To further develop my xylophone I wanted to try out making other forms of instruments. Through aesthetic research I found cookiena speciosa and gymnopus montagnei fungi naturally resembled the shape of bells and thought this would be interesting to play around sculpting. I decided to do something different to ceramic and this time make them out of bronze as a lot of bells are more often metal and I can easily get bronze cast at uni.
Cookiena Speciosa
Gymnopus Montagnei
While sculpting I made sure to make clappers to go with each bell, custom making the size to go with each individual bell. Unsure whether it would would work or not i make screw holes in the center of the bells for the clappers to be later attached.
Unfortunately, once the bells were cast I found one of them didn't work, (the smaller cookiena) the sound was so dead it didn't ring at all, however, the other three had a really lovely ring to them. Due to this I decided to not go through and completely finishing the small one but instead use it as a practice for what I wanted to do with the other three.
It did take a while to figure out how to attach the clappers the the main bells. I first made a small hook from bronze. However, when trying to weld it I found the heat required to melt the main bell was far too much compared to the the small hook, this meant the small hook completely melted before the main bell had even got to temperature.
I looked into a possible glue and found a resin glue designed for metals. I used this glue and it worked a treat. The only thing I think I might change is the wire I have used to connect it, it was a rushed job and I'd like it done much neater. I also thought that these would look good with really bright colours, but the patination I had available to me was very limited and the colours wouldn't come out massively bright. so I decided to spray paint them instead and i was so much happier with how these came out.
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