Chiff and Fipple Forums

so my first anglo was a china-cheapie which served my ok, but it was very limited, with just 20 buttons, so i got a rochelle recently, and the thing that struck me immidiately was how much more comfortable it was to hold, then i realised, that the handrails on my old one were way too wide, so my thumb couldn't be positioned straight and ended up being hooked awkwardly on the wood...



i wasn't until recently that i discovered that the air button was supposed to be pushed with the thumb yeah, i know. because all this while i've been using my index finger cos there was just no comfortable way to use the thumb. (i suppose i could angle my wrist sharply upwards to reach it, but that feels just as bad.) Now that i've a new concertina, i'm not too afraid to experiment with my old one, so, i was thinking of sawing off a bit of the handrail (at the red line in the pic below) and rescrewing the top part of the straps..




that way my thumb can rest straight, without needing to hook around the handle, and hopefully get a better reach of the air button. what do you guys think? what exactly holds the handle to the body of the concertina though? nails? glue? would it be possible to remove that offending bit once i saw through the height of the rail from the top?
ps i would post this on concertina.net instead, but for some reason i can't start a new topic there yet

Undo the screws holding that end on and have a look. My best guess would be glue but you never know, you might see screw heads are nail heads on the reverse side. Only way to find out is to look. Either way you can still take out the offending piece of wood and add a new screw in neccesary but you would need to fill any resultant hole.

Steve