They look kind of like giant wind chimes, so big they could withstand a hurricane.

Len Raines calls them wind bells, which he makes from discarded gas cylinders. Once decorated and equipped with clappers — he calls them clangers — they’re suspended on a wind bell tree in front of his home on Highway 80 a few miles east of Vicksburg.

He got the idea while visiting friends in Texas. They had a gong made from one of the cylinders in British Columbia, and he said he “was intrigued by it. It sounded good.”

The cylinders, which were used in different industries, might have held oxygen, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide or gasses used in acetylene for cutting metals, or maybe by the medical profession. They’ve all been condemned, perhaps because of rust or being gouged or dented, and they’re no longer safe for shipping, “But they’re safe for me,” Len said.

He’s not sure of the technology used to make them. They’re steel. Some seem to have been spun, others have vertical lines and were perhaps made in molds for hot metal. Some are from this country, others from Canada, and he has one from the United Kingdom. He buys them from a gas cylinder company that would ordinarily dispose of them as scrap, “but it’s easier to sell them to someone like me because they don’t have to haul them off.”

To turn the cylinders into bells, Len cuts out the bottom, drills a hole in the top and runs a small aircraft cable down into the inside, welds it into place and attaches the clanger. Dense wood makes a better sound than soft, so he often uses mahogany or cholla wood “or whatever I can put my hands on.”

The first bells he made were from cylinders manufactured in the 1950s and came from Walker’s Dairy, a local company long out of business. There were only six cylinders, and they were 5 feet tall and 14 inches in diameter, so big that he shortened them, making planters out of the bottoms.

Decorating the cylinders varies, for some have such attractive colors he leaves them alone. He does painted designs only by request, for they won’t hold up in the weather, have to be shielded from the elements and require a coat of polyurethane about every six months.

What he prefers is a bamboo design “because I like to watch it blow in the wind.” He’s cut stencils of bamboo leaves and uses “rattle-can paint,” getting different effects and changing colors.

Creativity comes naturally for Len Raines. His mother was a quilter “and a great seamstress who made things from scratch.” His dad, Wallace Raines, “was a really good draftsman who probably didn’t realize it. Just to entertain us, when I was a kid, he might draw a horse or something like that. I was just amazed watching him make those drawings.”

He also made cut-out Christmas decorations and other items and, now, using a grinder, he helps Len by cleaning and polishing the cylinders.

In high school at Warren Central, Len took art from Mary Helen Sims, “an excellent teacher and a very good artist. Under Mrs. Sims, you worked. You did something or you weren’t going to be in her class.”

He continued art classes at Hinds and Southwest Texas State. One of his artistic ventures along with three friends was carving the sign in 7-foot letters, “Remember Duane Allman,” (for one of the Allman Brothers) in the loess bluff on I- 20 in 1973. It gained national fame, and was visible for years.

Len likes watercolors but he uses mixed media — “felt tips, pencils, a little spit, just whatever” — in making working drawings of ideas, and experiments with colors “that I want to work out.”

One of his delights is a scrap yard, evidenced by a wide assortment of salvaged items in his work area. He makes use of any number of things he has collected and is reluctant to throw anything away because “you never know when you’re going to need it. I look at something every day until I decide what to do with it. You can find just about anything in a scrap yard.”

He’s also handy with woodworking tools, but claims to be “just a fair yard carpenter,” explaining that he has to work in the yard because his shop is too crowded.

In addition to being enamored of things creative and artistic, Len has a bachelor’s degree with a double major in English and Spanish and a master’s in Spanish. When he was 36 — about 20 years ago — he went to Ole Miss “as a nontraditional student to complete a degree of some type with a major in whatever suits your fancy.” He had accumulated a lot of hours in English and figured he could earn that degree pretty quickly. He also had an interest in Spanish literature, “and before I knew it, I had enough hours” for a double major.

Just before graduation, his adviser, Melvin Arrington, asked him what were his plans, and Len said, “I guess I’ll just get in the unemployment line.” An offer of a fellowship as a student teacher soon found him back in the classroom, teaching English and also pursuing a master’s in Spanish. “So I started over here,” Len said, “then ended up over here, but it was fun. Eventually, you get where you’re going.”

Two years teaching Spanish in a large Georgia High school was enough for him, so he came back to Vicksburg and a few years ago began making wind bells and followed other artistic and creative pursuits.

He has wind bells on the porch and in the yard and some on the wind bell tree he made, using the bumper off his dad’s old ’54Chevrolet truck as a crossbar because “it just seemed to be a good reuse of it.”

He plans to keep making wind bells, not on a big production level, but as long as he can get the cylinders. If he didn’t make them, he said, they’d be ground up, “as they’re high quality steel, and then remelted to make Toyotas and Chevrolets. But I don’t think they’ll miss it if I make a few bells out of them.”

“I don’t put up a sign,” Len said. “I figure if anybody is interested enough, and they see that wind bell tree out there — that’s my advertisement — they’ll stop and ask,” though some pull up, get out and look, then leave.

It’s not just the awesome use and design of the bells, or curiosity, that entices people, it’s also the soft, melodious tones you hear when a gentle wind blows. No two sound alike, and some have suggested that Len tune them, but he feels, “Why do it when they sound so grand?”

And what would be the point of tuning? With their size and weight, a wind bell choir is out of the question.