Handling a Bell
Frequently Asked Questions
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This is our first post on this section about handling a bell. Today we will focus on some of the questions we asked when we started our ringing careers.
Remember if you have any questions that may not have been answered we will add them to this post once we have received the E-Mail.
Q: What are the dangers of not letting go when instructed to?
A: There are many! The main reason is the bell needs to be taken back under control by an experienced ringer to avoid injury. You may have also broken the stay which means you will go sailing up into the belfry with the bells!
Q: Why is it called the sally?
A: Well nobody actually knows! We will leave this one to your imagination.
Q: I seem to be struggling with the hand transfer. Do you have any tips?
A: Practise with a tail end that is from an old bell rope. Ask your teacher to worry about the backstroke and you can just catch the sally with the old tail end.
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Q: A learner started at the same time as me, why do they seem to be progressing a lot faster?
A: There are many reasons why some progress quicker than others. Some people are lucky and it comes to them naturally and others need more guidance. We generally find the best age to learn is when you are a teenager but we have new ringers of every age coming all the time to have a look!
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Q: I have a bad habit, how do I get out of it?
A: First of all you are most definitely not alone! Lots of ringers have some very bad habits, even the most experienced. The best way of getting out of bad habits is concentrating on doing it correctly. I used to have a very bad habit of walking forwards a few steps while I was ringing without noticing and to overcome this I concentrated on it most while I was in rounds and didn't have to think about ringing changes. Remember the key to getting out of bad habits is patience, it won't happen if you only try to rectify it once!
Please send us more questions, we would love to answer them!
The Backstroke
The Backstroke is the starting place for almost all ringers. This stroke makes up half of the ‘full pull’ when ringing, the other half, the handstroke, will be covered in the next article.
Most towers will start with the backstroke because of the physical and technical ease.
Effectively all the Backstroke or ‘tailstroke’ is, is pulling the tail end down. That is an oversimplification but it is a good idea to have this in mind when going forward. When starting the backstroke, there will be another ringer dealing with the sally, so you do not need to worry about that yet. To start with, hold the end of the rope and point your hands to the floor – much like holding a golf club, right hand in front of left, thumbs BOTH pointing at the ground, perpendicular to each other. The other ringer will pull the bell off the balance and you will feel the rope rise, let your arms go up in a straight line and then when your arms are at the full extent you should feel the bell at the balance. The next part is to pull straight down and flick your hands into the ‘golf club’ position which is the position you started in. Remember that this should be a gentle pull as you should be guiding the rope more than you should be pulling it. You should notice that the sally will come down and rise in front of you, your teacher will catch the sally so do not worry about it, just worry about keeping hold of the tail end.
There is a very beneficial exercise that you can do around bell rope. By holding your hands in a ring around the bell rope or pole you can move your hand up and down, trying not to touch the rope or pole on your way up or down – this will help practice the motion of ringing the backstroke and help to keep a straight rope. When you are ringing the backstroke, you can imagine a glass wall in front of the rope. This is to ensure that you do not swing your arms out in a large arc and cause a loss of control of the bell. Remember that you will not get it straight away and your teacher is always there to guide you, they may place their hands on yours or take control should anything go wrong. It is also important to note that if you are told to let go and stand back, you should do so immediately to avoid serious injury or damage to a bell.
We hope that this article has helped you to better understand the backstroke. At the end of lock down we plan to make videos explaining most of our articles on handling so please watch out for them as we feel a video teaches much better than an article can.
The Handstroke
So, you have mastered the backstroke, but that is not the end of it, you now have to learn the handstroke. In simple terms the handstroke is just the sally bit. Once you catch the sally and pull off again its back to the backstroke and that is it, handstroke done! But not quite, first things first, get yourself familiar with the sally. When a bell is down, hold the sally with your dominant hand on top of the other. Your hands should be around 5cm or so apart and should be at full reach, no bent arms. Next, swing the bell around for a couple of seconds just to get used to holding the sally and the feel of the bell. Your teacher will worry about the catching and backstroke, all you have to worry about now is the ‘pulling off’. Get your hands back into the position they were before on the sally, but this time on a bell that is up. When you are ready, pull gently to get the bell to the balance point where you can pull further or let it go back to the ‘stood’ position. Trust us, you will definitely be able to feel the balance point. Once you and your teacher are both comfortable pull the sally and let go just before it flies up to the ceiling – it should be a long, gentle pull. The golden rule for this exercise is pull down and let go. As you have previously done with the backstroke, you should ensure you are pulling straight.
Once you have mastered the ‘pull off’ you can then move onto catching the sally. Pull off in the same way you have done previously, and your teacher will worry again about the backstroke. When the rope comes back down the sally will bob in front of you and rise again, you should catch the sally just as it rises in front of you. Ask your teacher to demonstrate this first as you do the backstroke – it will help you. You should catch the sally with your hands in the same place as when you pulled off, and then a bit like the backstroke let your arms rise up so that the bell reaches the balance, this means that your arms should be at full stretch . You will be able to feel the balance point and that is when you pull down again to pull back down and let go.
We appreciate that this is a lot of information to take in and it can be very hard to understand when written down. Everything you have read here, will be in our upcoming learning videos series where we can better demonstrate what we have written, we are just waiting for COVID restrictions to ease off.
Putting them together
So far you have looked at each stoke individually and by this point you should have mastered or at least be very confident with both the backstroke (tail stroke) and the handstroke (sally stroke) and whilst separately they may seem simple enough, it becomes a little harder when putting the two strokes together to from the whole pull, both the hand and back strokes.
To start with, get into the position you would if you were to start the backstroke – hands on the rope pointing down much like a golf club. Then move your hands up and take hold of the sally as if you were doing the hand stroke, but this time with end of the tail end still in your hand and gripped in-between the thumb and index finger of you left hand (or right hand if you are lefthanded) you could find the tail end is in front of the sally, i.e., you can see it. If not then practice the motion of going from backstroke to hand stroke position until you can get the rope in front of the sally.
The next step it is to pull off the bell as you would from the handstroke, and when you let go quickly put your right hand above your left, to get ready for the backstroke. Then allow your hands to go up with the rope, exactly like the backstroke, pull down as you would normally except this time be ready to catch the sally exactly like you did for the handstroke except this time the tail end should still be in your left hand and in front of the sally.
We are aware of how confusing this sounds when written down, so we are going to make a video on it instead as we believe it to be the best way to explain how to put them together. We are just waiting for COVID restrictions to be eased and then we will be recording ASAP. Watch this space!