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Handmade Cajun Accordion, Pt. 1: Reed-Mounts Deep in the Louisiana prairie, accordion maker Marc Savoy begins the journey in the construction of a Cajun accordion. From "Handmade Music" episode DHMM-308

(Continued from page 1)

This "carrying case for a bunch of reeds" needs to have an orderly system of holding and supporting those reeds. Marc shows how the reeds are held securely with the maple reed-mounts (figure C).

Each instrument requires four mounts (figure D) on the treble side and three on the bass side. But building each mount individualyl would be very impractical. That's why Marc builds assemblies designed to produce dozens of mounts at once.

Figure C

Figure D

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Cajun Accordion: Building Reed-Mount Assemblies

Materials:

table saw
belt sander
sandpaper
glue
hard maple stock

Figure E

• Marc Savoy begins with a 12"x9"x1" piece of hard maple stock and notches eleven 1/4-inch wide dado cuts into the stock about a half-inch deep.

• Marc rips the blank into thirds (figure E) leaving him with three three-inch pieces of maple. Each piece has eleven slots.
  

• Each of the eleven slots receives a 3"x3" square of maple 1/4" thick (figures F and G). Carpenter's glue is used to secure each piece in place.

Figure F

Figure G

The accordion's distinctive keyboard creates one set of sounds on the "push" and another on the "draw."

"The principle involved here," says Savoy, "is a vibrating steel reed, and you want something hard for the steel reeds to be mounted to--in order to sustain the vibrations once they're generated. . .The rest of the instrument is pretty much the case for the reeds and the reed mounts."

With the maple inserts glued in place, the reed-mount assembly is beginning to take shape.

The next step will be to trim them to the correct length so that collectively they form the proper angle and configuration for the reed mount.

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