Ringing Forums

Just a light hearted romp

Wood requires a certain percentage moisture content to maintain its performance in stays as much as in all other uses. I can't remember the figures for ash but each species has a "satisfactory range, below which flexibility and resilience are lost. It's a given than most belfries are humid to some extent and it is unlikely that stays etc would fall below the minimum preferred percentage anyway, so that isn't really the issue. What is more to the point is whether the upper end of ash's preferred moisture content range maintains the required performance better / longer than stays that are much drier. Can anyone enlighten us on that, please? With regard to treating ash with oil I suspect that it would be more beneficial in "wet" towers. It certainly helps maintain the pristine appearance of new installations for longer. In my home tower which I'm using "TuffSpots" to catch all the rainwater that gets in, I'm more concerned about the wetness / dryness of the wheels. The tightness of the joints varies considerably between winter and summer, and some years ago a bellhanger suggested oiling the wheels' spokes and cheeks. This was an interesting conundrum as the Foundry had suggested using a certain wood preservative on the wheels which I knew was incompatible with linseed and similar natural oils. Perhaps in your case, oiling the stays couldn't do any harm, assuming you have no need to use other preservative treatments. Change in cut wood's interstitial moisture content is slow, and, if uneven, leads to cracking
/ splitting. A light oiling helps the cellular structure of the wood to maintain a reasonably stable moisture content.

Interesting. Two questions:

1. what are wheels made from?, and
2.Whilst I know ash is great, is there no other tree that has similar properties that would do the same job as ash?

what are wheels made from? — Jason Carter

I believe the traditional materials are oak spokes, ash sole and elm shrouding, but the shrouding on our new wheels was plywood - obviously not a lot of elm around these days.

I wanted to add a photo to a comment but I can't work out how to quote a link from the comment to the photo files on my computer. I tried to copy & paste but that doesn't work. Am I missing something obvious??

Click on the last icon to first upload your photo, @Peter Sotheran then you can select it to show in your message.

What's this '@Peter Sotheran'. Is that Pinterest or Twitter or similar? I've never posted any photos there. Does this Forum not have a simple facility to browse my one photo files and upload from my desktop, or even to copy & paste one into a comment?

This is just about understanding how to use Ringing Forums, @Peter Sotheran, and is nothing to do with Twitter or anything else. Above the box you type your message in are a number of icons. If you click @ and enter someone's name, it is called a "mention". It sends an email to the person mentioned alerting them to the mention.

Similarly, to upload your photo to the Forum you click on the icon with an upwards arrow, then select the photo from your computer. Once uploaded, it lists it underneath with an insert button so that you can include it where you want in you message - like this:

You can click the Preview button to see how it will look before posting the comment.

Many thanks to Graham for the explanations. It's fine for those who know all about it but not very intuitive for those who don't!

Dora and Alice White gave a whole new meaning to 'stays' in a ringing context!