Thinking allowed

a touch of Kent Treble Bob

on Wednesday, 22 December 2004 at 7.57 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as bellringing, learning new methods

Oh dear! I have been dis­covered! My ringing teach­er said to me at Monday’s prac­tice, ‘I was look­ing at your web­site…’. I shall have to be care­ful what I write!

His revenge was to tell me to learn a touch of Kent Treble Bob, the ‘blue line’ of which I learnt a few months ago, and I have had one attempt at ringing a plain course.

When ‘Bob’ is called, the treble is, of course, unaf­fected, and so are the two bells which are going into, or com­ing out of, the slow.

The bells which are dodging in 5–6 and above make two extra dodges — three dodges in all, rather than one.

One bell makes the bob: the bell which is mak­ing 3rds and 4ths places up the second time. It makes 3rds and 4ths up, and then imme­di­ately rings 4ths and 3rds down, and goes straight down to the lead. It has become the bell mak­ing 3rds and 4ths down the first time, so it will make 3rds and 4ths down again next time, and then go back into the slow.

The bells which triple dodge at the back con­tin­ue in their treble bob course. Each of them is delayed in mak­ing 3rds and 4ths down by one lead end (because the bell which made the bob has pushed itself in, instead).

Remem­ber that you know you will have to make 3rds and 4ths down for the first time in the next lead end — because you dodge 3–4 down with the treble. So you ‘just’ have to notice when you are dodging with the treble in that position.

calling 'bob'

on Tuesday, 14 December 2004 at 10.19 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as bellringing, conducting

I had anoth­er go at call­ing a touch of bob doubles on Monday. I’ve now got to the point where I can remem­ber the sequence of calls (e.g. ‘out’, ‘make’, ‘in’ to leave bell 2 unaf­fected), and I know pretty much when to make each call but actu­ally mak­ing the calls in just the right place is a bit trick­i­er. Time to look at this in a little more detail, perhaps.

First, let’s write out the first lead end of Bob Doubles, for a plain course, and then, next to it, what hap­pens if a bob is called.

(plain) | (bob)

12345 | 12345

21435 | 21435
24153 | 24153
42513 | 42513
45231 | 45231
54321 | 54321
53412 | 53412
35142 | 35142
31524 | 31524 ‘bob!’ — called at back­stroke before treble leads
13254 | 13254
13524 | 12354 3 runs out, 2 runs in, 5 makes the bob, 4 unaffected

31254 | 21534
32145 | 25143
23415 | 52413
24351 | 54231
42531 | 45321

The bob should be called, I think, at the back­stroke before the treble leads, giv­ing a whole pull’s notice of the bob. This means it is called when the treble is in 2nd place before leading.

Since it is not easy (not for me any­way) to always see when the treble is in 2nd place, we ana­lyse where each of the oth­er bells is at this point.

We can see from the above dia­gram that, that when the treble is in 2nd place, the oth­er bells are as follows:

• the bell that would have made 2nds place (but runs out), leads (back­stroke),
• the bell that would have dodged 3/4 up (but makes the bob) is in 3rd place
• the bell that would have dodged 3/4 down (but runs in) is in 4th place
• the bell that rings 4 blows behind (and is unaf­fected) makes its first blow at the back

In the­ory the call should be made with the lead­ing bell, that is, when the bell that would make 2nds place makes its back­stroke lead. If you are ringing that bell then the tim­ing is easy, but if you are ringing one of the oth­ers then you need to make the call just before you pull your rope. This is more espe­cially true for the bells at the back. Remem­ber that each of these calls is made at back­stroke.