navasky Posted August 30, 2016 Share Posted August 30, 2016 I got to play with some singing bowls the other day and liked them so much that I decided to make my own. This one is copper but next time I'd like to try with bell brass or some kind of bronze (anyone know where to get get bell bronze sheet?) It ended up sounding a little different than the professionally made ones but it does indeed sing and is pretty fun to use. I'll try and get a video clip of it in action up soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BIGGUNDOCTOR Posted August 30, 2016 Share Posted August 30, 2016 There is a video on Youtube showing these being made, and they cast the material then shaped it on a homebuilt wood type lathe. McMaster Carr might have it, but it could be pricey. A good Google search should pull up a sheet supplier Good looking bowl.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foundryman Posted August 30, 2016 Share Posted August 30, 2016 I work in a bell foundry and bell metal (bronze), at least by our specification is around 80% copper, 20% tin and would be very difficult to forge I would imagine. We buy it in ingot form. It's a very brittle alloy compared to what most of the world would expect from bronze but the hardness means it resonates so much better than lower tin alloys. That bowl is beautiful, very nice work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BIGGUNDOCTOR Posted August 31, 2016 Share Posted August 31, 2016 Foundryman, what would be a good reference for bell making? I have a lot of copper, brass, and other alloys laying around,and I know a sculptor in Las Vegas who has done some big castings. I have always wanted to make a custom bell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted August 31, 2016 Share Posted August 31, 2016 Well Theophilus gave some pretty explicit instructions in Divers Arts---as long as you would be happy with a 12th century bell... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foundryman Posted August 31, 2016 Share Posted August 31, 2016 4 hours ago, BIGGUNDOCTOR said: Foundryman, what would be a good reference for bell making? I have a lot of copper, brass, and other alloys laying around,and I know a sculptor in Las Vegas who has done some big castings. I have always wanted to make a custom bell. I honestly couldn't say, It's not a particularly well documented subject as far as I'm aware but the core process really wouldn't have changed much from the 12th century. We semi-regularly have bells from the 14th century onwards come into the foundry for work, I believe we have some bells from the 1400s in at the moment with what we suspect are the original iron clappers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
navasky Posted August 31, 2016 Author Share Posted August 31, 2016 17 hours ago, BIGGUNDOCTOR said: There is a video on Youtube showing these being made, and they cast the material then shaped it on a homebuilt wood type lathe. I've seen that one but there are others of them forging the bowl from a thick round ingot. There's a lot of contradictory information out there but I believe the cast ones are brass and the forged ones are bell bronze and considered superior. This page has some info if you're interested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
navasky Posted August 31, 2016 Author Share Posted August 31, 2016 17 hours ago, Foundryman said: I work in a bell foundry and bell metal (bronze), at least by our specification is around 80% copper, 20% tin and would be very difficult to forge I would imagine. We buy it in ingot form. It's a very brittle alloy compared to what most of the world would expect from bronze but the hardness means it resonates so much better than lower tin alloys. Cool job! My understanding is that bell bronze can be hot forged and also cold forged to some extent but needs to be annealed frequently. Just out of curiosity do you have any experience with the acoustic properties of other metals? I know that cymbals are usually made from bell bronze but can also be brass and sometimes even nickel silver. I wonder what the differences in the sound are between the different metals and what physically is making them sound the way they do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foundryman Posted August 31, 2016 Share Posted August 31, 2016 5 hours ago, navasky said: Cool job! My understanding is that bell bronze can be hot forged and also cold forged to some extent but needs to be annealed frequently. Just out of curiosity do you have any experience with the acoustic properties of other metals? I know that cymbals are usually made from bell bronze but can also be brass and sometimes even nickel silver. I wonder what the differences in the sound are between the different metals and what physically is making them sound the way they do. That's not my particular area but I do know that the higher the tin % in the bronze the harder the alloy is (within reason, go too high and I believe it starts softening again). Higher tin bells tend to sound "brighter", not necessarily higher pitched but they sound more energetic, for want if a better word. Conversely, lower the tin content and the bells sound more mournful, the sort of sound you'd want for a large memorial bell for example. I've no experience with other metals however, though I believe harder metals resonate for longer when struck. I have no experience forging bell bronze but I would imagine you need to work it at a dull red, much hotter and the tin starts to sweat out due to its lower melting point and it'll already be molten by the time you hit orange. By the time you hit high orange/yellow colours it'll be snowing tin which will have evaporated from the bronze and condensed into snowflakes. I don't believe you can cold forge an 80/20 tin/copper bronze, it's just too brittle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
navasky Posted September 7, 2016 Author Share Posted September 7, 2016 Thanks for the info Foundryman, I appreciate it. It sounds like the harder the metal the more treble you end up with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted September 7, 2016 Share Posted September 7, 2016 I gather that some pre-Revolutionary Russian bells were cast with a little silver in the alloy, presumably for a sweeter tone. Don't know how true that is, or how many pre-Revolutionary bells survived the Stalinist suppression of the church in the thirties. The Zildjian Company has been making cymbals with their own secret alloy of copper, tin, and silver since 1618. I've met one of the family members who knows the formula, but she wasn't talking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foundryman Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 On 07/09/2016 at 7:40 PM, JHCC said: I gather that some pre-Revolutionary Russian bells were cast with a little silver in the alloy, presumably for a sweeter tone. Don't know how true that is, or how many pre-Revolutionary bells survived the Stalinist suppression of the church in the thirties. The Zildjian Company has been making cymbals with their own secret alloy of copper, tin, and silver since 1618. I've met one of the family members who knows the formula, but she wasn't talking. I know there's at least one Russian bell in the UK that was "liberated" during the Crimean war. A lot of foundries have experimented with adding different metals to bell metal, as well as altering the tin content. A couple of years ago we had an old Irish bell come back for scrap, when we tried breaking the bell up with a sledgehammer to go in the furnace it actually folded instead of breaking because the high quantity of lead in the metal! I'm not sure if silver would add anything to sound or not, but clearly that recipe has been working for them for 400 years so why change things now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted September 9, 2016 Share Posted September 9, 2016 Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco has a set of bells that were donated by Tsar Alexander III. http://holy-trinity.org/bells/index.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foundryman Posted September 10, 2016 Share Posted September 10, 2016 Very interesting, it's good to know others have survived also! It's funny where bells end up, I know bells from our foundry have made it to the USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Eritrea, Kenya... the list goes on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbettis Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 As a cymbalsmith, I also work with bell bronze (aka B20 in the cymbal world), 80% copper and 20% tin. Once the correct basic diameter of a cymbal blank is reached, cymbals are cold forged. No annealing once the shaping-forging begins. You can cold forge B20 for a long, long time before it gets too hard. In general, a cymbal blank is produced from a single ingot casting that is either hot forged, the traditional Chinese method, or hot rolled, the traditional Turkish method. FYI, I currently purchase raw blanks from two cymbal foundries, one in Canada, and one in Istanbul. I used to purchase blanks from a Chinese cymbal foundry as well. Mine are anywhere between 10 and 26 inches in diameter, and between 0.046 and 0.050 inches in thickness, all inclusive. As far as trace amounts of silver go, it is my understanding that copper almost always has at least trace amounts of silver. It's not that cymbal foundries add any silver. It's just too expensive to remove it entirely. Plus, having a musical instrument alloy with a trace of silver comes off as very cool in the marketing. But, like I said, this is only my understanding of the situation. Here's a pic of one of my finished cymbals. Texturing, in cymbals, is an important factor in both sound and also appearance. Later, Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Copper ores often contain silver but electrolytically processed copper will NOT contain silver save for traces so small that claiming them would probably count as false advertising, Your hammers might have more if they were made from reprocessed scrap steel! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbettis Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Trust me, when it comes to advertising cymbals, any trace counts. "False advertising" is a term that cymbal companies have heard of, but don't actually believe exists. :-) Later, Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 2 hours ago, mbettis said: Here's a pic of one of my finished cymbals. Texturing, in cymbals, is an important factor in both sound and also appearance. I took a look at your website, Matt, and if your cymbals sound as good as they look, they must be impressive indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbettis Posted January 25, 2017 Share Posted January 25, 2017 Thanks! I do try to make them sound as nice as possible. Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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