I was at my practice night once and I didn't know that the stay was cracked and i had bumped it a few times and when i set the bell after we had finished, i started tieing the tail end up and the stay gave way and when up all the way to the belfry from the ground floor of the church. i am okay now but it is so danm frightening!!!!
my fav church is near my home town its a classic church style has 5 bells, 1 6 foot 4 other 2,3 foot i like to ring these bells but also am scared that the stay would break i had a nightmare about it once thankfully it was a bad dream.😌
@@1260stedders no; it comes out of the tower’s fund for maintenance and is usually accepted as a result of training. The rule of thumb is that the breaking of the stay is the fault of the trainer rather than the trainee, but it doesn’t stop the massively guilty feelings! 2 years on I still have it in the back of my mind!
what's with the fancy bent stays? do they set light at hand and deep at back or are your sliders out of line with the bells? a square stick does the job on most bells I've seen.
York Minster has "Hastings" stays- wood with a metal tip. Neverhad this happen to me thank god, but i did have a clock hammer slip and fall into the spokes.... the old clacker valve twitched then I can tell you!
and this is why you have to use maas rowe digital chime unit or verdin digital chime unit to avoid damaging the wood of stay or damaging the rope at all costs.
I did this at Drumbo Church once, on the 4 cwt treble... I had rung the tenor before that, so I think I pulled too hard, and the sally came down too fast for me to react to... Plus, the stay had already been cracked by a certain ringer from Belfast - w -
Now, as a curious outsider to this seemingly wonderful and fascinating hobby, would it be the case that the stay breaking was a complete set up just for the film? Looks to me like it was made of grainy pine. Perhaps the original one was unbolted and switched with this softwood specimen, on which the camera shot was deliberately focused. Being filmed in the presence of actual ringers, I doubt any deliberate damage to the original parts occurred.
Hi Chris, we used a regular stay made out of ash, but drilled holes in it so that it would be easier to break. The holes were then filled with sawdust for additional effect.
At St Peters in Adelaide the tenor has its original spare stay from 1947 lying around, but its still using the stay that was used when it was first rung 75 years ago.
Not likely, the bell will continue to swing until it stops itself hanging downward. It will remain fixed to the wheel and headstock. Should the frame which holds the bell in place become unstable and cause the bell to fall, it will likely be a wider issue resulting in the entire collapse of the tower or all the bells to fall together. I would personally say the chance of a bell falling is almost zero. In fact, I have not yet heard of an account of this happening.
I read an article about a tenor bell falling down a tower in Kilmersden, Somerset. The ringers were actually in the ringing room ringing the bells at the time. They thought the tenor wasn't handling as well as it usually did, before it came away from the frame and crashed down two floors. The ringers fortunately got away as it fell.
The metal part is a 'trigger' which is part of a system called a hasting stay. I won't attempt to explain here how it works but it eliminates the need for the slider in the bottom of the bell frame.
due to the rope flying around the wheel I think the stay actually did break. Because of that the bell did an additional rotation and the clapper flipped to the opposite side, similar to what happens on Spanish bells.
Bell saved, the stay has broken saving damage to the headstock and bearings. The stay is cheap to replace and the rope is not necessarily ruined either. Three weeks ago, a stay broke at our practice and the rope and bell we perfectly fine. In fact, our most experienced ringers rang it up and held it on the balance so it could still be rang for the evening before the stay was finally replaced.
@Nautical_Parsnip2003 if you dont let go of the rope when the stay breaks, you will get taken into the ceiling and you might be severely injured or even killed. So it is best to let go of the rope when the slider or the stay breaks.
This just happened to me, i shot up then fell from the ceiling onto my coxis..........sooooooooooooo painful loool i started learning last week, bad times.
i don’t believe you are legitimate because, you wouldn’t fly up to the ceiling and come back down again the rope will continue up you would fall and be badly injured.
Well you would, if you didn’t let go of the rope. Usually when the bell is up and over at handstroke the sally would be the same height as when the bell is stood at backstroke. But when the bell swings past that point when the stay breaks, the rope goes higher than that until it rings itself down.
Think of the stay as the fuse in a plug. It's a safety mechanism. I've only ever had one ringer I was teaching (I hadn't taught them from the start, I should add, I was running an open practice which they attended) break a stay. I gave it to them as a trophy. Most stay breaks happen as a result of either a lack of explanation of the mechanics of ringing, or someone being rushed through handling and over-pulling.
nonsense, sir! what good would machines do? Machines cannot ring bells in the English style and they have always traditionally been handrung. You'll see quickly that Britain is a country that likes to hang onto its traditions
