Royal Bell Foundry Eijsbouts is looking for a new bell founder and that is not that easy. The company from Asten makes clocks for churches and towers all over the world. Joep van Brussel, deputy director at Eijsbouts: “Where else do you make a musical instrument today that will last 500 to 1000 years?”
The bell foundry, right in the center of Asten, has made bells for Notre-Dame in Paris and the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London, but now the bell foundry is short of hands. There are few people who master the craft trade. Recently they even employed someone from Austria.
“Viktoria Zöchling is our newest bell-founder and has only just moved to the Netherlands. When she came to us she didn’t have much experience with bell-casting yet, but she has now mastered the profession through internal training. It’s not easy to learn, but she is doing very well. We are very happy with her.”
Van Brussel can tell you why it is a special profession. “You must really want to make something beautiful and how beautiful is it that you can hear it all over the world?”
He explains exactly what a bell founder does: “It always starts with making a design and then a mold. It must have the right shape and size. That is a precise process and takes quite a bit of time. When this is done , the bell is cast.”
Casting requires quite a bit of concentration: “When the bronze is heated to 1100 degrees, we pour it from the oven into a pan. From there it is poured into the molds of the bells. This must not go wrong, because then all the work will have been for nothing. That is why we continuously measure that the bronze has the right temperature.”
The bell-founders have to wait a day or two for the bronze to cool below 150 degrees. Then the mold is removed and we see if it worked.
Then the clock is updated until it has the correct tone. “In the voting room we have equipment that indicates exactly how the bell should sound. We made it together with the TU in Eindhoven and is unique in the world,” says a proud Van Brussel. must be done accurately.”
If possible, our own employees will install the clocks at the destination. “Recently, a team was in America. That is of course very cool to do, but then we have to have enough staff. So let the new bell founders come quickly, so that our bells can continue to sound all over the world.”
