Bell Handling Tricks – Number Four Will Shock You!

I have been ringing for 6.5 years but I am still learning things about handling! Teaching in a tower with a very long draught will cause this. Here are a few of the things I’ve noticed recently (I don’t really think number four will shock anyone but you never know!):

1. Make sure your hands move in a straight line on the way up as well as on the way down! That is, let the rope pull your hands up but don’t let it pull your hands side to side.
2. If a bell rope is long enough to hit the floor (and I think most are), wait until it hits the floor before catching the sally. It turns out I am very familiar with the timing of ropes hitting the floor! Which is weird because it’s such a small noise compared to the actual bells, and I’m definitely not looking.
3. If you finish your backstroke too early, the rope may *bounce* off the floor and send the sally in a weird direction, even if you were pulling the backstroke nice and straight.
4. Catching the sally is supposed to be a bit like jumping onto a moving horse—the sally moves upward and your hands join it along the way. Your goal is not to stop the sally or even to slow it down, but simply to join with it.
5. When you start ringing a bell up, the pull may only last a moment, but it quickly expands to have a noticeable duration and you must pull throughout the duration. In fact, while ringing up the goal is to make the duration as long as possible. Once your hands are stretching as far down as possible (and still stretching up as far as possible) the way this will happen is by the motion of your hands very gradually slowing from one pull to the next. That is, within each pull your hands should start slow and speed up, but as the bell gets higher the speed you reach at the bottom of the pull will not be as fast.
6. In my own ringing I’ve sometimes found it useful to think about adjusting timing rather than pulling strongly or gently, and sometimes talking about timing helps more with learners as well. For instance, I frequently want to pull my backstrokes less, but thinking of it that way can easily result in underpulling, or learners especially not pulling all the way down and letting the rope go floppy. Or I’ll be afraid to be too gentle and end up not actually changing anything! Instead I like to try starting my backstroke a hair later, so that my hands are moving *with* the rope rather than slightly ahead of it. Or perhaps I need to move my hands down a tiny bit slower, again so that I’m with the rope rather than truly pulling it.
7. Overall I think the concept of “bell control” might need a rebrand. None of us can control most bells in a domineering sense, and we shouldn’t try! The real goal is to be aware of what the bell is doing at all times and to work with it as a team. Strive for “bell awareness” and “bell collaboration”!

Have you noticed any weird aspects of handling that don’t get talked about much? Feel free to add more in the comments!