Ringing Forums

Ringers like bell ropes that are perfect at day one, with no bedding in process; soft and flexible tail ends and sallies that feel like the ones someone has just got rid of are about the level of expectation. I know some suppliers may meet those requirements which has driven interest in having sallies that are not too fat at day one, but one has to look further than the first year at what is required of a bell rope. A bell rope sally that meets those requirements tends to only ever get a thinner, and the tail end only gets looser, reducing the amount of friction between the fibres and eventually disintegrates. Is it therefore better to have a bell rope that needs a bit of a bedding in process that is right for the time it spends in service afterwards?

It's a bit like asking a carpet manufacturer to replicate the nice firm short pile with the new carpet, when the old one has taken years to bed in like that.

So whilst I run Avon Ropes, and John Harrison has spoken highly of our work we have a slightly different approach. Our sallies are manufactured with the aim to give a good long service and not end up feeling too thin in a short term. Therefore, they start life approximately 1 7/8" in diameter, and with use, they slim down slightly from there to be something fairly firm and reasonable to hold onto. Likewise, our tail ends are slightly tighter at day one, but with use and time they free up so they retain enough friction in them that they serve a good term in service. We can trim them to be slightly thinner if required.

As far as I'm aware, we're the only supplier using 100% British Wool via our accredited supply chain for our full sized bell ropes.

Another effect that happens is that where bell ropes are not used from new, but stored, as the twist of the rope is akin to a spring, the sally shrinks slightly in length, but at the same time, gets thicker too. Once a bell rope is put into service and starts to be used again, it will revert back to the diameter it was when it was trimmed by the manufacturer.

I hope that helps.

the angle of sweep the rope passes through above the pulley box should be circa 82-90 degrees and this is irrespective of whether it's a single or double pulley. The radius the centre top of the pulley is away from the wheel is therefore constant for a given wheel diameter. The garter hole is out at 90 degrees from a chord drawn between the centre top of the pulley and the gudgeon and in theory could be in one of two locations (although it's nearly always in only one of the two).

Actually working out the angle of sweep of the rope is key, or the first step to working out whether the pulley height is too high or too low. Only once that's been confirmed and the angle of sweep being within the range suggested above, can you consider whether the garter hole is in the right place, or needs moving so that the sally is the same (or almost) when the bell is down vs. up.

In a lot of cases, some of these things are genuine guesses, sometimes they work, sometimes they dont and it's not always obvious without working some numbers out what is actually wrong.

You've probably done the right thing by keeping out of the pit even though it's tied up. I've heard of one scenario where something akin to this was done, and the bell was pulled/pushed off, the spokes stayed put but the bell broke free destroying the wheel in the process. This is why I wonder if anyone has tested it or put together any advice in what to do or not do.

some of the Marlow rope has it, some of it doesn't. Certainly, bell ropes made nowadays don't have any of these rogue yarns and we no longer use the Marlow rope with those flecks in it.

The blue fleck buried inside a rope indicates the materials they're made from, it's something that's technically called a "rogue yarn". Normally blue is for polyester and green is nylon.
Whilst you find it in some of Marlow's ropes, it is something that has more or less died out across the board, with so many hundreds of different types of man made fibre ropes mass produced nowadays.

Is it worth having a chat to the tower captain about it on the quiet. For one of the reasons you come is to ring the back ones and you also like hearing a true ring of bells being rung. Whilst you're not a local you need to be sympathetic to the rest of the band, but if you're making a good contribution to their practice and making the difference towards things then that might help. It might also help to suggest it would be good to work towards getting the local band up to 8 bell ringing over the next 6 months and see what the TC says. It might be that the TC is inexperienced on 8 and feels out of their depth so there's possibly some encouragement to do there too.

The plastic pulleys for bell installations are bespoke for the application and you're not going to find them in a general industrial suppliers product catalogue.
The majority of them are the Whitechapel design with twin bearings on a 1/2" bolt from the 1970s, which are 1.5" or 2" wide, along with a variety of diameters from 5" up to 8". If you get the right size, they're all interchangeable from the current suppliers (Whites/Nicholsons/Higby) as they all use the same design of fitting, but some are lighterweight than others, the lighter ones the better.

There was an era where Eayre and Smith were supplying plastic pulleys to slightly different dimensions to those listed above (they were narrower) and sometimes they even fitted plain bush bearings. These are no longer available and are either require a new pulley box or a timber one being turned up bespoke.

Unsuccessful? It would seem that the CCT blocking of it has been successful so far given the project (according to Dove's guide) appears to have not gone ahead, but certainly, the supporting information provided will prove to be very useful for any projects where Planning Permission and Listed Planning Consent is required. There certainly seems to be more information provided than a typical faculty for a bells project.

15/12/22 update.
Thank you to everyone (bellringers and the CCCBR) that has offered and provided assistance with this, as this benefits all bellringers nationwide. Collectively we have managed to pull together sufficient evidence to support the case that there is a precedence on grants being paid for mail-order bell ropes that are NOT fitted by a VAT-registered contractor. The evidence has been reviewed by the LPWS and also the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) who have agreed that grants for bell ropes will continue to be paid where they are supplied mail order and fitted by volunteers.

Should any grants have been declined since July 2022 on the basis they were not fitted, I would encourage you to speak to your PCC treasurer and the LPWS team in Leicester to revisit your claim.

We have put more information on our website https://www.avonropes.co.uk/vat.html

Yes. The rules around gift aid can be a bit funny, like with going to a national trust property, you have to pay 10% more than the normal entry price for the whole of your entry fee to qualify for Gift aid and it has to be to a registered charity (which the most BRFs are, but the Associations
are not) but generally if it's made as a donation with nothing in return I believe it qualifies, so the £12 to the general fund could qualify.

St Mary's Chester are currently having some work done to their bells and they too are a local authority church, so would guess a conservation officer is involved there too.
Peterstone Wentloog (Priv ownership) are having minor works done to them as a result of being unrung for 20+ years and the building now in new ownershiop, the church there is currently awaiting on planning permission (and probably listed building consent) for full conversion into a domestic dwelling and no doubt they have a conservation officer on board with the works. The Newport ringers are probably the best point of contact there as they seem to be involved with the minor works to the bells.

Have you thought about speaking with Matthew Higby? About 10 years ago he rehung the bells in the Lord Mayor's Chapel in Bristol? It's a Bristol City Council building with nothing to do with the diocease and no doubt a conservation officer was involved there.

Muffles seemed to be fine to recover the VAT on them. I have that in writing from the current administrators of the LPW Scheme, but bell ropes seem to fall into the category of a bell or bell frame which seems to require them to be fitted. It is to the extreme that you could pay your local VAT-registered electrician to fit them, and claim the VAT back on his charge too!

The G&B is pretty restrictive over what it gives grants for too. Whilst they give a headline 20%, they only focus on bells and bell fittings, anything else that permits the bells to be rung is not eligible despite the fact that most of it will need to be done to be a successful centre of ringing and learning, e.g. new lighting, decoration, new ladders to get to belfry, new louvers for weatherproofing, sound control, tower steps, handrails, ringing galleries, all excluded.

Leaving the money in the branch is great, but the other added thing about leaving it in the branch is that it's not eligible for gift aid...and yet pretty much all of the £15 could be eligible for gift aid if it was given the BRF...at an extra 25%!! If only the restrictions for giving money were loosened and likewise the percentage of "eligible" project costs given might decrease, there would be little need to keep money in the branch and more benefits realised. A lot of ringing associations are extremely tight with their money and spend hours debating even the smallest sums, yet in the real world, the money changing hands is a pittance.

please. As like your case, it's normally the ringers that generally do most of the fundraising and co-ordination of these things and the treasurers who do the claims, the evidence will need to come from the treasurer to LPWS, but if you could check if that's the case, then this will be good evidence to support the fact they are not fitted. You could also include in the statement that whilst the ropes were supplied by a VAT registered contractor who had done extensive works to your bells and bell frame, the church recovered the VAT on all of the works including the bells ropes, despite them being fitted locally by you/bellringers as volunteers.

This is an ideal case. Do you have access to the information to show that they received the LPWS grant for the VAT element, and together with it a statement saying that you fitted them yourselves? I don't need to see the information but would ask for your contact details to point the LWPS current admin team in your direction to provide the information directly to them along with your statement

the £1000 limit is across all eligible expenditure, so can be invoices from multiple contractors providing eligible goods and services. Also, once in a 12-month period, you can put in a claim below £1000, providing it's above £500.

I would like to focus on bell ropes in the first instance and would like the references towards evidence to support the claim that they've not been fitted before but LPWS have previously paid those grants. Certainly, as Stays are part of a bell fitting, and the caveat is that they need to be fitted by a VAT registered contractor, that would be very much the case as we stand at the moment, however, bell ropes don't require tools to be fitted and are very much like fitting car mats designed for your car.

A lot of ringers and towers like to compare towers locally to them to determine whether they are charging the right fee, or not. Is this the right way to do it? Unless one tower makes a change to their fees, the fees will never be raised without someone stepping out of line.

Is it not better for each church to do an assessment of the out-of-pocket expenses and reasonable rate of pay for the time, including traveling and waiting time for the skills provided, and base it around that?

The following document gives a "national all-occupations hourly wage" (2019) of £13.21/hr, then if you require parking, public transport or driving your own vehicle (which HMRC deem £0.45/mile is a fair rate for the last eleven years) for someone to get to the church, including their time traveling. Most weddings ringing after only take about 1.5 - 2 hours out of someone's day.

https://www.powertochange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Value_of_Volunteering_Working_Paper_Final.pdf

This then needs to incorporate the local situations and availability of ringers, some churches may struggle to get ringers, combined with how much should go into the tower bell fund. For a lot of churches, weddings are probably the main income for the tower.

We need to bear in mind that for sole traders/self-employed with profits below £1000 a year, there is no requirement to register for self-assessment with HMRC, so non-registered ringers can be 'paid' for ringing without having to declare it - I'm sure there's a lot more to the HMRC rules too.

The end result comes round to how much we and the wider society values bellringing, and it's not something I personally believe we should be under-valuing.

Is £30 a rope 'after-only' a fair rate at today's prices plus one or two ropes worth to the tower fund? I know there are some places charging/paying more than that, but perhaps their local circumstances have higher expenses, or they value their time higher.

The outer casing on a typical Dyneema braid on braid rope is made from polyester. It's there very simply for the protection of the Dyneema core and better handling characteristics. There are a couple of options, you can get a new polyester cover to put over the Dyneema core, or remove the entire polyester cover throughout the rope. It really depends on how it has worn through and how you can finish it at the splice above the sally. Has it been catching on something?

In my experience, some of the ropes I've supplied that have been on over 10 years, with a lot of ringing on them are still absolutely fine.

The company I run is called Avon Ropes Ltd.