Tuning shed, back apron — Tuesday, 8:40Five Bells Off the Morning Pour and One of Them Is Light
Right. Gloves off, hands clean, come here.
Lathe's still spinning down behind you, don't lean on it. Five bells out of last night's pour, stood mouth-up on the felt, shoulders still warm enough you'll feel it if you put a palm on one. Turned true, skirts trued, the lot of them look like brothers. One of them is light.
Core shifted in the mould — happens when the chaplets go soft and the sand takes a bit of a walk overnight. Wall comes out thin on one side, bell comes out short of metal, and a bell short of metal sits flat when you strike it. Not by much. Enough that a choirmaster in Adelaide writes us a letter about it in nine weeks, and I'd rather not be read that letter out loud in front of the lads, thank you.
You can't see it. I certainly can't and I've been at this beam eleven years. Once the outside's been turned true they're all the same shape to the eye, and the thin one is thin on the inside. So we weigh. Three goes on the beam, that's all you get, because the crate closes before dinner and Wilf's already painted the stencil.
The beam
On the felt — drag them onto a pan
Tap a bell then tap a pan, or drag it. Both work. Even numbers on each side or the beam tells you nothing you didn't know.
Load it and press WEIGH. Go ON.
Duds pulled before crating: 0
Caught in — weighings — best
Chalked on the inside of the shed door, under the calendar. Wilf keeps a rival column but his handwriting is a disgrace.
Why we do it this way
Two on two, then think
The lads — and I do mean Wilf, Wilf specifically — will put No. 1 on the left and No. 2 on the right and look pleased with themselves. That's one bell of information for one whole go on the beam, and there are five bells and three goes. Do the arithmetic on that and tell me how it ends.
Put two against two. If the beam tips, your light one is on the high side and you've got it down to two bells in one go, and the second go splits those two and you're done in two. If it sits dead level, all four are honest and the light one's the odd bell you left on the felt — done in one, and I'll want to hear about it.
That's the whole trick. Three goes is generous. Three goes is me being kind.
Why not just strike it?
Because a bell fresh off the lathe hasn't been tuned yet, that's why. They all sit rough and a bit sour on the strike note until they've been under the cutter, so an ear can't separate "wants tuning" from "hasn't got the metal in it." Half a semitone of thin-wall flat hides inside half a semitone of untuned anyway.
The beam doesn't care what note anything is. The beam only knows there's forty grams of bronze missing out of one of these, and forty grams is forty grams whether you've got an ear or a head cold.
After they're tuned? Then yes, I'll hear it across the yard. But by then it's had two hours on the lathe and I'd have wasted the two hours.
Straight back in the melt
No, you can't save it. Don't ask, Wilf asked. A thin wall isn't something you build back up — there's nothing to cut and nothing to add, and if you tune a thin bell down to pitch by taking more metal out you've made a paper bag that goes dink.
So it goes over the wall into the scrap bin, gets broken up Thursday, and it's back in the furnace by the following pour as perfectly good gunmetal. Nothing's lost but the night. Nobody sulks about it. We pour again on Friday.
The crate
Eight-hundredweight of straw and a stencil already painted: ST BRIDGID'S, ADELAIDE, VIA TILBURY. Lorry Thursday, ship the twelfth, and it's a fourteen-week sail, so anything that goes in this box wrong stays wrong for the better part of a year.
Which is the only reason I'm standing over you being a horror about it. Get the light one out, we nail the lid down, and I'm home for dinner at half five with my feet up. Go on then.
Show me the scales
Fine. But you've had a look now, so this batch doesn't go on the door.