-LLL- Jeff, when are you going to make some accordions? You have a strong sense of how they should be. I think you should get into production. Not being a wise guy here, I'm serious.

I have been designing, re designing, building components, and generally messing about with the single row for a number of years. New style fingerboards, bass boxes, straps , flapper and actuating mechanisms and pallets and well top secret stuff.

Not known to most of the folks here, I was on the verge of production 3 years ago when I was diagnosed with throat cancer. I dont't smoke,chew, do drugs and at that time had not had so much as a beer for ten years . I sold the majority of my bellows, reeds etc to another forumite and spent the time in treatment and recovery and no clear idea of the future.

This was a life changing event.
I also sold 12 accordeons indcluding 5 Castagnaris as prognosis was "you've got six months, time to get your affairs in order"
I also sold 14 guitars and 2 mandolins and 2 banjos... many of which are rare and unobtainable .. ie not replaceable.
I also sold my 60K mile Intl Model 1010 Custom pickup with 60K miles and my 1974 M-B 450 SL roadster with 63 K miles...
I beat the odds and sadly,(as I blew everything out to spare my wife the tedium of unloading my life's hoarding) and yet welcomed...as of three weeks ago.. cancer free. Three years Dec 17.

I may get back to building.

Meantime I will continue to observe and comment about archaic and crude and disrespectful building design, materials and workmanship as in
butted joints and fixed reed blocks and overly wide bass straps, and hokey nails and coil springs and cheap picture frame hangers for straps and cookie cutter metal corners and all the BS about bincis and unnecessarily over sized boxes and accordeons made by others and branded by famous people and bad mouthing THE standard of 1 rows.. The Hohner HA 114.

No joke.. I have enough wood to build 500 accordeons.. reeds and bellows and hardware available anytime from a number of sources in Italy and Britain at modest prices, as well as the US.

So little time, so many interests.

Not a joke , I owned the identical box in purple with red white and blue bellows and a case with a green fuzz liner.

I sent it to the well known player/builder/repairman and seller of accordeons in Wales.. Rees Wesson. He plays it at "sympathetic" events.

PS Check's in the mail for 25 cents for using "paradigm"... even though Sterling and Monarch were not in biz until the 20th Century, not 1829 when an Armenian immigrant to (Bohemia) Austria "invented" the 10 button accordeon (bisonoric, diatonic, aerophone) the mother of all 1 row 10 button accordeons to follow and every other bellows/reed instrument thereafter.

Thought you might enjoy seeing the keyboard of one of the local musicians.
He brought the accordion to me for a complete overhaul a few years back and this is what the keyboard looked like when he gave it to me.

Copper wires, steel wires, aluminum wires, gobs of epoxy, you name it.
BTW, this was an old Marc Savoy accordion that originally had copper alloy wires.