Friday 9 October 2009

Making Bellows Part Two


So I had my two halves of my bellows, next set was to cut a small square of leather to cover the inlet hole, shown in the picture here. The piece of leather was about 5cm by 5cm and tacked down one side so that it could flap about. The idea is that air can be drawn in when expanding the bellows, but not when deflating them, so all the air goes out the nozzle. I think I could have done with a slightly thicker bit of leather for this bit, as my valve does not work to well. My leather is 1.5mm thick (that is what the description on eBay said I have not measured it myself) so maybe 3mm or something like that could have been better for the valve.
Also I think thicker leather for the hinge would have been a good idea too, I lost the picture of the hinge piece, but it is easy to imagine the two boards back together so they make the bellows shape, then tacked together by a rectangle of leather forming a hinge mechanism.
Next came the tricky bit, cutting and fitting the piece of leather for chamber of the bellows, I was not to sure on the shape of the piece of leather I need, so I tested it with paper to start with, having the bellows open then wrapping a sheet of newspaper round them and cutting it to shape. The cut was roughly the shape of my sketch to the left. Once this was cut, I started by spreading glue along the edge of the boards then tacking the straight edge to the bottom board (the one with the valve on), then it gets a bit more difficult, tacking along the second board. I started by putting a tack in each side of the nose and then one partly in at the handle, as I thought I may need to move that one at some point (which I did) I tacked down either side until i got to the handle, here the leather did odd things and I was unsure whether or not I could make a cut to sort out the problem. In the end I decided to play it safe and fold the leather as neatly as possible and tack it in place which seemed to work. then I trimmed off the excess leather. and it was time for the Final part, the nose cover, to make the hinge air tight. This shape to the right, is roughly how the piece of leather looked. It took me a long while to work out the shape, that had to fold round the edges of the bellows, but once it was cut, it was just a case of gluing and tacking, and the bellows were complete.

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