Stealing 600-Pound Church Bell May Be Easier Than Selling It
On Monday, we reported on the theft of St. Michael's Korean Catholic Church's 110-year-old, 600-pound bell. Local scrap metal dealers appraised the purloined ringer for SF Weekly at anywhere from $760 to $1,800, depending on its weight and composition. But stealing a massive bell may be less of a feat than selling one. 
With a plasma torch, maybe you could have done a neater job here...
Wheeling a hot church bell to a scrap metal dealer intact would be a move on par with complaining to the cops that someone swiped your stash or falling asleep in a home you're robbing. Unless the burglarized bell is, say, sitting in a fraternity rec room, it figures the people who made off with it may want to cut it into little pieces before attempting to sell it as scrap. But this, too, poses a challenge, scrap dealers say.
Pat Curtis, the manager of San Francisco Scrap, notes that you're not cutting apart a 600-pound bell in the back yard. "We have machines that cut - but nothing like that," she says. "Most of our machines, you have to be able to hold the metal while you're putting it in."
Paul Forkash of Oakland's Aaron Metals says the ideal tool to reduce a bell into bell bits would be a plasma torch. But you don't find those down at Ace Hardware. Some scrapyards, metal shops, or fabrication facilities might have one lying around - and they usually cost $5,000 to $7,000 a pop.
"Presumably these are petty thieves," says Forkash. "They wouldn't have the tools or the technology to be able to cut something like this - unless they sat there for weeks with a hacksaw."
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