of punches and a chopping board in my toolkit.

 

 

Rob

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