Effect of Freezing on Accordion?

[craigd]

Hello,
An accordion is coming my way that has spent a night or two in a car in temperatures a few degrees below zero. Should I expect any damage?

 

[JIM D.]

Cold temp's won't harm an accordion - just warm it up at room temperature. It's excessive heat that will cause harm.

 

[TomBR]

As Jim said, no probs from moderate cold itself.
Condensation if you bring a very cold accordion into a warm place would be a bad thing.
Do you need to check it for damage on arrival? If you do, it would be good to do that in the coldest place you can, then if it's packed or in a case, close it up again and let the whole thing come up to living temperature gradually.
If you don't need to check it, and can bear it, leave it as packed up as possible and let the whole thing warm up before you open or play it.

 

[JIM D.]

Tom is quite correct. If you receive the accordion in a very cold state you can take it out of the case for exterior damage
inspection but most important DON"T OPEN the bellows until the box warms to room temp.

 

[craigd]

Thanks Tom and Jim, that's reassuring. I can let it sit in its case until it warms up. It's an old CBA, my first, so I'm getting a wee bit excited - should be here tomorrow.

 

[nagant27]

Hopefully you can contain your curiosity and desire to press a key and open the bellows!! Might be quite the temptation?

 

[Keymn]

For all the old timers that worked with tube amps and original Cordovox...bring it up to room temperature before turning on...and if in a 50-70 below F windchill, go out and start your car every break, run it for ten minutes...I did not listen to our guitar player whom did this...guess who had to be towed? those were the days, carbonators and vacuum tubes...?

 

[Cheshire Chris]

If I leave my concertina in the car and bring it into a warm room it takes maybe 15-20 minutes before the low notes will play - condensation makes the reed valves stick. I'd imagine an accordion would have the same issue, but I've never left my accordion in my car ?

Chris

 

[Mr Mark]

Good question - just wanted to know further...I live in a place which routinely goes down below -30C in the winter months. I hope to get out and busk this winter and while that is too cold for busking (my fingers will freeze) most buskers will be hardcore enough to manage -20 temps with their guitars. How far can a person realistically push cold weather playing as far as the bellows are concerned?

 

[Ventura]

there are a few things i have learned from playing outside for Christmas events

the steel of the reedtongue and the aluminum of the reedplate will expand and contract
at different rates based on temperature... it IS possible for the physical change to
actually cause a reed (or few) to catch and lock up... once they warm up they release
and again work normally

it is ALSO possible for a very wet and humid night that has had a sudden drop in temp
to actualy frost a bit of ice on the reeds, which makes a whole BUNCH of them stick
(similar to your breath being caught as ice in your beard or moustache)

occasionally after playing a long outdoor gig in cold and relatively humid
conditions i would immediately pop my bellows off when i got back
to the studio and set the exposed reedblocks in a nice airy warm section of the room
...the idea being that there was certainly some condensation left inside
after the gig and bare steel can powder rust very quickly
(think of that wet steel knife you left on the Sink for an hour that stained a spot brown)
humidity is condensed on a cold surface, so if you warm the reeds there is no
condensation, conversely, if you eliminate humid air from the cold area,
there is no condensation

this is why old timers advise you to keep your Gas Tank full as much as
possible during the winter... if there is no room for air in the tank, there is no
humidity to be condensed by the inner walls of the cold steel.

and yes on the Cordovox etc.
when we had to hurry, we flipped the power on for 60 seconds then off for a few minutes
several times so the Filaments in the Tubes would toss just enough heat to warm the
other frozen components (resistors, capacitors, coils, formant filters) up a bit quicker

ciao

Ventura

 

[debra]

there are a few things i have learned from playing outside for Christmas events

the steel of the reedtongue and the aluminum of the reedplate will expand and contract
at different rates based on temperature... it IS possible for the physical change to
actually cause a reed (or few) to catch and lock up... once they warm up they release
and again work normally

...

ciao

Ventura

Whether the reed can still go through the hole in the aluminium reed plate depends a lot on how much space there is between them. The best reeds have a very narrow gap (for better sound and less air consumption) and will "freeze up" more quickly than cheap machine reeds with a wider gap. So when you see buskers on the street in very cold weather, and their accordion is still working fine, it's because they use old clunkers with cheap machine reeds that have such a large gap that even though the reed plates shrink more than the reeds there is still room to spare.

 

[jozz]

why does this happen - I thought almost all metals expand when heated but shrink when cooled?

so how does that work mechanically

 

[Dingo40]

Reminds me of the WW2 stories told comparing German and Russian weapons.
Evidently, some German weapons were machined to such fine tolerances they would seize up with the least amount of dirt in the works, whereas the Russian equivalents had such wide tolerances they would survive being dropped in liquid mud or sand and continue to operate!
There's a place for everything!?

 

[Dingo40]

Jozz,
As I understand it, the steel of the reed tongue and the aluminium of the reed plate expand/shrink at different rates, narrowing the gap, causing tongue to stick.
If the gap is big enough to begin with, like Paul says, it may never happen ?

"I thought almost all metals expand when heated but shrink when cooled
Not just most metals but everything, even rock, brick, wood, glass, plastic etc, just at different rates.?

 

[Glug]

Metals expand/contract at different rates.

Coefficient of thermal expansion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion

From https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/linear-expansion-coefficients-d_95.html
Aluminium 21-24
Steel 10.8 - 12.5
Where units are 10^-6m / mC, which is 0.0001% per degree centigrade

Basically aluminium expands/contracts twice as fast as steel.
Which obviously has an impact on that 2 thou gap between the steel reed tongue and the aluminium reed plate.

 

[jozz]

i think I understand that part

what I miss is: the alu forms a "ring" around the steel tongue - then the alu shrinks

- how does the "ring" get tighter around the steel? I would guess the opposite happens.

So the plate shrinks and with it the gap in the inner part of the plate gets smaller? Why doesn't the whole thing shrink the same in every direction - opening up the gap?

 

[Glug]

The plate shrinks the same percentage in all directions.
So if it starts at 20mm wide with a 5mm slot and shrinks 20% it is becomes 16mm wide with a 4mm slot.
The tongue does the same thing but slower, so only 10% smaller in this example.

 

[TomBR]

I don't want to touch an accordion where the reed plates have shrunk 20% due to cold!
I don't want to be anywhere near anything that shrinks 20% due to cold!

 

[Glug]

It would have to be a very cold day, possibly involving freezing in hell

Spotted on the thermal expansion wiki page:
Zirconium tungstate has a negative thermal expansion coefficient.
It contracts continuously as you heat it from 0.3 to 1050 kelvin.

That may have applications for cold weather accordions.

 

[jozz]

thanks for clearing that up @Glug