[Bell Historians] Stayless trebles

[Richard Offen]

--- In bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com, "john thurman" <john at t...> 
wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Bryant" <david at b...>
> To: <bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 2:33 PM
> Subject: [Bell Historians] Stayless trebles
> 
> 
> > I notice from the picture on Andrew Aspland's website that the 
two trebles
> at Pateley Bridge don't have stays, the are just allowed to go 
over. The
> back six have stays and sliders. Are there any other light rings 
with a
> similar arrangement?
> >
> > David
> >
> Lightcliffe are the same.
> 
> John

I suspect that both towers were originally fitted with a full set of 
stays by Taylors, but the trebles got broken so often that the 
Steeple Keeper got fed up with making new ones! Fettes College, 
Edinburgh always used to be the same too.

At Seasalter in the early 70s, we gave up using ash stays and fitted 
pine ones, which were cut as long as each pit would allow and worked 
quite adequately. We'd simply used to pull out the broken stub from 
the headstock, re-drilled and re-fixed the stay until it was too 
short to reach the pendulum slider. This operation could be done in 
a matter of minutes and was extremely economical.

It has to be said that it was generally only ever visitors who broke 
stays, our local band (which had, at that time, an average age of 
about 16, and could ring 8-spliced and Glasgow) very rarely did!

R