Stockport St George, and Mears & Stainbank tuning

[Bill Hibbert]

In an idle moment the other day, I re-looked at the tuning figures 
for Stockport after the various discussions, and discovered to my 
great interest that the nominals appeared to have been tuned 'by 
ear'. This was a surprise, because I believe that M&S were using 
forks at this time, and I had assumed they would tune the nominals by 
beating them against forks. Stockport suggests this was not so.

Intrigued, I looked at Lord Rayleigh's paper of 1890, and Bert 
Hughes' report on the old Coventry bells of 1925. In Rayleigh's 
paper, he relates that M&S lent him a bell for his tests, together 
with a fork 'tuned to the pitch of the bell'. This fork was at the 
half nominal, which caused Rayleigh great puzzlement.

In the report on the Coventry bells, Bert Hughes gives the 'tap 
tones' measured with 'specially tested forks' and again quotes the 
half nominal rather than the nominal as the 'main note' of the bell.

All this provides strong evidence that M&S were tuning strike 
pitches, not nominals, at this time, even though they were using 
tuning forks.

Does anyone know if this was actually so, and if so, the procedure 
they used to do this? They can't have been tuning with beats, as 
there is nothing to beat against at the strike pitch.

Bill H