Bellows Pt. 2

Today I touched up the inside bellows surfaces with a final sealing of shellac in preparation for gluing on the bellows cloth. This seems like one of the more intimidating aspects of the project, because I feel like I'm not going to find out if I'm doing it right until after the cloth is in place and the glue has thoroughly dried. Only then can I test it, and if it's got major problems, I'm faced with the prospect of tearing the bellows apart and starting on them again.

One of my main concerns is to make sure I have the right amount of glue on the edges - not enough, and I don't have a good airtight bond. Too much and I risk getting glue on the cardboard stiffeners inside.

In order to guard against having unseen drips of glue coming into contact with the edge of the stiffeners during the assembly process, I went along the edges of the stiffeners with a colored pencil. My son has dozens of colored pencils and after testing a couple by scribbling on paper then running the paper under the faucet, I found one that seemed to have very good water repellant properties. I figured that if I waxed the edges of the stiffeners with the pencil, then any stray glue would be less likely to adhere to it.

I then followed Melvyn Wright's procedure ( http://www.melright.com/busker/jsart89.htm ) and spread a thin layer of glue along one length of both boards as well as the end, made sure everything was aligned, and worked my way around the bellows with the cloth.

Once I had the cloth glued in place, I cleaned up any bits of excess glue that I could see, then sandwiched the bellows between two padded boards and loaded it down with 25# of weights to act as a clamp, since I don't have any regular clamps wide enough.

Tomorrow evening I'll be able to tell whether everything's fine, or if I need to go back and fix anything. Until then, I've got my fingers crossed....