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Author Topic: electric tool to use with grinding/tuning reeds  (Read 10139 times)

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Psuggmog Volbenz

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Re: electric tool to use with grinding/tuning reeds
« Reply #40 on: March 12, 2016, 12:16:38 PM »

I have one of these, a pneumatic band file, also known as a ribbon sander. This could be mounted in a shop made precision swivel and used similarly to the machine shown in the posted video.
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IanD

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Re: electric tool to use with grinding/tuning reeds
« Reply #41 on: March 12, 2016, 03:40:57 PM »

What you need is a good scraper (in German: Kratzer) made from a quality file. It is and has always been a very popular and efficient  tool used by professional accordion tuners.
I've always worried that scrapers/scratchers (and badly used rotary tools) leave grooves to act as stress concentrators, which files (used properly) don't. Many of the broken reeds I've seen over the years have fractured at an obvious tool mark left by tuning. A diamond file is the tool least likely to leave such marks, which seems to me to be A Good Thing.
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Psuggmog Volbenz

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Re: electric tool to use with grinding/tuning reeds
« Reply #42 on: March 12, 2016, 11:32:27 PM »

I would think that a file or a scraper has the potential to create an equally damaging stress riser, if the geometry of the insult to the reed was the same. I make the area of material removal as parallel to the long axis of the reed as possible to achieve the desired result, rather than along the short axis of the reed.
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blafleur

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Re: electric tool to use with grinding/tuning reeds
« Reply #43 on: March 13, 2016, 07:26:07 PM »

What you need is a good scraper (in German: Kratzer) made from a quality file. It is and has always been a very popular and efficient  tool used by professional accordion tuners.

Scrapers are the one tool I haven't tried, but will.  Do you simply sharpen the business end, or do you sharpen then create a burr, like with a wood scraper? 

Steve_freereeder

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Re: electric tool to use with grinding/tuning reeds
« Reply #44 on: March 14, 2016, 08:14:28 AM »

What you need is a good scraper (in German: Kratzer) made from a quality file. It is and has always been a very popular and efficient  tool used by professional accordion tuners.

Scrapers are the one tool I haven't tried, but will.  Do you simply sharpen the business end, or do you sharpen then create a burr, like with a wood scraper?

Like Diatonix, I use a scraper made from an old needle file. I have ground away the old teeth for a few centimetres, so that the sides of the reed plate slot are not damaged when working on the underneath reeds. Then I grind away the original taper on the last centimetre of the tip to create a cylindrical cross-section about 1 to 1.5 mm diameter. If you look carefully at Diatonix's photos you can see this cylindrical zone on the tip.

Finally, I grind the tip at right-angles to create a flat circular end with a sharp 90° edge all round. No need to burr the edge over as you will be using the scraper primarily with a push action. I do all this grinding and shaping by hand using an old carborundum oilstone and a flat diamond-coated steel plate.

Initially, I made the mistake of simply leaving the original taper of the file in place until it was pointed out to me that would create a scraping edge of >90° and therefore less efficient as a result (thanks for the tip Theo!). Neither do you want to have a needle-sharp point on the tip of your scraper which simply digs into the reed tongue.

In use, the scraper needs to be frequently touched up on the oilstone or diamond plate to maintain the little circular tip with the sharp 90° edge.

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waltzman

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Re: electric tool to use with grinding/tuning reeds
« Reply #45 on: March 16, 2016, 06:16:05 PM »

What you need is a good scraper (in German: Kratzer) made from a quality file. It is and has always been a very popular and efficient  tool used by professional accordion tuners.
I've always worried that scrapers/scratchers (and badly used rotary tools) leave grooves to act as stress concentrators, which files (used properly) don't. Many of the broken reeds I've seen over the years have fractured at an obvious tool mark left by tuning. A diamond file is the tool least likely to leave such marks, which seems to me to be A Good Thing.

I've always used scrapers along the long axis of the reed.  Never across the reed. Scraping across the reed does seem like it would be a bad idea and could potentially lead to a fracture.
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