Day two saw us transporting a 35″ diameter Meneely bell to a local engineering works that had a vertical borer to see if we could retune it to match the pitch of a Stuckstede bell from the same church. The bell was quickly turned over with the aid of a fork lift – a technique familiar from Hayward Mills operations – and placed mouth up on the bed of a suitable borer. We experimented with a number ways of securing before settling on clamping the argent of the bell which was set into a steel tapered sleeve as part of its rehanging and bolting the bell down to the bed. This allowed the bell to be machined. Only a couple of cuts were needed to lower the nominal by the required 50 cent to bring it into line with the other bell.

Having returned to base with the freshly tuned bell, we completed the tuning of the 16″ bell.