Rudy Rodriquez designed and built these bass bell boxes to help his son ring large bells, and he kindly granted permission for me to share his instructions and drawings with you to download for personal use.

This box is designed to hold the 5th add-on octave of bass bells (C3 thru E3), but it can also be used to hold smaller bells such as F3 thru B3. The bass bell ringer just needs to remember where he/she placed each bell for each piece of music. The holes for the handles are sized for the larger bells and the smaller bells may “move around” a bit when ringing them. Otherwise, the smaller bells will work well in my Bass Bell Box.

You ring the bells by “throwing” the clappers away from the ringer. So you need to put the bells in the box with the “strike point” inside the bell “away” from the ringer (like you would normally do if you were holding the bell in your hand.) Damping the bell is done by hand (literally). You can make a stopped sound similar to a hand-damp by placing one hand on the waist of the bell and throwing the clapper with the other hand.

The plans are formatted for 8-1/2″ x 11″ paper so you can print it out on any printer. A color printer would be nice so you can see the colors on the page.

Bass-bell-box-1 – finished view
Bass-bell-box-2 – plan view
Bass-bell-box-3 – dimensions
Bass-bell-box-4 – elevation view

Copyright © 2005 Rudy L. Rodriquez. Used with permission.