Adjustable gudgeons

[Carl S Zimmerman]

At 23:57 +0000 2005/02/13, David Cawley wrote under the subject "Re: 
[Bell Historians] Identification assistance":
>
>Interesting by the way to see the image of the Naylor Vickers bell. 
>The "yoke" (headstock on this side of the pond) has the "adjustable 
>gudgeons - you can see the serrations whereby the shoulders of the 
>stock were adjusted - i.e., if you didn't like the hang of your bell 
>you just went upstairs with a spanner and altered it, Well, so the 
>advert said, or words to that effect. But I've never seen the real 
>thing, so thanks to Carl for putting it on.

For those of you who missed the original, see 
<http://photos.yahoo.com/csz_stl@swbell.net>http://photos.yahoo.com/csz_stl@swbell.net 
under the album name "Naylor..."

At least one American bellfounder used a similarly adjustable 
three-piece yoke/headstock. But I doubt that it was intended to be 
adjusted by the customer. Instead, I think it was designed to enable 
one size of yoke to fit several sizes of bell, with the adjustment 
being done before the bell and its fittings were shipped from the 
foundry. But since it never came into widespread use, I speculate 
that the additional cost of manufacture and assembly of the 
three-piece yoke outweighed the savings from designing and molding 
fewer sizes of yoke.

BTW, I've long wondered - what is a stock that's not a headstock?

Carl