NAGEL

NAGEL & CIE. Klokgieterij · Zutphen · MCMXI

Klokgieterij Nagel & Cie., one bell a year since 1911

HER MINE

Bourdon №114 · cast MMXXVI

strike
A♭2
nominal
207.65 Hz
mass
4 180 kg
Ø lip
1 842 mm
alloy
Cu 78.2 / Sn 21.6

Cast sharp on purpose, then cut down to pitch on a vertical lathe until five partials agree. Two hundred and thirty-two kilograms of bronze come off and never go back on.

Scroll is the tool. Everything below is removal.

01 Commission

A bell is one note that has to hold four hundred years.

Marnehuizen has had a tower since 1487 and a bell in it since 1502. The bell that hung there until 1943 was taken for its metal and never came back.

What went up in its place in 1951 was steel: cheap, bright, and dead inside a second of the hammer. The parish council voted on 14 March 2024 to put bronze back in the tower. They asked for one thing. That it carry to the harbour, four kilometres out, against a westerly.

We took the commission in the autumn of 2024 and gave it a number. We cast one bourdon a year and we have done since 1911, which is a limit and not a boast: the pit is one pit, and it is full for eleven days at a time.

02 Mould

The shape is not drawn. It is swept.

The profile lives in a single steel board. It pivots on a spindle set into the pit floor and it sweeps the loam into shape one revolution at a time. Core first, in brick and clay. Then a false bell, in loam thickened with tallow, at exactly the thickness of the bell that is coming. Then the cope, built over the false bell in six coats with a charcoal fire between each one.

The false bell is melted out. What is left in the pit is a cavity that is precisely the bell that is not there yet. There is no drawing to check it against. The board is the drawing, and it has been trued once, in 1962, after a fire.

  • loamriver clay, horse dung, cow hair
  • core1 240 firebrick
  • coats6, 14 h drying each
  • boardsteel, trued 1962
  • pit depth3 100 mm
  • inscriptionwax letters, 38 mm, laid by hand

03 Pour & cooling

Eleven days in the dark

day 00 1148°C

day 00 · 1148 °C

Eleven minutes to fill. Four thousand four hundred and twelve kilograms of bronze through one gate the width of a wrist.

day 01 · 812 °C

Solid. Still bright enough to read the gauge by, and still moving. Bronze shrinks about one part in seventy on the way down.

day 03 · 431 °C

The pit stays hooded. Bronze cooled in a draught splits at the shoulder, and a split at the shoulder is a year gone.

day 06 · 168 °C

Hood off. The loam has gone grey and begins to shed in sheets. Underneath it the metal is the colour of a wet road.

day 09 · 54 °C

First contact, bare hand, back of the fingers. Nobody strikes it. A warm bell tells you nothing you can use.

day 11 · 21 °C

Broken out. Rough, heavy, and sharp everywhere, every partial above where it belongs, exactly as intended.

4 412 kg as cast · target 4 180 kg

04 The tuning pass

Sharp by design.
A bell only tunes down.

The tool enters at the crown and travels to the lip. Where it sits decides which partial moves. Nothing you take off goes back on.

  1. hum A♭1 52.86Hz +31¢
  2. quint E♭3 157.90Hz +26¢
  3. tierce C♭3 125.63Hz +30¢
  4. prime A♭2 104.93Hz +18¢
  5. nominal A♭3 210.42Hz +23¢
tool
crown
depth
0.00mm
removed
0kg
pass
04/ 04

Scroll drives the tool. It does not come back up.

05 Partials

Five tones, one bell.

A bell does not make a note. It makes five, and the note you think you hear, the strike note, is not among them. It is a ghost your ear builds from the spacing of the upper three. Get the spacing wrong and there is no repair, only a smaller bell.

Partial frequencies before and after the tuning pass
PartialIntervalNoteTargetAs castΔCut
Humprime −8ᵛᵉA♭151.9152.86+31 ¢0 ¢
PrimeunisonA♭2103.83104.93+18 ¢0 ¢
Tierceminor 3ʳᵈC♭3123.47125.63+30 ¢0 ¢
Quintperfect 5ᵗʰE♭3155.56157.90+26 ¢−1 ¢
Nominalprime +8ᵛᵉA♭3207.65210.42+23 ¢0 ¢

Assay · ladle sample, day 00

  • Cu78.2 %
  • Sn21.6 %

trace · Pb 0.11 · Zn 0.06 · Fe 0.03 %

Twenty-two parts tin is the old number and it is still the right one. Below twenty the bell goes dull. Above twenty-three it rings well once and then cracks.

Dimensions · after tuning

Ø at lip
1 842.0 mm
Ø at shoulder
· 612.5 mm
height, crown to lip
1 506.4 mm
soundbow thickness
· 132.4 mm
waist thickness
· ·70.1 mm
mass, as cast
4 412 kg
mass, tuned
4 180 kg
removed
· 232 kg

Decay · struck at 1.0 m, free-hanging, 21 °C

  • hum41.2 s
  • prime27.0 s
  • tierce18.1 s
  • quint11.4 s
  • nominal· 6.2 s

The last thing you hear is the lowest thing in the bell. Forty seconds after the clapper, the hum is still there and everything that made it recognisable has gone.

06 Strike

Five oscillators at the five measured frequencies, each with its own decay. This is what comes out of the pit: untuned, +31 ¢ at the hum.

↑ Run the tuning pass and strike it again. The sourness is not a bug in the sound, it is the reason for the lathe.

Vocem meam audit qui me non videt

Cast in relief around the shoulder · 39 characters · 6 word spaces · 38 mm · laid in wax by hand, one letter at a time, the week before the pour

08 Hanging

It goes up on 14 November 2026.

transport
Zutphen → Marnehuizen, 214 km, low-loader, night run
lift
90 t telescopic, 46 m boom, from the north side
headstock
seasoned oak, 1 pc., 340 kg
clapper
wrought iron, 148 kg, ball Ø 196 mm
swing
±41° · 26.4 strokes / min
first ring
15 November 2026, 11:00, one hour

№115 is open.

One bourdon a year, taken in the autumn, poured the following June. If you are asking on behalf of a tower, tell us the height, the wall, and how far you need it to carry. We will tell you the note before we tell you the price.