Looking for an opinion on this Repair Manual

[cestjeffici]

well, it is a modern Bravo, so i will fall on the side of it just being a crappy reed
that would be way too much trouble to finesse into correct position and keep
it there maybe

so Jeffi, when you are back in town, if you want to come down sometime and find
an Eb reed the right size in the spare parts pile(s) you can and just tune it close
then swap it out

i have a weller soldering gun (trigger type) with a flat tip.. plenty of spare wax..
piece of cake even if you have never done it before

Ventura: You’re on! I’d love to do that!. I’ll be back in Maryland in mid January.

 

[Sylvie]

@cestjeffici I know it is a bit late, but I saw your post. You might already have the book but if not, I might be able to shed some light on the content for you. My mother tongue is French. Let me know if I could be of any use if your need French translating. About the book, I saw it on Amazon Canada where there is a preview of a few pages, including a page from the table of content. Some chapters had a main part name, for exemple the valves, the reeds, mechanics of the left side, of the right side, then each main part has subsections: Introduction to the parts, their roles, the problems encountered etc. There is a chapter on how to dismantle the accordion (section for the bass and a section for the right hand), how to tune, the different material used, how parts were manufactured, how to restore, etc.
I hope this helps. Happy New Year to you!

 

[Big Squeezy Accordions]

It's okay, though if you are just looking to make casual repairs, the Accordion Revival website should suffice. The book is hampered by some confusing language, which I assume to be due to a bad translation. A typical example:
"A tuning bellows allows three beats per reed for tuning. This means that an 80 Bass model would require a cumulative physical effort of 3 tonnes, a 96 Bass model with 3 voices - 6 tonnes of effort and a 120 Bass, 4 voice model with chromatic bass 12 tonnes."
I repair accordions, and I don't know what this means, or what its practical use would be.

 

[dak]

It's okay, though if you are just looking to make casual repairs, the Accordion Revival website should suffice. The book is hampered by some confusing language, which I assume to be due to a bad translation. A typical example:
"A tuning bellows allows three beats per reed for tuning. This means that an 80 Bass model would require a cumulative physical effort of 3 tonnes, a 96 Bass model with 3 voices - 6 tonnes of effort and a 120 Bass, 4 voice model with chromatic bass 12 tonnes."
I repair accordions, and I don't know what this means, or what its practical use would be.

"A tuning bellows allows three passes per reed for tuning." translates as "With the use of a tuning bellows, you will require to turn around the bass side three times per reed". When you multiply the weight of the bass side with the number of total turns on the bass side (there is missing context to decide whether the treble side turns are also factored in here, but they likely are), you arrive at a "cumulative physical effort" of lifting and turning around the instrument half/halves that is in the order of tons for one instrument.

I would guess that you could use some electrified clamp based on an industrial robot that puts the instrument half back and forth on the tuning table. But short of that, the worker has to do this. When lifting the instrument 50cm per turn (a high estimate) against 12t of total turnage and a worker weighing 60kg, he'd have to walk up a 200m hill for the same expenditure in calories. Not all that scary spread over the time you take to tune one large instrument, to be honest.

Maybe one should put the tuning bellows horizontally, mount it fixed to the instrument, and close the other side off with two air tight rubber gloves in a frame and add some light and endoscopic optics inside the bellows. Then you could just do your tuning without moving your hands all that much, and the accordion halves not at all.