Ringing Forums

In recent years we have tended to offer a 'silent' practice during Holy Week using the simulator, which evades the problem as far as I am concerned. This year there's a compline service that evening so we won't practice.

A young ringer at a neighbouring tower learned to ring plain hunt doubles without apparently knowing the bell order or what place he was in. He was about 11 at the time, musically gifted with almost perfect pitch but assessed as not on the spectrum. It took a while for the penny to drop but we realised that he simply learned the tune and rang it. Later I was in contact with someone on FB who could ring plain courses of some doubles methods by the tune, and could tell instantly if, for example, it was Grandsire that was being rung just by the sound. That doesn't really answer your question but your learner certainly isn't unique. On a more mundane level I discovered that I could ring plain hunt minor on the Ellacombe if I learned the tune and used the chimes as a musical instrument.

I have always assessed the sally heights with the bell up as with different wheel sizes the position of the sally can be different depending on whether the bell is up or down. I just note 'Treble up 2", 4th down 1"' etc. and then make the adjustment with the bell down [of course]. It is a bit of a one-size-fits-all exercise sometimes as we have ringers ranging in height from 5' 1" to 6' 5" and the shortest and tallest people do have to adapt accordingly. I try to set the tail length as short as I can get away with so as to minimise knotting the rope, but we have two ringers who will always put in a knot because of their height. The shorter ringers tend to use boxes so that solves the problem of the sally being a little high.

I just made a unilateral decision to set the sallies so that the bottom of the sally is about level with my nose. I am 5'11". That seems to suit the shorter ringers, one or two of whom use a box anyway. We have one ringer who is well over 6' and he could do with the sallies being a good 6" higher but he tells me he is so used to being 'too tall' that it no longer worries him.

I don't know what wood our wheels are made of. It is very hard and I don't think it looks like oak. The wheels are 90 years old, don't look as though they have ever been treated with anything, at least in recent decades, and show no sign of insect attack. We have replaced a slider that had woodworm and the floorboards have patches of woodworm attack. Could they be elm?

I think you have covered the obvious categories and I would be inclined to wait until you get some more traffic before adding more. If the categories overlap you may have the tendency for people to post the same thing in more than one place.
I hope you manage to get enough activity to make it worthwhile. I only use Facebook because of the bell ringing pages and would love to be able to ditch it completely as I don't think it's an organisation that we should be supporting.