What is the age of this bell?

[coinman123]

I found this bell at a colonial location. It is made out of a gray metal, and has an iron clanger. It took a lot of cleaning to make it look how it is in the photo. I hammered the clanger to remove the huge growths on it (It have pebbles, twigs, and pine needles engulfed in the corrosion). I used steel-wool on the bell part to get it looking how it is now, before the cleaning you could not tell that the metal was supposed to be gray colored.

Anyway the big question is how old is it?



Note: The iron part of the bell is made out of two pieces as seen in the sketch

 

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[DigIron2]

I couldn't really give you a approx age.But it is a very nice find!

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Actually, the "big" question is the bell's size... which you did not tell us. Size is often super-important for figuring out an object's correct ID. Comparing your bell's size with the clovers in the photo, AND it being made of a "grey metal," I think your horse is a horseharness Hames-bell... sometimes kinda inaccurately called a sleigh-bell. The attachment (a ring) on yours is different from the attachment form shown in the closeup photo below, but you get the idea of the size and shape of Hames-bells. Ones from the 1800s were often made of a greyish metal -- which is NOT pewter, but instead is some kind of grey bronze-or-brass alloy.

A Hames is a form of horsecollar, part of a horse's wagon-pulling (or buggy-pulling) harness. You might have to enlarge the antique photo of a Conestoga-wagon's horse-team to see the Hames-bells on each horse.

 

[johnnyi]

A fine bell. Unless they grow some mighty big clover up north we're probably looking at 2" to 23/4" at the base? That said, it falls into the exceptable range for horse collar, earliest design of sleigh bell, with the exception that all of these were cast as one piece with the hanger as part of the bell. Based on many bells I've dug, this bell appears to be consistent with early half of 1800's but could be earlier.

It has some very distinctive features that will eventual make it identifiable: The hanger has been replaced with a crude loop; the clapper may be original, though looks to me to me out of scale enough to have been scavenged.(unimportant) What will identify the bell is the slight protrusion around the top hole of the bell. This subtle rise is deceptively unusual, and I have so far only been able to find one other example which shows the right dimensions and this protrusion (you'll need a magnifying glass as it is worn) This bell is much larger, four inches at the base but it seems to be the same manufacturer based on those subtleties. Small bells were often cast in series of tone and size, which should hopefully make identifying that much easier. Odds are your's was put into service as a sheep's bell, but who knows. Good luck. http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTQ5MlgxNjAw/z/e8oAAOxyTjNSmqtU/$_35.JPG

 

[coinman123]

Actually, the "big" question is the bell's size...

At the base it is 2 7/8'' in diameter, so being around 3'' would be a reasonable size for a horse hames-bell.

 

[coinman123]

The hanger has been replaced with a crude loop; the clapper may be original, though looks to me to me out of scale enough to have been scavenged.(unimportant)

The loop is made in a completely different fashion then the clapper, which leads me to believe that the clapper is original to the bell, it was probably recovered and attached to the added loop.

 

[coinman123]

What will identify the bell is the slight protrusion around the top hole of the bell. This subtle rise is deceptively unusual, and I have so far only been able to find one other example which shows the right dimensions and this protrusion (you'll need a magnifying glass as it is worn) This bell is much larger, four inches at the base but it seems to be the same manufacturer based on those subtleties.

It seems strange that two bells have the same dimensions, and there may be a chance that they were made by the same manufacturer. There are no manufacture marks anywhere on the bell that I found, but I know at the time the bell was made not may manufactures marked their products. That protrusion looks like it may have acted as a guard for the main structure of the bell, which might imply that thing there before the loop might have had frequent contact with the protrusion, making it pretty worn down.

Thanks, Coinman123