Splitting Accordion Reeds
I got these vintage accordion reeds from ebay ages ago. They have been sitting on my shelf for over a year. I’ve calculated that they have gained as much as 1% more vintage in that time.
These accordion reeds are unlike their neighbours who came from pump organs. Accordion reeds have steel tongues (not brass), and the frames are made from aluminium (not brass). Beyond that there are no material differences. Only morphological ones.
The most consequential difference is that accordion reeds have to work on the blow and the suck. Not by some clever reed physics, but instead out of sheer two-faced duplicity.
For each note there’s a pair of reeds facing opposite directions. This is because unlike organs, squeezeboxen are both squeezed and unsqueezed. Half the clue’s in the name.
The reason for this difference is that organs possess a hippocampus. This means they can pick a direction and stick to it. Squeezeboxes, such as accordions, are cursed to forever change direction. No offence to squeezebox players, I play a melodeon myself and have about five at home. So no, I don’t need another one.
These reeds are from a piano accordion, which means each pair of reeds plays the same note. Now I know what you’re thinking. Buy one set, get one free.
Not entirely free though. I would still need to cut them in half.
This wouldn’t be easy. There’s very little spare. I would have to be careful cutting these. Measure twice, cut once.
Cutting these would take a steady hand and a thin blade. I didn’t quite have the confidence to do such a fine cut by hand. Ideally I’d need something to guide the cut.
And I have just the machine. A table saw! On the one hand, the 3mm kerf would obliterate the reed frame. On the other hand, with that fence I’d get a nice straight cut.
But there’s a million other ways it would be unsuitable, five of which I could count on one hand.
I saw these slitting saws on amazon. They looked a bit dodgy but I thought I’d give them a go. I have neither a dremel or a generic rotary tool. But I do have a pillar drill.
I wasn’t about to put this blade in the pillar drill and cut it by hand. I have five more reasons for that and I’m still quite attached to them.
What any reasonable person would have done at this point would be to go and buy a cross vice. You know, a dedicated tool designed to move a work piece precisely. I don’t think I’m unreasonable, but I already had this tiny vice and smaller linear rail. The bracket seemed to be sturdy and square enough so I cut it down, tapped some holes. Before too long I had this tiny sliding vice.
These reeds are from the bass of the accordion. A Stradella bass is arranged in the cycle of fifths, and the reeds are in this order too. One set is for the tonics, one set is for the chord notes.
Even after some trial cuts on offcuts of oak, it still felt risky. So I startd with EFlat as it was the most distant from where I normally hang out. No disrespect to my saxophonist friends. It’s a perfectly fine key if you don’t mind transposing to make friends.
After much trepidation I loaded it all up and made my first cut. It took longer to set it all up than to do the cut. The saw cut through the aluminium easily, and stayed more or less on course, which was a miracle. It had a lot of play in every poss dimension. But the result was reasonable. The reeds are both separated and usable.
I would feel bad about destroying this reed block and cutting the frames in half. But this accordion is long gone. The least I can do is make something unrecognisably different.
I don’t know what that is yet, but I’ll know it when I hear it.