Monk’s work with bronze of 1100 degrees: ‘Tough job, but very cool’
Royal Bell Foundry Eijsbouts is looking for a new bell founder and that is not that easy. The company from Asten makes clocks for churches and towers all over the world. Joep van Brussel, deputy director at Eijsbouts: “Where else do you make a musical instrument today that will last 500 to 1000 years?”
The bell foundry, right in the center of Asten, has made bells for Notre-Dame in Paris and the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London, but now the bell foundry is short of hands. Few people can collect it. Recently they even employed someone from Austria.
“Viktoria Zöchling is our newest bell-founder and has only just moved to the Netherlands. When they came to us, they didn’t have much experience with bell-casting yet, but they have now mastered the profession through internal training. It’s not easy to learn, but she is doing very well. We are very happy with her.”
Van Brussel can tell you why it is a special profession. “You must really want to make something beautiful and how beautiful is it that you can hear it all over the world?”
He explained exactly what a bell-founder does: “It always starts with making a design and then a mould. It must have the right shape and size. , the bell is cast.”
Casting requires quite a bit of concentration: “When the bronze is heated to 1100 degrees, we pour it from the oven into a pan. From representation it is molded into the molds of the bells. This must not go wrong, because then all the work will have been for nothing. That is why we continuously measure that the source has the right temperature.”
The bell-founders have to wait a day or two until the bronze is normal to below 150 degrees. Then the mold is removed and we see if it worked.
Then the clock is updated until it has the correct tone. “In the voting room we have equipment that indicates exactly how the clock should sound. We made it together with the TU in Eindhoven and is unique in the world,” says a proud Van Brussel. connecting has to happen.”
If possible, our own employees will install the clocks at the destination. “Recently, a team was in America. That is of course very cool to do, but then we have to have enough staff. So let the new bell founders come quickly, so that our bells can continue to sound all over the world.”