Some background on bells and clappers:

In modern changeringing bells, the clapper swings from a short horizontal rod (the clapper pin), which runs between the two arms of the u-shaped staple. (Which is attached to the bell with a staple bolt, which is the thing that broke the LAST time we had a problem with the #5.) On our bells, the clapper pin screws into one side of the staple, and is then further secured with a nut on the outside.
Everybody with me so far?
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So the first thing to note about The Time Wot The Clapper Fell Off The Bell is that I wasn’t actually there. I was at home with Peter, and only found out when sorcyress texted me that I was “missing an Exciting Day at bells today!”
The second thing to note is that it was still, pretty much, my fault.


Y’see, the #5 had been sounding a little off for a while now, in an off-and-on fashion; but because of that last, I didn’t think much of it. Bells do weird things sometimes. But then last week, we heard (or some of us heard) a sharp “Crack!” when somebody was ringing it.
“Stand!” yelled the conductor.
“All right, 4, 5, and 6 down please!” yelled me.
“Are you sure that’s necessary?”
“If we’ve broken something, I want to find out BEFORE it causes serious damage,” I replied. And if I’m going to inspect a bell, I don’t want to have to worry about joggling the one next to it with disastrous results.

So we got the bells down, and I and Sor. climbed up to have a look at it. We checked the stay and the slider,* because that’s what usually breaks; and we checked the axles, because that’s what went (nearly disastrously) wrong on one previous occasion; and we checked the wheel and the rope and the various bolts on the bell and the area around the trapdoor.

We forgot to take a close look at the clapper, partly because due to the peculiarities of our belfry, the clapper on the #5 is used to brace the trapdoor open when you go up there.

We couldn’t find anything wrong. I concluded that it was just one of those things, or perhaps that a slightly-larger-than-usual fragment of brick had fallen off the walls** and hit something loudly.

I did not consider the possibility that the noise we heard was the nut falling off the end of a mostly-unscrewed clapper pin.
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Again, I wasn’t there when the clapper fell out of the #5. I can sort of imagine: the out-of-time BONGG, the catastrophic-sounding banging and clattering; the bell rope being yanked up through the ceiling when the falling clapper hit the slider and bounced it out of its housing, whereupon the bell turned turtle. The conductor yelling “Stand!”, or possibly spouting profanity.

Before anyone else asks, No, there was pretty much no way that the clapper was gonna fall through the ceiling. The thing is probably forty pounds of metal, and it was moving at some speed; but the odds of it actually getting projected at the floor without hitting anything else (the bell itself, the bell frame, the slider, the girders that hold the whole business up) are close to zero. And unless it got launched like an arrow into the floor, it wasn’t even gonna make a dent in it. We need to walk on it, so it’s a sturdily-constructed floor; and that’s before you even get to the second ceiling and all the insulation between ‘em.

It IS fortunate that it didn’t do more damage, though. I’m kinda surprised it didn’t break the slider on its way down, and if it had actually flown and hit one of the OTHER bells … (shudder)
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This time, Ricki and sorcyress climbed up to have a look at the damage, and then Ricky and I had another look last night. From what we can gather, the pin had gradually worked itself out (and the nut that was supposed to stop all this fell off at some point). Then there was some period of time when the clapper-and-pin was hanging from the very edge of the staple, ‘cause the threads instead the hole in the staple actually got crushed together at one end.

And that, in fact, is my problem. We didn’t break the slider; the staple is otherwise fine, as far as we can tell; and the clapper pin appears to be undamaged…but it won’t screw into that side of the staple. Since the screw isn’t load-bearing, we can just excise the damaged threads and go on using the staple; but doing that is gonna be tricky.

Plan A is to find someone with something called a tap, which I guess is basically a drill-head thing that you use to bore (or re-bore) screw sockets. The problem with this plan is finding that someone. Charles Street Supply (who are a really great hardware store, and super-helpful when we brought this wtf chunk of metal in and said “Hey, can we re-bore this with a tap?”) do not have one NEARLY that large; neither (he thinks) does sovay’s crazy-engineer brother. Other possibilities include Sor’s place of work, Emerson College, and the local technical college. (And of course, even if one HAS one, we have to convince them to let us use it…)

Plan B is to just file the damaged portion of the threads off. We now have a file (again, thanks, Charles St. Supply!) The problem with this plan is that we can see several ways that this could go horribly wrong and ruin the whole part.

Plan C (if we ruin the staple with Plan B) is Buy A New One. The problem with this plan is 1. finding one that’s congruent with the current clapper, 2. Expense, 3. The fact that it may have to be shipped from frickin’ England, 4. What do we do with this now-useless hunk o’ metal?

As such, Plan T (for “Temporary”) is Just Stick The Old Clapper Back On, Like We Did Last Time, since unlike the other plans, I’m pretty sure I can actually get that one done on Wednesday. Then we make do with that one until one of Plans A, B or C bears fruit.
Well, or until the old one breaks, I guess.


*Again, that’s the wooden bits that allow you to Stand a bell pointed mouth-upwards)

** Yes, this is a thing that happens. Yes, it’s a little worrying. Yes, I need to take it up with the property committee, and/or with the vestry once we hire a new rector.***

*** Today was, in fact, Fr. Warren's last day as rector. We were going to dedicate one of the several quarter peals this afternoon in his honor, except they didn't happen, because the clapper fell out of the #5.