July 29, 2008. Lifting and installing new bells on Lowell House Tower are starting at Harvard University. From July 28 to July 30 lifting and installing new small and middle-sized bells is going to be realized. The bells will be hung along the perimeter of the tower on arches, in accordance with the scheme elaborated jointly with the Russian experts.
During this period of time the most spectacular and important operation will be installing three largest bells – blagovestniks (resounding with evangel) weighing 14, 6 and 3 tons. These giants will be installed with intervals of two working days. The blagovestniks will take their places on a special metal construction in the center of peal’s tier of the belfry. American workers and Russian experts were getting ready for the operation the whole last week.
The small bells were lifted on July, 28. Now the works on installing these bronze “recruits” already lifted are in progress on the tower. The first of three blagovestniks to be lifted and installed will be the bell weighing 14 tons. This operation is scheduled for August, 1. The second and the third largest bells will be hung later on.
The visitors of www.danilovbells.ru will be able to witness the lifting of three largest bells on Lowell House Tower thanks to the web-camera installed in Harvard.
Hanging the blagovestniks is the most complicated and crucial moment of the works. In order to install these giant bells it was required to fill the inner area of the peal’s tier of 80 sq. m. with squared timber beams up to 2 meters height. On the peal’s tier the arched pillars were completely removed on one out of four sides of the tower. This was done in order to take the old bells outside and place the new ones. A big platform, fixed on the rails, has been assembled outside the tower on scaffolding, right across the cut out opening. The new bells are going to be placed on the platform one by one with the crane. The rails, laid from the platform into the tower, will serve for moving the bells towards the construction on which they are going to be hung.
Each of the new bells will be taken inside and then lifted with jacks and brought up to the beam with a winch. The complex equipment, which is going to hold the three largest bells on the beams, was made by the Foundation specifically for Harvard. Its function is to suppress the dangerous vibrations of bell’s suspension during ringing, to minimize the dynamic load on the beam and prevent swinging of the bell during bell-ringing. The installation and testing the unique equipment constructed in Russia is one of the tasks for Russian experts at Harvard and also participation in hanging the bells on the damping suspensions mentioned above. The representatives of the Church Bell-ringers Society: I. Konovalov, K. Mishurovsky, G. Titenkov and senior bell-ringer of Danilov Monastery hierodeacon Roman work in Harvard together with American architects and engineers work in Lowell House now.
