Sound Control

 The only house next to the church is on the north-east side of the tower, and reducing the volume of the bells as much as possible on this side is important.

Both the north and east sides now have timber blocking the tower windows. To make it even more effective, a layer of carpet tiles is needed to reduce the sound level even more. The north side was completed recently, and the east side needs doing next.

 The west side will be kept fully open but the south side will be partially blocked as the 3rd bell swings into the window opening and rings louder than the other bells as a result and is very noticeable when listening from the outside. Blocking up the bottom half of the window will prevent this from happening.

New ringing room carpet!

 We have a fantastic new carpet!

It really looks lovely. Now we need some new mats to go with it.

 

Ready for the new carpet

A new carpet is being fitted in a couple of days, so tonight we got as much as possible out of the way. The old carpet was rolled up and taken away and the floor vacuumed in readiness.

The two benches left behind are too big and heavy to take down the ladder so the carpet fitter will just have to move them aside and work around them.

 

Ringing the 8 again!

 The Worcester Catherdal young ringers came for a visit, and this meant that all 8 bells were rung for the first time since February 2020.

 Here is a view from above.

Swing time correction

 One of the important jobs still outstanding was to bring the swing times into alignment. These are measured by the "Oddstruckness Meter" I make. Getting the timings correct will help improve the overall standard of the ringing and it is worth taking the time to get these fine details correct.

To do this, two pieces of metal weighing a total of 1.5kg were bolted to the vertical spokes of the wheel as shown here.

 

 

This slowed the bell down by 25ms and the swing time curve now looks like this :-

As you can see, the timings are now very close to the ideal curve (thin black line).

Tidying up

 We've managed to do a bit more tidying up. This is a rather large task, but it means that we are closer to the end of the project and will be well worth the effort.

 Not only did we remove 5 more sacks of rubbish today, but the lifting fame and beam were taken down and stored in a corner of the belfry.

This opens up the following view

From right to left are bells 1, 8, 4 and 5 with 2 in the foreground.

The large lifting beam over the frame will be kept in place.

Family bubble #2

 Another family bubble work session.

The platform in the ringing room window has been completed.

This is a seating area and the floor boarding protects the fragile masonary underneath from damage caused by being stood on. It also bungs up a large gap which is very drafty in the winter!

All that is needed to complete the job is to replace the bench seat some 8" higher than it once was.

The ringing room is now ready for a new carpet.