the.com/bell metal
Bronze tuned to sing, hardened to ring, struck for centuries to summon, warn, and mourn.
means A hard, brittle bronze alloy of copper and tin (typically around four parts copper to one of tin) prized for its resonant tone and used to cast bells.
from A plain English compound — "bell" plus "metal" — describing exactly what it is: the metal for bells. "Bell" traces back to Old English belle, possibly echoing an old root meaning to roar or bellow (a cousin, perhaps, of "bellow" itself). "Metal" comes through Old French metal from Latin metallum, "mine" or "ore," itself borrowed from Greek metallon. The recipe is far older than the name: bellfounders learned through centuries of casting that more tin makes a harder, more brittle bronze that rings longer and truer — sacrificing toughness for voice.
- Recipe
- Roughly 78% copper, 22% tin by weight
- More tin
- Higher tin makes a brighter, longer-ringing tone
- Brittle bonus
- High tin makes it hard but easily shattered
- Old gongs
- Indian cooking pots use the same alloy
- Cannon cousin
- Gun metal shares copper-tin bronze ancestry
tsar bell — largest bell in the world, 202 tons, cast in moscow 1735
great bell of dhammazedi — burmese bell cast 1484, weighed 300+ tons, melted down by portuguese in 1600
savoy chapel bells — english bell metal composition standardized at savoy chapel, london, 18th century