A lady has sought the advice of the bell ringing hive - why do sliders not have a bar across their top to prevent them from jumping out of position? Her tower has had a couple of incidents recently and it can cause injury, not to mention spread alarm amongst the newbies. There are few ringing things as nasty as a perfectly reasonable bell, which a moment before has been standing nicely (and you know you did not bash the stay to get it there), suddenly whizzing itself over the top without any warning. At least with a broken stay there is a chance that you feel and/or hear it go.
We have had jumpy sliders a few times – twice one practice when the new muffle straps were too long and caught the sliders, once when a clapper dropped marginally, but by enough to knock the slider out of position, and once when we were hosting a branch quarterly. This was inconvenient because it took 20 minutes and a perilous tower of chairs, poles etc to disentangle the rope from the guides. Someone suggested that towers in damp, coastal locations are particularly vulnerable to such mishaps because the wooden sliders tend to warp in the salt air.
Various people have made helpful suggestions to the original enquirer and fitting a metal or wood bar over the runner board seems a sensible precaution. It is also worth checking the pivot hole for wear and of course the sliders themselves.
As a system, the mechanism is very simple but, since it has such a crucial role in the prevention of accidents, it probably could be improved on. As someone once said to me in Edinburgh when I asked them the way "I wouldn't start from here, hen…"
An extra bar across the top would certainly be a start.
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