Ringing Forums

There are a couple of suppliers of dumbbells. Matthew Higby makes a steel-wheeled one which quite a few towers have versions of it and St Peter Mancroft in Norwich have a set of 8 with differing sizes of weights on them for their training centre to make them feel more like a real ring of bells. The advantage of these is that they can be mounted in your clock/intermediate chamber, or bolted to the bell frame - they're much more weather resistant than other suppliers. The Higby design uses a standard size (~4ft 6") steel wheel both the flywheel effect of the weight of the wheel rotating combined with the weight on the wheel to create the effect of a ~3cwt bell and as a result it has a reduced loading requirement on the building it is in, although it is very good for training and teaching people, it isnt a subsitute for a real bell which does subtly feel different, although it is better than those which use smaller wheels..

Saxilby simulators have about a 3ft/1m diameter wheel and I'm pretty sure there are a few rings of these around, I think Exeter (cathedral?) has a set of 10 of these. They look good, and I think the wheels are made of steel weights and MDF, so would suit a weathertight loft space rather than being fixed to a bell frame with open louvers. These are good if you have space restrictions, e.g. in your loft at home, or want to get the mobile tower they supply to take the bell to shows or other towers.

I'm sure most of the bell hangers have and do supply them too. Whites have supplied a full sized steel wheel light weight one for the Cheltenham Minster part of their project, but I would rate the Higby ones being better for realism, but I'm sure Whites could, or might now offer a better version. I'm sure the other bell hangers have done them, but Matthew Higby's design seems to be very popular.

I have attached a photo of the dumb bell at Leeds Minster in their clock room. It runs on an old cast iron headstock and has some cast iron clock weights bolted to it to simulate the weight of the bell. I don't know who made this, but I suspect it could be a couple of locals who put it together rather than a professional. This is probably better again at mimicking a real bell, it uses a weight that is very close to the weight of a real bell on real fittings. (I've not rung it)

There's 3 distinct avenues and I guess it depends what you're looking for;

• a smaller than normal size installation that's portable and could go into a loft space
• a full size wheel with light weight utilising the flywheel effect to mimic real bells
• a full size wheel with a heavy weight giving the weight and characteristics of a real bell.

The second two points are the type that most bell hangers would offer. The teaching centre at Worcester Cathedral has 8 all made locally by members of the band which are a hybrid with MDF(?) full sized which give a bit of the flywheel effect wheels and a heavy weight.



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With the greatest respect to most electricians that do valuable work in churches, most, if not all are not lighting designers and not skilled in the selection of light fittings, just like the ringers and the clients (PCC). Whilst electricians have the experience of putting light fittings in, they are rarely the ones that look at or use them so generally do as instructed on the back of their purchase order from the PCC.
The cause of flicker is generally the lighting rectifier circuit within the driver behind the LEDs and its ability to smooth out the ripple on the rectified AC mains voltage to generate DC. Whilst LEDs are common in everyday life nowadays, the ones without flicker are more likely to be the professional products that come with a much better LED driver at a much higher capital cost. One of the big advantages of professional fittings is that they have a lot more literature about them and can provide flicker-free assurances or a quantifiable amount of ripple. The cheaper LEDs won't have been tested, and are likely to have a ripple many times worse than the ones that have been tested.

I have come across a couple of ringing chambers at towers that have not long been re-hung, where the lighting level is akin to "restaurant mood lighting" at best. There seems to be an underestimation of the amount of lighting required.

From a technical perspective, as it is the driver at fault in these LEDs causing the flicker, it is entirely practicable if the LED fittings allow their internal one to be bypassed, to fit a much better driver upstream, or local to the LED fitting. Some of the professionals LED drivers will output 230, or even up to 300VDC, which would mean you could drive the fitted (mains powered) LEDs direct from another driver without any work to them, and the rectifier circuit within will never see an oscillating AC supply. I have not looked into the cost of this, but I suspect the professional quality LED drivers could be greater than the cost of some of these LED light fittings that are suffering from flicker.

I've PM'd you

Hello Barbara, There are one or two people that are ringers, and have worked in the trade that do project management/coordination. The main person that springs to mind is Andrew Higson, his company is called Exaudite http://www.exaudite.co.uk/ and is probably worth a discussion with him. He has managed a number of bell restoration projects, including the new ring of 12 in Cheltenham. He would also help with understanding your requirements and adjusting the works required from the different contractors before your PCC places the orders with them.

In a world where a lot of church and bell-ringing projects are entirely lead by volunteers, anyone charging a fee relating to their time to a project appears expensive. As you have also alluded to, the PCC finds it rather time-consuming to be managing projects and pushing them through, and isn't this something that you'd be tasking your paid professional to undertake? Everyone's time is proportional to a value of money, even if the time is given for free, in real terms there's a value to put to it. Rather than look at the hourly rate or fee the professional is looking to charge, why not consider the outputs they will achieve in that time with their the suite of skills they have bringing projects together? They are bound to add value to your project and even raise or consider things that you may overlook.

If it were a paid professional, like an architect, would they too have issues with getting contractors to get back to them, is it the history the church has with local contractors that means they are not interested?

What you've identified is a level of scope in your project, managing various suppliers/subcontractors which you believe could save you money if you have the time/skills to undertake it, whilst taking on the risk of it not all going swimmingly. If you were to let the entire project to the main contractor, who then subs it out, the main contractor has to do all that project management and interfaces, generally which they will build into the costs somewhere, so it's not free for them to undertake it. As part of a paid professional undertaking the management of the project, they'll often add a mark-up percentage to the subcontract values, and/or book a fixed fee for the project. The issue that most bell-hanging projects have with this, is that Ringing Association/Guild grants don't always provide grants for the overheads managing the project, even though they're essential to the success of the project - they'll often only provide a grant for the hardware element only.

As Jonathan has ably detailed, when using the velcro type muffles, the second muffle is different to the first, being that it has loops and no velcro. This is a Big Wilf's Bell Muffle.

Hello Simon/James, yes, Big Wilf's Bell Muffles are still being made to the same tried and tested design as Wilf has perfected over the last 15 years. There will be a notice in the RW and an updated website in due course, but we are accepting orders.
http://bigwilfsbellmuffles.co.uk/

Hello Alison, being someone that has NPTC C&G Qualifications in Arboriculture, I can confirm that trees suffering from Ash dieback also have a discolored or brown/black stem. The timber goes a brown/black from the center of the stem and works its way out.
If trees are too badly infected with disease, it is not recommended to climb them to dismantle unsfate trees as they have no spring to them and will just drop limbs, the advice is to just fell them. The timber becomes very brittle and means you need to vary felling cuts to ensure it falls in the intended direction.
This will no doubt have an effect on the Ash market and what is available as a replacement for ringers going forwards.

There is no standard for the sally heights, however, I use a number of 66" (1.68m) from the floor (when the bell is up) to the bottom of the sally, and only rising to 69" (1.75m) for bells around the 20cwt mark, with 72" (~1.8m) for bells from about 40cwt upwards which generally have 3ft6 long sallies.
I have worked these heights out over quite a few years, looking at where people catch the sally when ringing and setting sally heights to accomodate the band. The average height of your ringers should be catching the sally in the middle of the sally when ringing (not when pulling off, where they might be lower down the sally) which allows the taller, and shorter of the band to also have the use of the sally when ringing.

With regards to garter hole positions I have a spreadsheet that I've worked out pulley heights and garter hole positions if you're having the effect of hard work or a short handstroke pull on your bell and also having sallies at significantly different heights when the bells are down if you'd like a copy (PM me). The first thing to check is the height of the pulley box below the wheel, an awful lot of bells, the pulleys are too far away from the wheel which makes the handstroke pull hard work and has the same effect with sally heights as though the gater hole is in the wrong position. Once you've checked your bell has an ~85-degree angle of rope sweep above the pulley box, the garter hole position can then be considered. (Greater than 90degree sweep has issues with handling too). The garter hole should be at 90 degrees from a line from the centre top of the pulley box to the centre of the bearing, and out. A garter hole that's 4" out gives a sally that's 8" different in height between up and down. My spreadsheet works it out from the top dead centre of the wheel around to where it should be.

A standard sally length is 3 feet and any shorter or longer are made at the request of the customer.
Bearing in mind that a new sally sat in a box and not used gets shorter and fatter, and could be an inch below the 3ft mark, plus over time and with use a 3ft sally ends up longer by about 3 to 4 inches.
Any sally that's not wound tight enough will be longer than the specified length, plus they tend to go hour glassed shape much quicker: A longer sally doesn't mean you've got better value.
Vice Versa is also true.

the pulley height has a bigger impact on it too. You need an arc of about 80 to 90 degrees that the rope moves between back stroke and hands stroke above the pulley box

This is the second time I have logged in here in 2 weeks, and I'm a little disappointed that not only my question hasn't had a reply, but also that there's been no other activity.

Is there going to be an app we can download?