[Bell Historians] Molding terminology

[Carl S Zimmerman]

At 10:07 +0100 2003/08/17, Christopher Dalton 
<dalton.family at v...> wrote (under the subject line 
"Beverley/Downside Bourdon of 1900"):

>Moulding lines on bells also performed an important function when it came to
>placing the letters etc. of the inscription on the model (or 'dummy') bell.
>They helped to keep them in place and straight.

This is a fairly obvious matter when one considers lettering that is 
placed either between a pair of lines in the shoulder band or just 
below such lines. However, the first Stuckstede foundry of St.Louis 
utilized this principle in a manner that I have not (yet) seen on any 
other bells. A series of hair-fine notches in the strickle board for 
the outer profile of the false bell produced a series of hair-fine 
ridges which were utilized as the baselines for whatever custom 
inscriptions the buyer had ordered. These fine lines were spaced 
approximately 1.25" apart, and ran from just below the shoulder band 
(if any) down to just above the conventional triple moulding lines 
below the waist. Since the standard lettering which Stuckstede used 
for such inscriptions was about 3/4" high, multi-line inscriptions 
ended up with a nice vertical spacing.

These fine lines are obvious to the touch, as well as to the eye when 
one is close to the bell. But from several yards/meters away they 
are effectively invisible. They could have been removed by 
polishing; but as far as I can determine, the first Stuckstede 
foundry never polished its bells.

Someday I hope to find time to post on the Web some photographs which 
illustrate this practice nicely.

Is there any evidence that any of the English bellfounders ever used 
this sort of very fine moulding line purely for alignment of 
lettering? If so, did they polish the lines off after the bell came 
out of the mould, or leave them visible?

Carl