restoring old crosio

[wout]

Hello good day!

So I am restoring my old Crosio. This is how it looks and currently I am working on restoring the bellows, adding new felt under the pads and some optical stuff.
Will post some pictures on the progress . I am also building a tuning bellows so I can practice my tuning on it. It is pretty detuned at the moment and alot of stuff needs replacement i fear (like 3 bellow corners and all the tape). It used to be my little travel accordion while being on a journey through spain, france and england. We've been busking together for several months but it took its toll. It will be a fun project because I don't have to worry so much about screwing things up

 

[Geoff de Limousin]

I for one will look forward to your progress reports as I have several accordéons that need a wee bit of care. No doubt something to be learned for other people's exploits!!

Good luck,

Geoff.

 

[James]

Hello good day!

So I am restoring my old Crosio. This is how it looks and currently I am working on restoring the bellows, adding new felt under the pads and some optical stuff.
Will post some pictures on the progress . I am also building a tuning bellows so I can practice my tuning on it. It is pretty detuned at the moment and alot of stuff needs replacement i fear (like 3 bellow corners and all the tape). It used to be my little travel accordion while being on a journey through spain, france and england. Weve been busking together for several months but it took its toll. It will be a fun project because I dont have to worry so much about screwing things up

Wout, so you are building your tuning bellows. Very much want to see yours. I built one of mine and have used it working on my box. I am going to post pics in a separate post.

 

[wout]

So progress so far: I finished revalving the treble side. Quite easy since the pallets are held in place by little rings around the rods. I also tried to strip the old tape of my bellows of, but this wasnt possible (strong adhesive), so i removed as much as I could and sanded the old tape down as best as I could. Unfortunately the bellows tape I ordered is quite ugly bright red, pictures are hard to read sometimes . Also instead of buying new bellows corners I decided to make them myself from a strip of thin aluminium. They function wel; and are the same size they are only a little bit less pretty but hey! Anyhow after the taping I am going to airbrush the whole bellows black! I think it will look great. Reason for that is the ugly bright red tape (dont feel like ordering tape again) and the slight decoloration on the bellowcloth

I will post some photos tomorrow! Unfortunately from this evening on I have to work the coming days so I cannot spend to much time on experimenting, restoring and tuningbellows making!

I will keep you guys updated

 

[JerryPH]

Pictures and videos are what will place this thread right at the top of the most popular threads... keep it up, a lot of us are watching!

 

[wout]

So here are the promised photo's! So what you can see here are:
Retaped and painted bellows, I think they look pretty neat! And a closeup from my makeshift bellow corners.
The new felt on the pads, cleaned the pads and everything in there as well.
And the picture of the whole accordion as it looks now: pulled of the old grillcloth and put a new one in the grill, stripped the damaged decoration off (don't know if I will replace or leave it like this).

Next I want to start on the bass machine but that will probably be next week somewhere.
I want to take it all apart, clean and revalve it and reallign the bassbuttons. Thats going to be a challenge since I tend to leave the bassside for what it is whenever I open an accordion

Thanks for reading!

 

[JerryPH]

Wow, good job! Take your time on the bass part, that's where most DIY jobs go to hell, lead to frustration and leave the poor accordion in a useless state. Go slow and patiently, and keep posting, we appreciate it!

 

[wout]

I will Though the bellows taping was hard to especially keeping it neat, didnt really succeed in keeping it all in line since the tape tenden to shrink when glued so unfortunately its not spic and span.

 

[wout]

UPDATE:

Today I finally had some time again to work on the instrument. I took apart the whole bassmachine and cleaned the inside, sanded all the corrosion? off the levers (there was a slightly green sort of layer on them) and cleaned the pistons. Also replaced the pads on the valves. They were very very dirty. In the pictures you can see how I organized it. I punctured holes in a cartboard box in the same order as the holes in my instrument (looks a bit chaotic but it isn't) and I pushed the levers in some soft foam to keep them in order (left dirty, right half cleaned). Also a picture of the reedsblocks. The leathers arent in the worst shape and it seems like I don't have to replace them all, most of them are still strong.
Unfortunately I have to work tonight so I can't assemble and level the bassbuttons

As soon as I can!