Overview:
Norwich Congregational Church members and Selectboard chair re-install repaired clapper of 1817 Paul Revere & Sons bell. An event celebrating the bell will be held Saturday afternoon July 4.
After Easter service at the Norwich Congregational Church each year, the children in attendance help the Rev. Jonathan Hauze ring the church’s bell. This year they grasped the rope and pulled, feeling the weight of the 209-year-old bell, but on the back swing heard no sound.
Hauze later climbed the five stories to the belfry and found the bell’s cast iron clapper missing. He worried that it had broken and fallen off the roof.
But it turned out that before Hauze’s discovery, Kimo Griggs, the town’s Selectboard chairman and one of the church’s clock winders, had looked into the absence of the hourly chime that he remembered hearing while growing up in town and found out why both the chime and the clapper were missing.
The church was built in 1817. Town resident Thomas Emerson paid for its bell, cast that same year by Paul Revere & Son in Boston. Stephen Hasham, a clockmaker from Charlestown, N.H., made the steeple clock that chimes the hour on the bell with an external striker.
In March this year, as Griggs worked on a fix to make the clock chime again, he discovered the broken clapper resting under the bell. In a stroke of luck, it had not rolled off the sloped belfry roof as Hauze feared. Griggs had brought it inside and set it on a beam near the clock intending to pass on news of the damage, but Easter came first.
This summer, with the chime of the clock now sounding, attention turned to learning what caused the clapper to break and how to fix it.
Smith Reed, of Fairlee, a retired mechanical engineer, determined that the clapper, which weighs more than 17 pounds, had broken at a weak point caused by an air bubble in its stem when it was originally cast.
Revere & Son only guaranteed the bell for one year, said Hauze. Reed estimated it functioned well for about a century before breaking, based on evidence of a previous repair.
An Ohio bell maker quoted the church more than $6,000 to cast and install a new clapper. Setting his sights closer to home, Reed contacted Mike Hutchinson, of Central Vermont Micro Weld in East Braintree, Vt.
Hutchinson had the metallurgical knowledge and willingness required to make a durable repair, said Reed. Hutchinson charged $270 to braze the two pieces back together, then promised to waive his fee if the church donated the same amount to a food shelf.
“Somehow with our own ingenuity we were able to get this done,” said Reed. “To heck with the people in the Midwest.”
In a parking space on Tuesday, across from the church and between Reed’s 2004 BMW Z4 and Griggs’ 1979 Ford F-250 Camper Special, they met with Hauze and church member David Gouwens, of Thetford Center.
The clapper, its nuts, bolts and wooden carriage were spread out on the pavement.
“A remarkably fast repair,” Griggs said. He examined the fix and remarked that such work tends to take “forever.”
The only missing piece was a tough leather bearing to protect the oak carriage that holds the clapper from friction on the metal bar inside the bell that it hangs from. Griggs offered to sacrifice a pair of his work gloves. They concluded the gloves were too soft.
As Reed, Hauze and Gouwens gathered their supplies and set off for the belfry, Griggs walked off toward Dan & Whit’s, the local general store.
When he caught up with the group, they were preparing to swing the bell horizontally so they could reach inside. Griggs had purchased a thick leather belt, which Reed cut to length for the bearing. Less than half an hour later the assembly was complete.
Just a few minutes after that, Hauze was back on the ground floor with the bell’s rope in hand; its ringing filled the air.
At 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 4, the Norwich Congregational Church and the Norwich Historical Society will host an event celebrating the bell on the steps of the chuch, and it will be rung 250 times to honor the United States semiquincentennial.
