G'day Paul Burke,

Richard Evans starts with brass reed-shoe blanks stamped for each of the (many) different sizes needed in the standard English pattern of concertina making - then machines the bevelled (... tapered, radiused) slot in a pantograph cutting machine. I'm sure this could be done far cheaper by methods you describe - as long as the number of each variant was sufficient.

It's a bit like the time Richard Evans was metitulously fret-sawing out a concertina end plate... he asked me if there was some faster "modern" way to do it. I said: "No - for the dozen ends you need when you are making a production run of six concertinas ... but: Yes - if you need 10,000 of them!"

Nobody making instruments for impecunious folkies can ever imagine having the production base to permit the economies of high production. Perhaps the common use of CAD/CAM design programs will, eventually let some skilled bod set up the CAD/CAM files for all these bits and, if the production can be slipped into a brief spell of 'downtime' for a big manufacturer, enough reed shoes for all the concertina constructors could be turned out in a flash.

Now all we wouod need to do is to get all these blokes talking to each other ... work out how we can get them into the right hands ... in the right countries ... past tariff barriers ... and National Security checks ... and ? ... and ... ?

Regards,

Bob