The last day before Christmas I had the German silver end plates cut in rough hex shape. Emphasis on ”rough”…
Now it is time to print the design. The design is based on a Jeffries pattern – a good photo placed in a vector drawing program (my old Canvas 3.5, now retired and taken over by ”Intaglio”, a very good and reasonably priced program; it is here) and the design drawn on top of it, but modified to fit the (”reduced”) English concertina layout.
The fretwork paper design is glued onto the German silver plate, using the button holes as guide and 2 mm holes are drilled at suitable positions in the fretwork cutouts. My old jigsaw (had it since I was 6 years old) is getting to work now. Hard in the beginning - I had lousy blades and they broke all the time. I finally got hold of professional (silver/gold smithing) jigsaw blades – a joy to use. Nonetheless, it took all together 8 hours (during one week) to cut the design.
The plate is then left in water to remove the paper. Irregularities and rough corners are shaped with needle files and some more jigsawing, then 320 and 800 paper gives the plate a first smoothing. Final polish we'll do later.
German silver, 1 mm, roughly shaped –
On paper it looks good…
I had wrong blades in the beginning, but still with good ones
it takes 10 hours per side
Cover with cheese, 10 minutes at Gasmark 5
Freshly cut
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