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Once Upon a Job: Down East Man Has Made Bells By Hand For Nearly 50 Years

Nick Woodward
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Maine Public
U.S. Bells Apprentice Newman Young melts bronze bars in a furnace that will heat the metal to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Church bells still summon the faithful to the start of worship, and you can still hear them ring out on special occasions in certain town squares. But these days, the dulcet tones of handmade bells and chimes are increasingly being drowned out by electronic gadgets.

In the latest installment of “Once Upon A Job,” there is one man in Maine who has staked his livelihood in the vanishing craft of bell making.

Dick Fisher has been making bells for almost 50 years now.

“There was no magic moment when I said, ‘I’m going to make bells,’” he says.

But at an early age, Fisher did know that he was attracted to more traditional ways of life.

“I grew up on the South Shore of Massachusetts and I used to go into Boston a lot and there was always, you’d see people three of four people with push carts, one guy selling chestnuts, another guy grinding a hurdy-gurdy,” he says.

Credit Nick Woodward / Maine Public
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Maine Public
Dick Fisher has been making bells for almost 50 years. U.S. Bells in Prospect Harbor is one of a small handful of traditional foundries left in the country.

That seemed appealing to Fisher, who at 24 was still trying to figure out what to do with his life. He always liked to work with his hands, and he was fond of some bells his mother had brought back from China. So he got the idea of hammering and welding pieces of steel into simple, handmade bells for sale.

He nailed together a pushcart, got himself a peddler’s license and spent the summer of 1970 making and selling the little steel bells to passersby in Copley Square.

“As time went on I figured out that there were limitations to the hammered steel bells — they kind of sounded like cowbells. Kind of funky. So I decided I wanted to learn casting to make bronze bells,” Fisher says.

Bronze could make more beautiful tones, and that was important to Fisher. He began studying with a bell maker and found he had both an interest and an aptitude for the craft. He began selling his bells at craft shows. And in 1985 he and his wife, Cindy, moved to Maine, where they opened a foundry.

At U.S. Bells in Prospect Harbor, what started as a simple peddler’s cart has grown into a sizable — and noisy — workshop where Fisher casts everything from tiny, tinkling chimes to big, deep-voiced bells that can be heard across many acres.

He’s also been called upon to make important historical replicas, including one of what’s often referred to as Canada’s Liberty Bell, given in goodwill to the people of Prince Edward Island, where it now hangs over the harbor at Charlottetown.

The original — something of a sore spot with some Canadians — hangs in Gouldsboro.

Credit Nick Woodward / Maine Public
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Maine Public
Newly minted bells await polishing and finishing.

These days, Fisher has a pair of apprentices who tend the noisy furnace and poor the liquid bronze into molds.

“It’s gonna have, when it’s full, about 100 pounds of bronze, all melted, and the bronze will be about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit,” he says.

The process, says Fisher, is fairly basic. He sketches a design, then makes a wooden template, around which a special sand mixture is packed to form a mold into which the liquid bronze is poured. When cool, the mold is opened, the sand is tapped out, and with it comes a rough bell that will be finessed and polished.

“If we get one that doesn’t sound good, it never turns into a production pattern — and that has happened,” he says with a laugh.

Like all bell makers, Fisher has relied on knowledge that has been shared across generations, and he has traveled as far away as Japan to learn specific bell making techniques. But as bells are replaced by other things, there are fewer craftspeople to share the skill.

This year, one of the world’s oldest bell foundries closed its doors after nearly 500 years. Citing a decline in the need for old-fashioned bells, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London went silent. Fortunately, one of the most recognized and most loved bells it ever produced — Big Ben — still chimes regular as clockwork on the hour.