Hello from Sydney

[ringer]

Hi Everyone,

Just thought I'd introduce myself. I've been coming on here for a month or so but only just joined. It's so fantastic to see such a passionate and active community!

I live in Sydney, Australia and started Cheesemaking last November and I love it!! I've only done soft cheeses and Camembert so far but I would love to get into making Cheddar and other hard cheeses.

My other quirky hobby is that I ring Church Bells (in the English Style) - hence my username.

So, Hi!

Lexi

[DeejayDebi]

Welcome Lexi. A church bell ringer how cool! You don' see that as a hobbie often. How many bells do you have?

[Cheese Head]

Hi Lexi/ringer, welcome, two great hobbies!

Last summer my family and I had a Europe holiday and went up lots of little windy stairs in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, I was very surprised to see even at that great height the bell tower was made of big beams of wood with a rock facade, they said it was because just rock wouldn't take the vibration. Really big bells .

[FarmerJd]

Welcome to the forum! This is a great place to learn.

[Gürkan Yeniçeri]

Welcome to the forum Lexi.

[ringer]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the welcome messages!!

I have 13 bells in my tower but one is a semitone so we can ring a lighter set of 8 bells in a major scale. (you only would ring up to 12 at once)

Thanks for the photos John, looks great. The ringing at Notre Dame is quite different to the ringing I do. The bells are hung down (ie with the mouth of the bell down), where as the ringing I do is mouth up so the bell swings in 360degree circles. Bit bizarre that it's only a stone facade; our bells are mounted in a cast iron frame (or wood if it's an older installation) into the stone of the tower. As you can imagine, there's a huge amount of force as a bell swings 2x its weight at the sides and 4x its weight at its downward point of the swing. The biggest bell in my tower is 29cwt (about 1.5 tonnes). So you've got all that metal swinging plus the other 11 bells! 

I'll try to add a photo of bells up as I work out how to put a picture in. 

[MarkShelton]

I love heavy metal...