The scaffolding reaches the top!

This week the scaffolding has reached the top of the Grace Episcopal Church Bell tower. It is quite and impressive site to the the work climb to the top of the tower.



Our masons are almost done with the front vestibule of the church, when they are done, They will start work on the interior of the bell tower until the scaffolding is ready for them to begin work on the exterior of the tower. The High Street door of the church may be closed for a couple of weeks.




The Bell company sent the bell to the foundry in the Netherlands to have it repaired (see the last blog post for the story of the cracked bell). The foundry (Royal Eijsbouts Bell Foundry) can't fix it, but will take a mold of our old bell and cast one that is identical. They will also use digital technology to shape the new bell's sound to exactly replicate the old bell's sound. They plan to take our old bell and melt it down and use the same bronze to fabricate the new one. All of this is at no additional cost to us. There will be both material and metaphysical links between the old and new bell!

Right now the bells are scheduled to come back the begging of October, and we hope to have the entire project completed by early November. The work seems to be on schedule at this time.

Phase II Tower Work Begins

The Phase II Restoration work on the Grace Church bell tower has begun!  We anticipate that this work on the Bell Tower and the High Street foyer will continue until the first week in November.

Our General Contractor, Murray Brothers has demolished and removed the internal first floor of the bell tower.

And the second floor platform (which will not be replaced).

The floor was then filled, and will have new concrete slab added later.

Our masons are working to match the mortar color and consistency with the building -- 

You can follow our masonry subcontractors perspective on this project on their own blog found here. 

We also have learned, unfortunately, that one of our bells developed a hairline crack as the bell contractors were working on it.  The bell is being shipped to the foundry in the Netherlands in order to be repaired.  You can see the crack in the photo below radiating down from one on the bolt holes.  We are told that the crack does not effect the part of the bell that produces sound, and will be able to be fully repaired.