380 Mr. E. Beckett Denison, [March 6, 



weight of the tenor by 2 J cwt;, no doubt judging of its weight 

 according to what a bell of the same size and thickness would be 

 when made of such metal as their new peal was. 



This bell is also so elastic, that I can make the clapper of 

 13 cwt. strike both ways, pulling it alone, and therefore of course 

 to one side only ; which I never found the case with any other bell. 



You will probably wish to hear something of the actual casting 

 of the bell, which is by no means an easy operation, if we may 

 judge from the much greater rarity of good large bells than of 

 small ones. There was no bell in England above 3 tons weight, 

 except perhaps the tenor of the peal at Exeter, equal to many that 

 exist of half that weight. Sir Christopher Wren condemned and 

 rejected the great bell of St. Paul's, for which the present was sub- 

 stituted in 1716 ; and that rejected bell was made by a founder 

 whose bells, cast the same year as his St. Paul's bell, are still at 

 St. Alban*s, and are very good ones. The present St. Paul's bell 

 is itself inferior to that of Bow and the old York Minster bells ; and 

 both the Lincoln and York Minster bells are feeble and unsatis- 

 factory, though the same foundry, until the last 30 or 40 years, 

 turned out many very good bells of smaller but yet considerable 

 weight. The metal was twice melted, as it is for making specu- 

 lums. It was first run into ingots of bell-metal in a common 

 furnace, and then those ingots were melted and run into the mould 

 from a reverberatory furnace, in which the fuel does not touch the 

 metal, but the flame is carried over and reflected down upon it 

 from the top, or dome over the melting hearth. The ingots were 

 only in this furnace 2^ hours before the metal was ready for run- 

 ning, as the alloy of copper and tin melts, as usual with alloys, at a 

 much lower heat than the most obstinate of the two metals requires 

 alone ; and the whole 16 tons were run into the mould in five 

 minutes. I understand that quick casting is essential to the secur- 

 ing of sound casting. 



Messrs. Warner make their moulds in a different way from 

 usual. First of all a hollow core is built up of bricks, and straw, 

 and clay, and made to fit the inside of the bell by being swept over 

 with a wooden pattern or siveep, turning on a vertical axis through 

 the middle of the co^e. For bells of moderate size, they keep a 

 number of different sized cores of cast iron, instead of building 

 them up of bricks ; and the iron cores are covered with the loam 

 as before. They are easily lifted into a furnace to be dried and 

 heated, whereas the brick ones must have the fire lighted within 

 them. But the great difference is in the outside mould, or cope. 

 Generally a clay bell is made on the top of the core, the outside 

 being turned by another sweep turning on the same vertical axis ; 

 and when this is dry, a third fabric of clay and straw is laid on the 

 outside of the clay bell, and this is called the cope. When it is 

 dry it is lifted off, and the clay bell broken away ; the cope is then 

 put on again, and the metal poured in where the clay bell was. 



