I made a batch of buttons for my first prototype instrument. For simplicity I decided to use solid black acetal (an engineering plastic, commonly called Delrin, though that is a trademark of DuPont) rather than metal. Acetal is used by most modern concertina makers and it has a number of useful properties; particularly ease of machining, low mass, low friction, and low thermal conductivity (i.e. they don’t feel cold to the touch). I believe the top quality instruments still tend to use hollow metal buttons though.

The acetal came through the post in 1m lengths protected by a plastic tube. Long lengths of it are quite bendy. I started with 6mm and turned it down to 4.8mm. Before putting it in the lathe I cut it into 250mm lengths, which was about as long as I dared (shorter would result in more wastage, any longer risks the unsupported left hand end whipping around dangerously). I got nine buttons from each length.

I did most of the work on my manual Taig micro-lathe. I did a few things differently than usual in order to increase efficiency. For instance I set up both a standard right hand tool in the front toolpost and a parting off tool in the back toolpost so I wouldn’t have to mess about changing tools twice per button.

I made a couple of simple length gauges to control how much of the stock was protruding from the chuck at each stage, then turned up to the Z axis stop (set up to allow the carriage to almost touch the chuck). The short gauge is for the peg on the bottom of the button, and the long gauge is for the main body of the button. I also made full use of the graduations on the cross slide handwheel to produce the two diameters without stopping to measure the part.

I made a special jig to hold the button while I drilled and countersunk the cross hole on both sides. It is built in such a way that you can turn it over 180 degrees and locate it using the two pins on the baseboard, which is clamped to the drill press table.

Although this photo shows a standard jobber drill bit, I found it worked better to first use a smaller, more precise drill press to spot the hole location with a small centre drill, otherwise the bit drifts to one side or the other and you end up with an off-centre hole.

Finishing the top of the button involved facing off the parting-off stub, hand-sanding to round it off slightly, then flame polishing with a pencil torch to get a smooth glossy finish.

(Close-up picture of the polished button didn’t come out well – it turns out that my camera’s autofocus struggles to lock onto glossy black objects!).

This video shows the whole process:

Here’s a finished button:

And the full batch (more than I need for the first instrument – I made extra because I wasn’t sure how many I would ruin in the process, and I can always use the extras for my second instrument):

After completing the buttons, I now had prototypes of all the parts of a concertina action, so I decided to put it all together in a little test piece:

As well as the crude box itself, I made the pad, samper, grommet, lever, post, spring, felt washers, button, and both bushes. It is currently sitting on my desk as an executive toy, and I find myself reaching out and pressing the button whenever I’m thinking about a problem!

Update: After a couple of days of pressing the button whenever I happen to be at my desk, it definitely operates smoother and easier than when I first assembled it. I think the pad may be sealing more tightly too.

I made a prototype action lever. It’s a Wheatstone-style riveted lever hand-cut from 1mm thick brass sheet (the post is 1.5mm; possibly a bit thicker than necessary, but I didn’t want it to distort when I hammered it in).

The hardest part was making a die tool to thread the pad end so that I could screw the leather grommet onto it. Because the lever is cut from thin flat sheet rather than round bar, an ordinary thread cutting die wouldn’t have worked, so I instead made a sprung die set to form the thread.

I started with a 15mm x 25mm x 100mm bar of O1 tool steel, drilled and filed a spring shape on one end, then slit it in half:

Next I clamped it tightly together in a vice, and drilled and tapped an M2 hole in the middle of the slit, near the opposite end to the spring:

I put a couple of M5 threaded holes in the bottom so I could bolt it to a chunk of angle iron, then hardened and tempered it to 200C, differentially tempering the spring end to a higher temperature with a blowtorch so it won’t break in use:

After a bit of experimentation, I found that I could get it to form an acceptable thread if I cut a section of the 1mm sheet to 2.5mm wide (this dimension is fairly critical: 2mm forms almost no threads, and 3mm distorts and creases badly). It works best to hammer the tool fairly hard four times: once with the lever vertical, once each at 30 degrees from vertical in both directions, then a final time with the lever vertical again.

The lever after sawing it out with a jeweller’s saw, forming the thread, and riveting it to the post:

The proportions were based on one of the shortest levers in a treble English; most of the levers will have longer straight sections. The straight section is 2mm wide; I had to make the threaded part a bit wider (the tool squishes it narrower and thicker):

After screwing the grommet on. It is necessary to enlarge the hole in the leather grommet to 1.65mm before it will screw on without using excessive force and damaging the grommet:

I made a simple machine for winding concertina springs, inspired by Bob Tedrow‘s video.

It has a drum with a mandrel sized for the desired coil diameter and a hook on the outside, driven by a crank handle. The small step at the base of the mandrel helps to get the first turn of the coil tight. The adjustable guide plate isn’t strictly essential, but it helps a bit with consistency.

The raw spring material; 22 S.W.G. (about 0.7mm) phosphor bronze spring wire. It bends easily, is fairly corrosion resistant, and I’m told it lasts a lot longer than brass. At some point I’m planning to experiment with stainless spring steel and other diameters, but I’m sure the phosphor bronze is going to work fine for my initial prototype instrument.

Step 1; use needle nose pliers to bend a right-angle that will form the ‘pin’ that you push into the action board:

Step 2; insert the wire into the machine as shown. It’s important that the hooked end is parallel to the face of the drum:

Steps 3 and 4; turn the crank handle clockwise about 2 1/4 times, then cut the wire off, using the guide plate to gauge where to cut.

Step 5; use small round nose pliers to form the hook:

Step 6; use needle nose pliers to bend the hook over at a right angle:

The finished spring:

Here’s a quick video of the process:

Sometimes it’s necessary to use an opposite-hand spring because of limited space on the action board. You make these in the same way but doing all the bends the other way and turning the crank handle anticlockwise:

A few experiments with various arm lengths: