NEWS

Local companies fix old church bells

Jeff Barron
Reporter

LANCASTER - St. James, St. Francis and Immaculate Conception are a long way from their Portland, Oregon, home.

They are the names of the three bells local company Chime Master is repairing for St. Mary's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The bells are not light, with one weighing in at almost 3,000 pounds.

"We have these three nice bronze bells that were cast in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1885," Chime Master sales manager Jeff Crook said. "Recently, they discovered they had some problems with the equipment that held the bells. So we made the suggestion, rather than trying to make repairs in the tower that would not had much longevity, we suggested they pull the bells out and ship them back to us."

He said a yoke in one bell became loose and the bell started to wobble. Crook said it is best to replace the yokes in all three bells.

Church pastor Msgr. Patrick Brennan said it has been at least 25 or 30 years since the bells last rang out. He said parishioners started asking him about the bells when he arrived at the parish five years ago.

While the bells date to 1885, they they have been in the current St. Mary's since 1926 after moving from the original church building.

Workers at Hubbard Enterprises on Quarry Road will cut the cone-top portion of the bells off and drill holes into the bells through a large machine to install better hardware for hanging in the bell tower.

"These cone tops, when they put them together at the foundry 100 and some years ago, usually they're OK for a little while," Crook said. "But over time they start to get loose and they'll start to wobble in the yoke. Because there's only one bolt connection it starts to put stress on that bolt. Once they get loose and they stress the bolt, we normally change the bolt out. Because you can't tell how much damage has been done by having it in there with thousands of pounds flexing it over an indeterminate amount of time. You don't know how long it's been loose."

Hubbard Enterprises owner Brad Hubbard said his company has never done work like this before.

"Jeff got our name through a mutual friend and called me," he said. "I said I'd be happy to do it. We're really excited to do it. Everyone here at the shop is really interested in them and can't wait to see how they turn out. They're historic. We can't really make a mistake, so we have to be careful. We're going to go slow. But what we have to do is generally pretty simple. We've got a good game plan. We've got experienced machinists and we'll be able to handle it."

Hubbard said his portion of the restoration should be finished by next week.

General Machine, which is across the road from Hubbard, will fabricate and weld a yoke onto the bells. Then all the pieces will be assembled locally before the bells are shipped back to Portland around Easter.

"We're going to have something that will last another couple centuries for them and probably not ever have to have any work done on them," Crook said. "We're going to make all new parts for them."

The new parts include an electromagnetic system that turns on and off and will swing the bells with no moving parts like chains or connections.

Brennan said he was able to raise the $200,000 needed for the work in about six weeks through donations. He said he'd like to ring the bells three times on Sundays and for weddings and other special occasions once they are back in the bell tower.

"I'm not sure what the reaction of the neighbors will be," Brennan said. "But there are no city ordinances I believe against ringing the bells."

Brennan said he spoke to University of Portland officials who recommended Chime Master after the company did work for the school.

"It's a challenging project," Crook said. "You take this stuff out, redo it, find people that know what they're doing and get it to all work. You kind of get one crack at it. It's kind of hard once you put them up in the tower you discover that, 'Whoops. We really didn't quite do this right.' Then it's real expensive to take them back out and redo it."

jbarron@lancastereaglegazette.com

740-681-4340

Twitter: @JeffDBarron