Blagovest's Unconditional Warranty

BLAGOVEST, the only company in America to sell authentic Russian bells, has helped more than 30 North American churches to acquire bells from Russia's premiere bell foundries over the last year and a half. We have brought over 100 bells into this country so far. That's a lot of bells— and if we had any doubts at all about their quality, we wouldn't dare offer a full, unconditional, lifetime warranty.

When it comes to bells, though, no one even knows how to make better ones than Russia's premiere foundries, which pour a thousand years of tradition and modern acoustical and metallurgical sciences into every bell they cast.

A friend of ours stayed for some months a while back in a monastery in Greece.

Accustomed to rising for Matins at the sound of their Greek-style brass bell, one wintry morning she was surprised to discover she had missed Matins.

"Didn't you ring the bell this morning?" she asked.

"We were afraid it would crack in the cold."

When she told us this, we became alarmed, since some of our clients are in Alaska. So we called the foundry.

"Are you kidding?" they laughed. "We make bells for Siberia!"

Of course, they added, if the temperature drops below -50° fahrenheit, you should start out by striking them somewhat softly, to warm them up. But this would be true with any metal.

Bell bronze, an alloy of about 82% copper and 18% tin, is especially made to be hammered by a heavy tongue (clapper), even in cold weather— and to produce beautiful, resonant sound under any conditions.

Some people think that silver is added to this alloy to make it sound sweeter, but that's a myth. In fact silver would make the metal brittle and unsuitable for use in bells. Russian foundries do not use silver in their bell metal.

But our founders, metallurgists worthy of the name, have worked hard to achieve the strongest bronze even theoretically possible. They go to extreme lengths to ensure that no impurities or air bubbles are present in their bronze. These are the things that will cause a bell to break.

So what does all this mean in terms of your investment?

There has not been, nor will there be, any problem with bells we help you to import from Russia. And on the outside chance that something just might go wrong, we offer you our unconditional promise to take care of it— even to the point of having the bell recast, if necessary.

This is our unconditional guarantee,
for the lifetime of the bell.

We admit that a "lifetime" warranty might be a little ridiculous for instruments likely to last a thousand years. Still, we take the durability and longevity of Russian bells so seriously that we even discourage people from including the names of their states in the inscriptions they order. Parish names, yes; cities, yes— communities tend to last almost as long as bells do! But abstract political entities like "states", which spring up in a day and wither in a day, like the grass of springtime— well,

in the bell business, we have to take the long view.