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If you’re interested, shoot me an email williespoke@gmail.com

Hi! Unfortunately I don't. I have my hands full as it is making anglos, I don't think I'll ever have time to develop an english or duet design.

Hey Dana, thanks for the input, very insightful indeed! Yep, pretty much the only reason I got the tormach was for the flood coolant. Being able to evacuate chips effectively, and lubricate/cool the cutter, renders 260 brass similar in machinability to 353. I haven't broken an endmill since I upgraded, whereas before I was breaking many, and spending a pretty penny to replace them. That's a good idea about the phosphor bronze, I never considered that. Maybe I'll look into that and see if I can get some to play around with. I've been considering pouring my own brass ingots. I'd have to make an ingot mold the size/shape of my sheets (4"x6"x.093"), but then I'd be able to add my own lead and make it free-machining, not to mention find a use for the many lbs of brass scrap I've accumulated over the years!

@@CrookConcertinas online metals carries the p bronze in .093. Various sheet sizes available including cut to length. Not sure you could plunge a 1/16 end mill into 260 brass even with coolant. When I was in High school, in the 60’s I watched a 1 inch drill try to screw its way through a block of brass. Making a small 90 degree rake flat on the cutting edge cured it. But not practical on tiny cutters. Anyway, pre drilling starter holes works just fine. My clamp block sheets only had a plunge at the start of each row, and I ended up pre drilling those. The rest was. Side cutting which went fine. I really missed the 353 though. It cut burr free. I liked being able to cut it dry. Fortunately, scrap yards seem happy to take brass scrap, but I’m not sure they’ll take a box of near microscopic chips! I think the reason 353 is hard to get now is because the lead content is a pain to deal with pollution wise. Lead is happy to vaporize at molten brass temps, so you have to deal with that. My friend said most of it is done overseas now. I’m glad you are making concertinas. Most of us old farts are hanging it up now but there is still a good market for good concertinas.

Thanks for this input, it's very valuable to me :)

@@CrookConcertinas One key point that I should raise with you... I see that you are cutting your reeds across the grain of the steel roll. Reeds, or any other type of spring are always cut along the direction of the grain which is always along the length of the roll. The physical properties of spring steel vary depending on the direction in which they are measured. It is these physical properties that cause all concertina or accordion reed makers to cut along the grain. A wood plank provides a good analogy .... wood has a grain composed of long tubular cells which makes it difficult to break across [ie perpendicular to]the grain and is quite hard to bend along its length, but has a high resistance to failure. If you bend across its width, it is far easier to bend, indeed it is liable to fail and not hard for a kid to karate chop in half. The spring steel strips we buy were hot rolled through a series of hot rollers with decreasing gaps between them and also under tension. When the required thickness is achieved, the continuous roll is later cut into the desired widths.... along the direction of the grain. The process causes the metal crystals in the steel mix to align in much the same way as the elongated cells in wood. This cellular structure is then refined and locked in place as as the steel passes through a series of rolling heat treatments. With my level of understanding, that is about the best I can do in layman's terms, but if you are going to be making concertinas, you would do well to speak to a metallurgist or an industrial spring maker. Perhaps try a few reeds as identical as you can get them, but with half of them cut across, and half of them cut along the grain. Perhaps do a search on the topic on concertinadotnet, I have a feeling Geoff Crabb covered this subject a year or two back

@@bigoldgrizzly Thanks for the input! I've always been a little curious/concerned about the idea of the grain direction of the steel, and that I shear my reeds transverse to the "grain", rather than aligned with it. However, as the blue-tempered spring-steel is quenched and tempered after rolling, and the quenching temperature far exceeds the "recrystallization temperature" of the steel (see this video: ruclips.net/video/uG35D_euM-0/видео.htmlsi=oKtid5A5PufORxdD&t=364) I think it's unlikely that the spring steel has a discernible grain direction. Furthermore, all of the info I could find regarding the importance of grain structure/size/direction etc was only as it relates to forming operations, which stress the material beyond the elastic deformation yield point. A concertina reed never even approaches this degree of stress. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to look into this issue a little deeper and come to a more reasoned conclusion about it :)

Oops, the video link was supposed to start that video at the 6:04 mark, where they start talking about recrystallization.

Indeed, I've considered things along these lines, though that does sound a bit finicky. What I've started doing since I posted this video is scraping the surface of the wood flat, then filling the grain completely with a low viscosity epoxy that's designed specifically for sealing and grain-filling wood. Once the epoxy is cured and sanded flat the sealing surface is pretty ideal.

I really don't think it's necessary to do all that calculation. For me, reed making is much more intuitive. You could have a reed produce the same note with much different profiling and it would play completely differently in terms of tone, response/attack, dynamics etc, but play the same pitch. It's about making the decision as a reedmaker how you want a reed to perform, something no calculation could ever tell you, and which can only be understood painstakingly through the personal experience of actually making 100s or 1000s of reeds by hand.

@@CrookConcertinas I had to, I was lost for initial thickness and length and so on, it gave me some idea of what to aim for.

Wow! That sounds like an awful lot of work😅

@@CrookConcertinas No, it was quick and easy.

Yep, 1-inch. I have to calculate the "heights" (or perhaps more accurately the "elevations") of all of the important features (action+padboard thickness/pad thickness/leather nut diameter/lever drop/post axle pin height/button hole height/button pin length/button OAL etc etc etc) very carefully to get the action to work within that space.

@@CrookConcertinas That is legitimate labor, and hope people understand how valuable that is.

I make a reading of all the reeds in place in the instrument, then tune them on a low-pressure vacuum jig I made specially for tuning concertina reeds. I tune them relatively, so if it's 5 cents flat in the instrument, I lower the pitch of the reed 5 cents on the tuning jig relative to where it started on the jig, if that makes sense.

@@CrookConcertinas Makes sense.

@@CrookConcertinas Scientific analysis, (not trying to be "clever" here, okay, just saying) sows that a reed that operates in a region between atmospheric pressure and a pressure slightly higher than atmospheric will resonate at a different frequency than the same reed operating in a region between atmospheric pressure and a pressure slightly lower than atmospheric pressure. It just means the same reed will have a different resonant frequency in a different pressure region. That is the reasons why the frequence of a reed change from start to end. But not too much though. Any way I have a bellows to finish... chat later again. I hope you see the message I posted about using AI for calculations. I use it as a reference for the thickness to get to the target frequence, obviously it does not remove the need for filing.

Thanks! I know the head-mounted camera isn't fun to watch for too long, but it's the best I can do at the moment I'm afraid.

Hey there, thanks for your comments! I know the head-mounted camera isn't ideal, but it's all I have time for at the moment I'm afraid.

@@CrookConcertinas that makes perfect sense! Many folks who make videos of their process in making things have pointed out that all of the associated tripod-moving and such make the whole process take much, much longer. I appreciate that you're sharing your process.

Why does anybody do anything in this weird world?

Maybe it's to show how much machinery, labor, and material is required to make a high-quality instrument, and justify the expense?

@@cdorcey1735 the labor is worth every penny.

@@cdorcey1735 What would you say is a good price for a good quality concertina?

Thanks Chris ❤🙏

Hey, thanks for the input! Indeed, I am continually awed by the quality of work produced by people from the past with less sophisticated resources. I have filmed a video showing my process of making the reed shoes, but there's a lot of footage and it might take me a while to get the video edited. Cheers!

I believe it’s called willi-cloth.

Thanks

Shoot me an email! Williespoke@gmail.com

My table saw is from a company called Byrnes model machines, though unfortunately I recently found out that Jim Byrne passed away, so I'm not sure if these modeling table saws will be available anymore.

Cheers, glad you’re enjoying the videos 😊

Hey Brad, thanks for the input! Indeed that thought had occurred to me, and of course that would be the better way, but I make these on the nomad 883, which only has 3" of Z travel, and I couldn't fit my test indicator in the spindle with enough distance to clear the fixture plug, let alone something like a coaxial indicator. Maybe there's a better solution, but this way works well enough for now!

Hey Jake! Indeed, it is tricky to get a debossed effect in the leather. The printing plate itself must be deep, the leather has to be the right weight (not too thick or thin, maybe .030”) using a impressionable pad under the leather helps, and then a quick swipe of a moistened paper towel just prior to printing all help to achieve this effect 😊

Cheers!

Your comment brought a tear to my eye, thanks for the kind words!!

@@CrookConcertinas dude, your work deserves more praise than I give, that's for sure. I've been watching your progress on Instagram for years now and I always say to myself 'wheres he gonna cut corners? There's always a need to cut some corners in such a process' and I watch and wait and I just don't see any corners getting lopped off! Instead, I see you've come up with some really clever process methods that other makers haven't used. Usually there's a sort of dogmatic adherence to tried and true methods, which makes sense for building complex instruments like concertinas, but you've come up with some clever methods for getting the job done. So yeah, happy to sing your praises man, it's very well deserved!

Hey Jake! Great to hear from you, I hope you guys are doing well <3

Hey, thanks for the input!

Hey, thanks! Hopefully I'll be able to make a video showing the process of milling the reed shoes on my cnc milling machine the next time I have to do that process :)

Hey that's great! Best of luck to you on your journey :)

until now I didn't know what a concertina is. I had to look it up 😅

Hey thanks! It's from a company called "Byrne's model machines". They make woodworking tools for high-precision models etc. I had to special-order their table saw with a wider table, as their normal table saw wasn't quite wide enough for concertina making.

Haha, that's good to hear, cheers!

Thanks!

Hey thanks for the kind words! Yeah, they’re intriguing little creatures, to be sure 😊

Hey, Thanks for the kind words! Indeed, I noticed there's not a lot of this sort of content around, so I figured I'd do what I could to share what I know and have figured out over the years, maybe that would encourage others to share their knowledge as well :)

Hey! First Comment on the whole channel! Thanks for the positivity, my friend :)