NEW YEAR'S EVE

The plan was to get the bell into the back of the car by sundown and ring it from there. Well, that hasn't happened yet. However, we got the bell out from the back of the house where it was covered in lint from the dryer. It weighs nearly 100 lbs. so I couldn't lift it. Norman lugged it around all day and said it got heavier as the day wore on.

We needed to remove the part of the bell that was used to swing it because it was too big for my car. There's not room in the back of the car to swing the bell anyway. The problem with removing anything from the bell was that everything was rusted together for the last 100 years. Nothing was coming apart so fast.

Once the bell was cleaned and ready to put into the car, we needed to make some kind of stand in order to support the bell so that it can vibrate freely. There is room in the back of my car, but it's a hatchback and the window slants down. The height of the bell stand is limited by the glass. So it turns out that there will be 8 inches of clearance between the bottom of the bell and the floor of the car. Enough to get my hand in there and swing that clanger.

Norman thought it would be nice to make the stand out of wood. So that's where it stands. On the drawing table. We managed to get the bell up onto cinder blocks in order to ring it at 4:59PM. It's pretty loud and not such a pleasant sound. But it carries. Right now it's kind of clunky to ring because the yoke is loose and the bell is all wobbly. We'll see what happens tomorrow.