Awsome video! Having the animation exactly in sync with the video of the ringer makes it so clear what is going on up in the belfry, including the motion of the clapper and why the strike occurs when it does. Good idea and well done! Thanks for posting.
Thank you so much for this video. I've been watching many videos on bell ringing and find them very interesting. But whether watching the ringing bells or bellringers, I could not understand why the ropes were 'bouncing'. Your animation side by side with the bellringer explains it better than any words might have. TY!
I’ve only been ringing a short time but also enjoy understanding the mechanics of the bell tower and I’ve been up in our churches many times. I would agree that the clapper does not behave the way shown in the video. The clapper moves faster than the bell and strikes the side opposite to it’s rest position when the bell is approximately horizontal as it swings up. The clapper rebounds very very slightly which allows the bell to ring (speak) the clapper then follows the bell and comes to rest gently against the bell. If the video was correct the bell would never speak properly as the clapper would muffle the sound. If the bell did actually speak at the very end of the sally and tail stroke the timing would be so much easier but as we ringers know, it isn’t. The bell speaks before you have completed the tail end stroke and after the sally has passed your face on the way up on the sally stroke.
The mechanism of the clapper is that once the bell passes through bottom dead centre both the clapper and bell start to slow down, and at some point the bell slows down more than the clapper. In the video the motion of the bell is accurate, but the motion of the clapper is simulated and there are various tuning parameters, such as the mass and length of the clapper, and the position of the clapper axis relative to the bell axis. I haven't attempted to tune these accurately, beyond getting the basic motion approximately correct. I agree that the actual moment that the clapper strikes the bell would be a bit earlier in a real bell. I plan to redo this video at some point and I'll pay attention to that (unfortunately I can't simply update the existing video as I lost the data in a hard drive failure some years ago). The angle of the bell at the point the clapper strikes it varies from bell to bell, but it is certainly much higher than horizontal. The "rule of thumb" is indeed that it strikes roughly as your hands pass your face at each stroke, which is roughly 45 degrees from the top. I have a precise measurement of this angle somewhere, I'll update this comment if I can locate it!
Dear Brisbane Ringers. I am preparing a presentation designed to help recruit ringers to my home tower in Brewood, Staffs, UK. I would like to include a short clip from this excellent video. Is that OK with you ? Regards. Steve Askew
I’ve just started bell ringing (only one lesson) and I found that the amplitude of my hand positions, from highest to lowest, was much less than your video (and a lot of other videos) show. I seemed to be raising my hands only to my forehead on the upstroke (both handstroke and backstroke) and to roughly my belt on the downstroke (both on handstroke and backstroke). I’m guessing that the amplitude must vary with the diameter of the wheel, and where the rope is attached to the wheel. I certainly wasn’t stretching anywhere as high as the person in your video is doing. Any help would be appreciated.
The bell I was ringing here was fairly light. Generally you want as much distance as possible, and if you look at videos of very good ringing you will often see people are using maximum distance possible, even on light bells. Sometimes you will see very good ringers not stretching very far because they are lazy and good enough at it that they don't need to! Eg look at the treble ringer at York in ua-cam.com/video/fvXyJmdOh-U/v-deo.html - much better style than some of the people around the middle.
Awsome video! Having the animation exactly in sync with the video of the ringer makes it so clear what is going on up in the belfry, including the motion of the clapper and why the strike occurs when it does. Good idea and well done! Thanks for posting.
Thank you so much for this video. I've been watching many videos on bell ringing and find them very interesting. But whether watching the ringing bells or bellringers, I could not understand why the ropes were 'bouncing'. Your animation side by side with the bellringer explains it better than any words might have. TY!
I’ve only been ringing a short time but also enjoy understanding the mechanics of the bell tower and I’ve been up in our churches many times. I would agree that the clapper does not behave the way shown in the video. The clapper moves faster than the bell and strikes the side opposite to it’s rest position when the bell is approximately horizontal as it swings up. The clapper rebounds very very slightly which allows the bell to ring (speak) the clapper then follows the bell and comes to rest gently against the bell. If the video was correct the bell would never speak properly as the clapper would muffle the sound. If the bell did actually speak at the very end of the sally and tail stroke the timing would be so much easier but as we ringers know, it isn’t. The bell speaks before you have completed the tail end stroke and after the sally has passed your face on the way up on the sally stroke.
The mechanism of the clapper is that once the bell passes through bottom dead centre both the clapper and bell start to slow down, and at some point the bell slows down more than the clapper. In the video the motion of the bell is accurate, but the motion of the clapper is simulated and there are various tuning parameters, such as the mass and length of the clapper, and the position of the clapper axis relative to the bell axis. I haven't attempted to tune these accurately, beyond getting the basic motion approximately correct. I agree that the actual moment that the clapper strikes the bell would be a bit earlier in a real bell. I plan to redo this video at some point and I'll pay attention to that (unfortunately I can't simply update the existing video as I lost the data in a hard drive failure some years ago). The angle of the bell at the point the clapper strikes it varies from bell to bell, but it is certainly much higher than horizontal. The "rule of thumb" is indeed that it strikes roughly as your hands pass your face at each stroke, which is roughly 45 degrees from the top. I have a precise measurement of this angle somewhere, I'll update this comment if I can locate it!
Just a thought...it would be interesting to create a similar video with a bell that is odd-struck, so we can see how and why that happens as well.
Dear Brisbane Ringers. I am preparing a presentation designed to help recruit ringers to my home tower in Brewood, Staffs, UK. I would like to include a short clip from this excellent video. Is that OK with you ? Regards. Steve Askew
wow
I’ve just started bell ringing (only one lesson) and I found that the amplitude of my hand positions, from highest to lowest, was much less than your video (and a lot of other videos) show. I seemed to be raising my hands only to my forehead on the upstroke (both handstroke and backstroke) and to roughly my belt on the downstroke (both on handstroke and backstroke). I’m guessing that the amplitude must vary with the diameter of the wheel, and where the rope is attached to the wheel. I certainly wasn’t stretching anywhere as high as the person in your video is doing. Any help would be appreciated.
The bell I was ringing here was fairly light. Generally you want as much distance as possible, and if you look at videos of very good ringing you will often see people are using maximum distance possible, even on light bells. Sometimes you will see very good ringers not stretching very far because they are lazy and good enough at it that they don't need to! Eg look at the treble ringer at York in ua-cam.com/video/fvXyJmdOh-U/v-deo.html - much better style than some of the people around the middle.
Do you have animation videos of raising and lowering a bell ?
No I don't. It would be good to make one someday.