Bellfounding story
Bill Hibbert
bill at s_Q43drZsi9ZCTZqs_txFgNPvFl13a2D4iUvn5zHctZu1tM9DCKmFT_225YwY1skg2lescznOMH4LDnz.yahoo.invalid
Wed Aug 30 17:30:44 BST 2006
I finally met Robert Perrin last week after corresponding for years.
I won't bore you all with discussions of bell acoustics but I will
pass on the following story he told me . . .
A numbr of years ago, an employee of some bellfoundry in the Midlands
hatched a plot with accomplices to steal the foundry's stock of tin.
The theft was successful, but the employee chose to take his share of
the proceeds not in cash but in tin, which he hid in his locker in
the foundry. When the police arrived at the foundry to investigate
the theft, the employee lost his nerve and threw the tin into the
furnace just as a bell was about to be cast.
There is another alloy of copper and tin as well as bell metal,
called speculum, with a much higher propertion of tin. Speculum is
white and shiny and used to be used to make the mirrors of
telescopes. The foundry staff were amazed when they took the bell
that had just been cast out of the mould, to find that it was white.
When upended and struck, it made no musical note, and after a few
hammer blows, collapsed into a pile of fragments 'like glass breaking
in a Tom and Jerry cartoon'.
The theiving employee was charged, did time, and is said to have
later run his own business casting handbells somewhere in south
Derbyshire.
Bill H
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