Fatto a mano

[Rob2Hook]

Well, it had been a rather boring morris practice and my mate and I were having a jar after, as you do.  In my pocket I found my multi-tool had an unsharpened saw blade with a forked end.  "Just the thing for levering out bellows pins!"  I said.  So we pulled the Trilly out of the bag and took the bass side off to see how the selectors worked.  Quite ingenious mechanism it is too, to operate otherwise normal slides. 

What surprised me was the reed blocks were stamped not "Tipo a mano" as I expected, but "Fatto a mano".  Is there any way of telling whether this indicates full blown hand made reeds?  Not that the difference would change how I feel about the box - I love it.  My old Nik has "Hand Made" stamped on the reed blocks, but I always took this to mean TAM.

Rob.

[Theo]

The mark is on the blocks, not on the reeds. It means the reed blocks are handmade.

[Rees]

Seconded, Theo.

[RickC.]

The mark is on the blocks, not on the reeds. It means the reed blocks are handmade.

That's like booking Gladys Knight and the Pips, and only the Pips show up.

[Theo]

The mark is on the blocks, not on the reeds. It means the reed blocks are handmade.

Some Castagnaris have the same stamp on other parts of the woodwork as well which does make it clear that its the woodwork not the reeds that are "fatto a mano"

[Rob2Hook]

It's rather like the marketing ploy of a product from the far east being sold in a box marked "made in UK", which is indeed where the box was made...

I'm only surprised that the woodwork is stamped as hand made, to be honest, why should anyone care how they achieve that superb fit?  I guess some makers machine the blocks, but surely they work just as well?  My initial thoughts were that the stamp was to indicate what was in their stock cabinets, so they select the correct assembly - after all, they stamp the tuning on the blocks.

Rob.

[diatonix]

If they were referring to the reeds the stamp should read  "fatte a mano"  (voci fatte a mano)

[Theo]

I can't help wondering what anyone means by 'hand made' anyway. 

Can it still be 'hand made' if power tools were used, or if machine cut materials are used?   Recently reading a book about French polishing (learning how to refinish wood concertina ends) I came across an assertion that in that context 'hand polished' at one time referred to a a finish obtained by rubbing with fine abrasive powder applied with the palm of the hand.

[Chris Ryall]

A wider concept is actually quite defined in UK consumer law. For example 'home made' quennelles of pate involve a commie chef scooping such out of a 5 kg factory block, and a 'home made' steak and kidney pie in a pub involved emptying a tin or cook/chill plastic pack into a bowl, slapping a frozen puff of pastry on top and banging it into a hot oven. Simples!

So are 'hand made' blocks so, if someone troubles to glue some wooden bricks together in a clamp and cut back, or should they be chiselled out of a bit of tree à la Guiillard?

[Rob2Hook]

My point exactly, it doesn't matter a fig whether the blocks were moulded in plastic ny the thousand or hand carved from recycled roof beams - so long as they hold best quality reeds in place.

Perhaps it would be more pertinent to ask how one would recognise hand made reeds?  I seem to remember being told that hand made reeds are cut from sheet rather than cut from a roll and that the blue edges from the heat treatment is still in evidence?

Rob.

[hack]

Perhaps it would be more pertinent to ask how one would recognise hand made reeds?  I seem to remember being told that hand made reeds are cut from sheet rather than cut from a roll and that the blue edges from the heat treatment is still in evidence?

Rob.

I think the machine made reeds are stamped out of a sheet, and the handmade ones are cut from a strip. The blueing at the base of the handmade reeds was present in the strip, and is not cut away when the tongue is cut. Machine made reeds are stamped out of a larger sheet, so there is no blueing at the base. And I suppose a machine sets the rivet on machine made reeds, as opposed to a guy with a hammer for hand made reeds.

Here are some pics from the tex-mex forum:

http://gilbert27.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=1692877

[Theo]

Rob,  actually I believe that the design and construction of the reedblock, and the material it's made from is critical to the performance of the reed.   

[Rob2Hook]

I agree that it's more than likely that the design and material of the the reed block is critical to the performance of the reed, just as many believe that the material of the reed frame is as critical as the reed itself.  I just wonder why the blocks should be marked as hand made when I thought Castagnari hand make everything wooden?  I doubt that anyone has experimented in injection moulding exotic loaded plastics for the purpose yet!  There may just be one that has the perfect characteristics for the job.  There are plastics which are sound deadening, accoustically opaque, etc. and the block could be flowed onto the reed - what a world of possibilities.

Rob.

[Theo]

Weltmeister piano accordions have been built with plastic reedblocks for some time.

[Falseknight]

Linn Sondek made some stupidly expensive small speaker enclosures from injection moulded glass reinforced plastic.  I know!  The company I was Quality Manager of at the time was making them!

I'd be very interested to see what a free reed instrument using engineered plastics, laser (or electron beam) cut reeds and engineered assembly techniques would sound like.  If you turned out enough of them, they'd probably be as cheap as Chinese boxes too.

[Lester]

If you turned out enough of them, they'd probably be as cheap as Chinese boxes too.

That's the problem. Even more so on the concertina front, it would be really easy (??) to set up a high tech factory turning out really good concertinas/melodeons if only everybody wanted one, unfortunately there is just the 1088 members of mel.net and a few others   

[zubz]

If you turned out enough of them, they'd probably be as cheap as Chinese boxes too.

If only everybody wanted one, unfortunately there is just the 1088 members of mel.net and a few others   

You're right, Lester, of course, but with 125 melodeon players all playing together in one room at Witney there certainly didn't seem to be a shortage!   

[Falseknight]

Linn Sondek made some stupidly expensive small speaker enclosures from injection moulded glass reinforced plastic.  I know!  The company I was Quality Manager of at the time was making them!

You left the firm amicably, then 

Oh yes!  This was about 13 years ago (thread drift coming on).  The company had taken a number of prestigious but idiotic contracts and although it had good expertise in injection moulding practice it was not very good (to say the least) at identifying and correcting running problems.  This particular job ran at about a 90% scrap rate, which I quantified within about a month of joining.  They had too many jobs like this and though we worked through manufacturing strategies to cut waste, there was too much history involved.  As the company reviewed the data, they decided the correct approach was to downsize into the trouble-free jobs and sack the problems.  I was in the enviable position of being courted (not too strong a word) by three of the customers to join them and sort out the problems of the incoming work.  That is another story though.