[Bell Historians] Trebles on higher numbers

[Carl S Zimmerman]

At 08:37 +0000 2004/08/11, Richard Offen wrote:
>Tuning is surely carried out on the internal surface because of
>inscriptions and stuff on the external surface. The pitch is
>affected just as much by turning the outer profile as inner - a point
>proved in the tuning of handbells. As far as I am aware, bells
>are "thickened up" by altering the internal profile not the outer.

Unfortunately you've got it backwards. This is very easy to see 
using the larger bells of a tune-ringing set from any modern handbell 
manufacturer. Typically, two (and sometimes even three) adjacent 
bells are cast from the same size mold (to save molding costs). As 
received by the customer, the ones cast from the same mold can be 
identified because their outside diameters are identical, as verified 
by holding them mouth-to-mouth. But the deeper-toned one of such a 
pair is thinner (and therefore weighs _less_) than its higher-pitched 
"twin", because the manufacturer has removed more metal from the 
_inside_ of the casting during the tuning process in order to lower 
the pitch.

CSZ