hi brill don't no if you no this but theirs a program on the TV named haw its made they did one on the accordion
I caught that on youtube when looking up accordion building stuff. It's a watchable show but they usually skip over the stuff I actually want to see. I'm still not sure how they make accordion reed plates. Although looking at the sides of the thing, it seems they might be punched. I did find a video of a guy matching the reed to a plate, which was just filed till it fit.
Anyways i've not been working on this thing too hard since the bronchitis got worse, and I figured the stuff in the garage wasn't doing it any favours. But i've got all the reeds leathered and waxed in now. My enthusiasm for the whole thing has been ruined by the slow pace though, and I really just want to get back and finish off the banjo.
I'm thinking I might just get the thing re-assembled for now though. But the big problem is that the bellows still smell. It seems obvious spraying vinegar on them was a stupid idea now, but alas. So I decided to give them a wash in break cleaner. I thought all break cleaner was tetrachloroethylene, which is used in dry cleaning, but this stuff from Rob Wilson says it's mostly light naphtha. I did a test on a bit of cardboard soaked in vinegar beforehand and it seemed to improve the smell, and didn't damage the cardboard.
Sloshed it about in a bucket for a while. I wasn't too worried about the stuff dissolving the animal glue. I didn't imagine it'd do so to begin with, but even if it did it wouldn't be too hard to get back together. Either way it held together and it's now drying.
The break cleaner is now alot dirtier than it was. So I suppose it did the trick. Hopefully it got rid of the smell, but it's a bit hard to tell currently.
