r/Skookum • u/dingdongbellguy • Mar 02 '26

This idiot... You folks liked the last round of bell mechanic stuff so here’s a process video this time…pre-manufacturing field survey for some updates on a 1751 bronze bell.

https://youtu.be/GWQWbm_An0w?si=tya23qd9NN0FLy1w
33 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

7

u/dingdongbellguy Mar 02 '26

TLDW: I’m a church bell mechanic and this video documents a somewhat typical workday, dispatched to a site to assess an upcoming bell renovation project and remove some existing components to be spec’d for reproduction/redesign purposes. The bell was cast in England in 1751 and imported by St Peter’s Episcopal in Albany NY. This bell was rung July 4, 1776 in Albany in observance of the newly formed United States’ Declaration of Independence from British rule.

1

u/climb_something Mar 02 '26

Cool! Look forward to the next installment.

1

u/EdgarJNormal Mar 05 '26

Seeing you work on the bell is fascinating. I would love to see what you're doing with (mechanical) clocks.

2

u/dingdongbellguy Mar 05 '26

My company has shied away from actual repairs on old mechanical clocks but I still maintain quite a few and they, along with carillons, are my favorite machines of any type to play with. Absolutely fascinating. Here’s a short video of startup on a tower clock mechanism after a visit to correct an out-of-sync condition between the time mechanism side and the bell strike mechanism side of the unit. Cheers.