Robbie Rhodes:  Thanks for your prompt reply. I'm presently making a set of bells
for my North Tonawanda band organ, which plays Wurlitzer 150 rolls. The bells
on the Wurlitzer organs are struck at the ends, as are the organs made by Don
Stinson. There is a dissonant transient produced when the bell is struck on
the end that I find annoying. It can be reasonably well eliminated by
striking the bar dead center, so that is my approach on this set.

The material is 1.25 by 3/8 inch cold rolled steel with no cut up. The bars
are being cut at a machine shop, the ends milled to within one millimeter of
the calculated length, and the mounting holes drilled. Then I will tune them
about five cents sharp to allow for a drop in pitch when they are
electroplated with nickel. The five cents is a guess, as I have no experience
with how the tuning is affected by plating, but I assume it will drop the
pitch a little. I'll keep track of what happens so that I can change my
computer program to allow for plating.

My tuner is a Peterson Strobe-tuner, and I can see the two octaves above the
fundamental as well as an overtone a fourth above the fundamental. The same
harmonics and overtone are present on my commercial glockenspiel, on which
the bars are cut up in back. I will try to find the third and fifth harmonics
and compare the cut-up bar and the uniform cross-section bar.

Have you seen any technical articles on barbells? My only  reference is
"Music, Physics and Engineering" by Harry F. Olson. He treats only uniform
bars. Since cutting up the back lowers the pitch, it probably affects the
location of the nodes also. This question of the cut-up is only curiosity for
me at the moment, as I have no intention of cutting up the metal bars.
However, if I should ever make wooden bars then it would become a practical
question.

Fritz Gellerman