After the reed blocks are leathered, the plates are fitted to the blocks.

One of the more time-consuming and tedious parts of building a concertina is leathering the reed blocks and fitting the reed plates and drilling for the hook screws. Each fin in a reed block has a thin strip of leather glued to it (as well as strips around the perimeter on the top and sides) to help ensure that each reed gets the maximum amount of air by ensuring that there is no leakage into adjacent reed cells. Leakage (blow-by) = a poorly performing instrument.

Ignore the mess you see on the workbench in the background. Christy Hengel used to have a plaque in his shop that read "a creative mess is better than idle tidiness." ;-)

Here are the ends after all the pilots have been drilled in.

Here I am drilling the pilot holes for the sound holes in the ends of the instrument. I use a special jig to find the center of the stars and holes that are in the fret plates so that everything lines up perfectly. I can't take credit for this method, however. The individual who taught me a thing or two (or many things, for that matter) about building concertinas (and he is still living, and is located near a lake in a suburb of the Twin Cities) showed me this neat method. Other manufacturers use a metal template with holes drilled in it to mark the sound hole locations, but every set of fret plates turns out slightly different when they are stamped, resulting in off-center holes.

Finally! More time to do updates! This time of year is really busy for my current employer, and I will be starting at a new job in a week or so.

Here is a photo of the frames after they have been buffed. I use three different grades of buffing compound to give the celluloid the mirror-like finish that you see here.

The reeds also arrived a few weeks ago.

I am far behind on this concertina, and I hope that I can catch up in the coming weeks.