It's good to have the real Tom Scott back. We've been surviving on substitutes for a while now, but there's nothing like the real thing.
In Tom's first video back on YouTube, he takes us to see four bells cast in Loughborough, England at Taylor's Bellfoundry. You can check out their behind the scenes video of the visit below and can visit their site here.
Tom sees them make the forms - out of sand, resin, horse manure, graphite, straw, and a whole lot of experience. It's an impressive process which results in four absolutely gorgeous bells cast in bronze.
Coincidentally, I'm going to be in Helensburgh, Scotland in about a month and a week (from when this posts on 4/25/22, anyway). My wife and I are hiking the John Muir Way, a 134-mile path from west to east across the narrow 'waist' of Scotland. Maybe I'll check out the house from the video.
I find myself in an odd little focus on conservation videos of late. In the above video, Tom Scott looks at the efforts to 'dry' out a cement house from from 1902 designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Mackintosh's design used Portland cement for the outside, and while it's a fascinating house, it's made from a material that is absolutely not appropriate for the damp Scottish environment.
In trying to dry out the house, they have to dry it slowly. So they have built a giant, roofed box over the house and made the walls from chainmail which keeps raindrops off the house but allows the water vapor to leave and the air and bees to come through for the 'fifteen years it'll take to dry out and repair" the house. Plus they've put in walkways and gantries that turn the house into a tourist attraction. Brilliant plan there, National Trust.
