[Bell Historians] Stayless trebles

David Cawley dcawley at w...
Wed May 12 20:31:33 BST 2004


Of course, Taylor's overcame the problem with sprung steel stays on some of their extremely light rings - Saxthorpe, Norfolk, being an example. 

Re Seasalter - or as it is now known, St Alphege, Whitstable, the fitting of 1" section deal stays was somewhat before Richard's time, although he was most helpful in assisting when the bells were put in. There were then only six bells and it was the front four which were troublesome; the two largest had larger section stays. The first four went within weeks, and I realised that we might be out of pocket. A visit to the local timber merchant produced the suggestion that deal was the thing, largely because it was cheap and it (usually) snapped off straight across the stay socket (yes, on Whitechapel headstocks). Hence my purchase of the material in quantity.
It is no disgrace to say that our local band at the time had its fair share of breakages. The heady days of eight-bell ringing were still far off - we'd never even thought of it. I bought the trebles in 8 in 1973 by which time local stay-breaking was confined to the occasional learner...., and as Richard says, more frequently to the visitor. Am I right in thinking that ringers these days have less trouble with light rings than formerly ?

DL:C
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Richard Offen 
To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 5:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Bell Historians] Stayless trebles


--- 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


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