Ringing Forums

As Jonathan has ably detailed, when using the velcro type muffles, the second muffle is different to the first, being that it has loops and no velcro. This is a Big Wilf's Bell Muffle.

Hello Simon/James, yes, Big Wilf's Bell Muffles are still being made to the same tried and tested design as Wilf has perfected over the last 15 years. There will be a notice in the RW and an updated website in due course, but we are accepting orders.
http://bigwilfsbellmuffles.co.uk/

Hello Alison, being someone that has NPTC C&G Qualifications in Arboriculture, I can confirm that trees suffering from Ash dieback also have a discolored or brown/black stem. The timber goes a brown/black from the center of the stem and works its way out.
If trees are too badly infected with disease, it is not recommended to climb them to dismantle unsfate trees as they have no spring to them and will just drop limbs, the advice is to just fell them. The timber becomes very brittle and means you need to vary felling cuts to ensure it falls in the intended direction.
This will no doubt have an effect on the Ash market and what is available as a replacement for ringers going forwards.

There is no standard for the sally heights, however, I use a number of 66" (1.68m) from the floor (when the bell is up) to the bottom of the sally, and only rising to 69" (1.75m) for bells around the 20cwt mark, with 72" (~1.8m) for bells from about 40cwt upwards which generally have 3ft6 long sallies.
I have worked these heights out over quite a few years, looking at where people catch the sally when ringing and setting sally heights to accomodate the band. The average height of your ringers should be catching the sally in the middle of the sally when ringing (not when pulling off, where they might be lower down the sally) which allows the taller, and shorter of the band to also have the use of the sally when ringing.

With regards to garter hole positions I have a spreadsheet that I've worked out pulley heights and garter hole positions if you're having the effect of hard work or a short handstroke pull on your bell and also having sallies at significantly different heights when the bells are down if you'd like a copy (PM me). The first thing to check is the height of the pulley box below the wheel, an awful lot of bells, the pulleys are too far away from the wheel which makes the handstroke pull hard work and has the same effect with sally heights as though the gater hole is in the wrong position. Once you've checked your bell has an ~85-degree angle of rope sweep above the pulley box, the garter hole position can then be considered. (Greater than 90degree sweep has issues with handling too). The garter hole should be at 90 degrees from a line from the centre top of the pulley box to the centre of the bearing, and out. A garter hole that's 4" out gives a sally that's 8" different in height between up and down. My spreadsheet works it out from the top dead centre of the wheel around to where it should be.

A standard sally length is 3 feet and any shorter or longer are made at the request of the customer.
Bearing in mind that a new sally sat in a box and not used gets shorter and fatter, and could be an inch below the 3ft mark, plus over time and with use a 3ft sally ends up longer by about 3 to 4 inches.
Any sally that's not wound tight enough will be longer than the specified length, plus they tend to go hour glassed shape much quicker: A longer sally doesn't mean you've got better value.
Vice Versa is also true.

the pulley height has a bigger impact on it too. You need an arc of about 80 to 90 degrees that the rope moves between back stroke and hands stroke above the pulley box

This is the second time I have logged in here in 2 weeks, and I'm a little disappointed that not only my question hasn't had a reply, but also that there's been no other activity.

Is there going to be an app we can download?