What would be the aim? Use of brittle ash die back wood?
We have just bought one ‘spare’ stay; it will only cover 4 of our six bells but as they are the bells on which we teach it should cover a higher proportion of breakages
ALL Wood dries out and becomes brittle over time and
We all know about Oiling cricket bats with linseed oil
I carried out a survey and it would appear that it is very unusual for a stay to break; not counting the Shute ‘peg’ I have only known of two and that is in 60 years
Most belfries are damp if not wet places so the rate of drying will be much slower than the ‘willow’ bat which hopefully is out in the sun.
So if we oil this spare then what about those fitted to the bells?
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.
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??
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.