Repeater Bell - During Refurbishment

I thought I'd show you what the the Repeater Bell mechanism is made up of, what components are used and what material they're made from.

Plan view of the 6 components

Side on view

The main item is the Y Frame, a cast iron part with 3 pillars rivetted to the frame; 2 of the pillars are mild steel the other one is brass.  The large brass spigot is there to act as a bump stop to restrict the travel of both the Clapper and Trigger Casting. The 2 steel pillars are dual purpose spring locators and pivot points for Trigger Casting and Clapper.  The springs slide over the pivot and fit on the lower square section followed by Trigger Casting or Clapper, these are fixed by split pin.  The last item is a brass Cable Interface, this pivots on the end of the Trigger Casting whilst being pulled up by the cable coming from the belfry.

Assembled Repeater Bell Mechanism

The fully assembled mechanism (without Bell)  There's a rubber ring fitted to the Brass Stop, I'm not sure if rubber would have been used on the original but this appears to work fine so far.  The rubber is dual purpose in that it stops metal to metal contact of both Clapper and Trigger and acts as a spacer to restrict the travel of those parts, allowing the systems to re-arm faster after striking.

Repeater Bell - Before

The first thing we notice of the Seage's Silent Ringing Apparatus are Repeater Bells mounted high up on the walls in the Ringing Room.  When I saw these I asked what they were for; one of our ringers has had contact with the tower since 1987 and he told me that these were for ringing during the Second World War. In war time all ringing was stopped unless Silent Ringing Apparatus could be used; ringing of bells would be used as a means of sounding the Invasion Alarm, if practice was continued Seage's was put into use.  The Repeater Bells are about 20 feet up and quite hard to see due to bad light and location, they are also difficult to maintain up there.

Repeater in as removed condition

Mechanism as removed

A few years of dust accumulation

 The Bell is mounted on a casting in the shape of a Y.  All the castings have some degree of corrosion but it is largely superficial.  Another casting forms the Trigger, the rest of the parts are brass or spring steel.

Bell Frame Casting

Here we have the major piece of iron work in the system, the Bell Frame Casting is mounted on a large wooden block which is bolted to the bell frame.  The casting has three spigots on the front, the top centre one is for the Cow Horns to pivot on; the lower two can be used for either Actuator Arm Pivot or Stop.  Depending on which side the cable needs to run away from the bell frame, the Actuator Arm is fitted to the left or right spigot, the unused spigot then becomes the Stop.

 

Bell Frame Casting

Actuator Arm - Update

Whilst working on the Seage's Silent Ringing Apparatus over the past few days, I've noticed small marks on some contact faces of the components; one of these is the Actuator Arm.  The arm pivots on a spigot and comes to rest against the second spigot on the Bell Frame Casting, the half cup on the arm has a wooden or leather dowel inserted at the 6 O'clock position.  The dowel stops metal to metal contact between arm and spigot.

Pivot end of the Actuator Arm

 The arm has been fitted with a dowel made from Ash, we'll see how this stands up to the wear and tear.

Actuator fitted to the Casting Spigot

This shot shows the wooden dowel resting on the 'Stop Spigot'

Decided which bell to install first

Yesterday I had a good look around the Seage's Silent Ringing Apparatus at our tower, St. John the Evangelist, Whittle-le-Woods, Lancashire, with a view to finding which bell would be the easiest to get a Seage's working again; No. 3 has won the prize.  The main reason for this is that there's a straight drop from Bell Frame in the Belfry to the Repeater Bell in the ringing room.  Some of the other bells have pulleys which turn the wire enroute from Belfry to ringing room, so these will be left until later.
The original wire used to pull the Repeater Bell was approx 18 swg, 1 mm in todays speak.  I am going to use 1 mm 7 x 7 Stainless Steel wire rope for this refurbished installation.  Wire rope will flow round the turning blocks more easily and stainless steel should not corrode like the mild steel did.  We'll need to come up with different means of terminating the wire rope, possibly copper crimps.

Cow Horns

 The Cow Horn, this item is fitted to the same casting as the Actuator Arm shown previously.  Cow horns are rocked backwards and forwards by a bolt attached to the Stay Socket, as they rock, the point below the pivot hole moves over the 'Gear Tooth' and moves the lever up pulling the wire and operating the Repeater Bell.

Cow Horn with 15" rule for scaling

Closer view of Cow Horn

Actuator Arm

 A view of the Actuator Arm from the Seage's Silent Ringing Apparatus, this arm fits on the casting located on the bell frame above the Stay Track.

Close up of the Actuator Arm.  This arm gives a pull of seven times the height from the rest position to the top of the 'Gear Tooth' or triangle between the two circles above the rule.  If the height is 7 mm we get a lift of 49 mm on the cable used to pull the striking mechanism in the ringing room.

The Bells Are Missing

A good number of years ago we had a case of disappearing bells.  The small bells used on our Seage's Silent Ringing Apparatus are the same as handbells, we think that someone, or possibly the whole band, decided that the bells would be better off the wall mounts and being used as handbells.  So the bells were removed from the brackets and shipped to Taylors the bell founders in Loughborough, to be converted or made into handbells.  I'm not sure of the exact date when the above took place, if anyone reading the blog does know when the Whittle-le-woods Seage's bells were removed please let me know, it was quite a while ago around the late 1960's.  The last information we have on them is an invoice from John Taylor and Co. for the cost of postage for return of the Handbells to Dalton Lodge, Whittle-le-woods, Lancashire  We are fairly sure that these would have been the completed conversion into Handbells.

The bells which we have now are a replacement set of eight, purchased second hand from a Mr. Flatters at John Taylor and Co in November 1987, at a cost of £50; quite a bargain I think.

Edit

PS
I've found a letter, dated 24th February 1987, from Mr. Gerald A Flatters of John Taylor and Co.  The second page dealt with a query regarding the Seage's Bells;

"With regard to the Whittle-le-Woods Seage's apparatus, I have carefully gone through the details and find that the bells were delivered to our Works in November 1969.  On the 17th december of that year we wrote to Mr. Peter R Jackson giving details of the work that would be required to convert these to handbells.  On the 30th January, 1970 the bells were returned by post to Mr. Jackson - see enclosed photocopy from our records.  This was the last involvement we had with these bells."