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Scale of thickness of bells
I have always used the interval between octave nominal and nominal as a measure of the relative weight and thickness of a bell, because of the octave nominal’s influence on strike pitch. Bells which...
View ArticleGillett and Johnston
Gillett and Johnston, formerly Gillett and Bland, were bellfounders in Croydon, Surrey from the late 19th century to the early 1950s. For the first half of the 20th century they were one of the...
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Anomalies in the tuning of Gillett & Johnston bells
Introduction This page has been updated to include the 25 old trebles at Bournville. These were replaced in 2015 but have been preserved in the school. This is one of a pair of papers about the...
View ArticleWeights, sizes and frequencies
Finding ways to relate the weight, size (generally mouth diameter) and nominal frequency of bells is useful, because it allows values to be estimated what data is not available. Some work on this was...
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Partial groups in the bell sound
This paper is one of the two key papers investigating the modes of vibration of bells, the other being Perrin, Charnley and DePont’s paper Normal Modes of the Modern English Church Bell. As this paper...
View ArticleEwald Riepe, Naylor-Vickers and Bochumer Verein
Steel bells cast by Naylor-Vickers in Sheffield in the 19th century commonly include “E Riepe’s Patent Cast Steel” as part of the inscription. Ewald Riepe was a German chemist, living in the UK. He...
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Two van Aerschodt carillons
This paper has been updated with review comments, photographs and suggestions from Paul-Félix Vernimmen, and comments from Michael Loris, and further updated following discovery of the foundry book...
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Cyril Johnston’s tuning forks
In the period that Gillett & Johnston were active, between the late 1800s and the early 1950s, bells were tuned using tuning forks to check their partial frequencies. All three bellfounders in the...
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A history of Gillett and Johnston in bell sounds
This article follows a similar pattern to the corresponding article on Taylors. That article gives the technical background, which is only summarised here. The assumption on which the investigation...
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Simpson, Van Aerschodt, Lower Beeding and Kilburn
The nine original bells at Lower Beeding, Sussex were a chime cast by Séverin Van Aerschodt in 1885. Five bells were retuned and four recast by Gillett & Johnston in 1926. Canon Simpson in his...
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Manipulating bell sounds
This page explains the mathematical techniques and software algorithms I use to manipulate bell sounds for various purposes. It is likely to be of interest to anyone writing software for similar...
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