
After our successful collaboration with the National Bell Festival last year, NovaLabs could not think of a better group to work with to ring in the New Year.
All old bells have a story to tell. Though the Solidarity Bell was only bellfounded in 2024, its journey has already been fascinating. The brass ingots used in its manufacture were smelted from spent munitions casings collected in Ukraine. More information on the bell and its creation can be found here https://www.bells.org/blog/pictures-bullet-shell-bell.
Since its arrival in the US it has been blessed in several Ukrainian places of worship, as well as the Washington National Cathedral and it will continue its travels picking up more blessings and being admired.

Designing the Stand

Paul Ashe from the Bell Festival provided us with a deceptively simple looking sketch. Despite the small number of pen strokes, most of the final design for the bell is included here. With this sketch, some general dimensions the process of design could begin.
We had no question that the star of the show should be the Bell and its surroundings. Attempting to compete with the detail of craft in the National Cathedral would be a bad choice.
For that reason the design was kept very clean, with just the addition of a few small accent details. We knew the tenons would get most of the accent, but it took us a while to settle on the best choice.
Material Choice and Milling

The logical choice for material was the old-growth cherry that came to NovaLabs via the estate of Larry Smoak. It was made available to members to help defray the cost of setting up the Luthier shop named in his honor. This cherry wood has stunning detail if you have the patience to find it, and luckily Graham had the required patience.
Final milling would take place a couple of days later, once the wood had relaxed. We now had our required boards in the correct dimensions, plus a few spares in case we goofed.

Engraving
A strong design motif on the bell is the Ukrainian trident. We made four variants and asked for opinions from anyone who walked through the labs. The choice was almost unanimous. We stepped out of the woodshop and into CNC to engrave the trident onto the outside of the two uprights.


Joinery
To give a stable base via an A-frame and maintain clean lines, a modified bridle joint was adopted.
It started with a sketch, and was made into a nice bridle(ish) joint.
After some use of the dado stack, much chiseling, scraping, sharpening of tools and then chiseling again, Chris and Graham had really nice snug joints and we had two vertical assemblies.
With two snugly fitting uprights, the next step was to join them together. That meant firing up the Louise de Mortiser (mortising tool) and sharpening the chisels.
We penciled in the layout lines for the mortises and hoped they were correct. It's more difficult to erase a problem on the mortiser than a bad pencil mark!
About halfway through the build, the bell finally cleared customs, and a couple of days later we got to put our hands on it. We got an actual measure of its weight, and more accurate dimensions for the headstock (pole). We felt good about the choice of going with extra bracing as we were going to support about 50 lbs of bronze.
With good dimensions the uprights were taken to the drill press and a forstner bit was used to get the diameter, and then the diameter was extended up with some chisel work to make a nice cradle that the headstock could be lowered into.

Then the planning to trim down the tenons started in earnest. Graham and Christopher seem to be in their happy places with this part of the job.

An important tip to all woodworkers is to label your assemblies. Once you start cutting and sanding pieces off, it is easy to lose track of yourself. Also, do not place all your labels on material you plan to remove. We only made that mistake once on this project.
Dry Assembly
With all the main joints working correctly on their own, it was time to start assembling the project. Wood continues to move after you work it, so getting sixteen joints to fit together perfectly a lot of fine tuning is needed. Delicate work is required to remove enough wood to fit but leave enough to still be strong.

This is where most of the work goes in, but images of woodchips and sawdust as we sneak up on the best fit for the joints are repetitive.
Glue Up
The most stressful part of a project is applying glue; it is not easy to undo if wrong. Unlike drilling a hole, you cannot check it for 20 minutes to see if you were correct. All you have is the glue open work time.
Each of the uprights required some “persuading” into place - as you tap in the bridle joint the support stretcher moves out a little. As you adjust them back in, out pops the bridle. Patience is required, as is accepting “good enough” once we got both uprights glued we started to breathe a lot easier.
Update on the Bell

As the first glue-up was curing, the bell was receiving another blessing, this time at the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church in Washington D.C.. Holding a bell is possible but complicates your life. If we complete our job correctly, the bell will be self-supporting for its next stop!
Back to the Glue Up, and Lots of Clamping
The wedge tenons were installed during the final clamping. Once the final glue up was complete, we had to wait for the glue to set and get the bell back for another test to see if we got it right.
It WORKED!!!!!!!
The bell was brought back for another test fitting and everything went great. Now we can talk a little bit about the accents and get to finishing.

Accent Work
The use of Wedge Tenons was settled upon as a nice clear way to add both strength and visual interest at the same time.
One pair of tenons is shown above with the saw kerf (slit from width of blade) and the stress relief holes drilled. Contrasting wood (Maple) will be driven into those kerfs to lock the tenon in place and add a beautiful detail.
Once these are flush-cut, the hard edges are taken off and some oil is applied, they will sing!
Finishing
Plenty more sanding was done and then a couple of coats of boiled linseed oil and beeswax were applied.
By keeping the finish light, it really allows the natural beauty of the cherry to come through. In the side view you can also enjoy three of the six tenons and one of the tridents.
The wedge tenons' detail pops from across the room. In this close-up image, you can also enjoy the different textures on the cherry boards.
A huge amount of effort went into making the bridle joint work. Now that it is done, it is serving its job perfectly, being understated and almost invisible.
The Ukrainian trident contrasts very nicely on the otherwise simple boards.
The stand is ready for action and the cradles are ready to accept the headstock!
Delivery
When we delivered the Bell and stand to Washington National Cathedral, we got to go in a special door that requires badge access and walk behind the ropes to set up.
The Blessing and Ringing of the Bell
On January 1st, 2025, at the Washington National Cathedral, the Solidarity Bell was blessed by three honorable reverends and one venerable member of the Archdiocese of Washington. It was rung by Denys Sienik, Deputy Ambassador of Ukraine, in the presence of the first secretary of the embassy, a representative of the State Department, and many other distinguished guests.
Not least of the honored guests included several members of NovaLabs. We even got most of the sawdust out of our hair for the occasion!
Recognizing Those Who Made this Happen
As with all things in NovaLabs, this was a collaboration between the people formally working on the project and the hive mind of good ideas that come by when needed. Maybe it is a suggestion to use painter's tape to hold the joints while the glue cures, cookies and hot chocolate on a cold day, tracing the outline of the headstock on paper, so you don’t have to hope you used the calipers correctly, or assistance using a new (to you) CNC machine. Heck, we had a one-person cheering squad in Slack to keep us rolling. Many people even threw in comments from the peanut gallery to keep us grounded. It felt like a community build.

As a shared space, everything people do helps: emptying the dust bags on the machines, sharpening and maintaining the tools, and making accommodations for us working on a couple of tables. It made the work possible.
The main team working on this were Christopher Sexton, Graham Copp https://talloakwoodworks.com and Brian Irwin.
Photo credits: Brian Irwin, Christopher Sexton, Graham Copp, Paul Ashe, Jeanne Marshall, Grant McLaughlin
Comentarios