One foot in the grave and one firmly on my clock shop floor...  Just go
to a good hardware store and get yourself some untempered steel rods.
Neck a rod in a vise, inserted into the vise evenly and at exactly one
inch depth.  Taper the rod inward, just shy of the top; you will need
the metal there to rivet later.

With a chime rod hammer (take and clip a junk chime hammer off and set
it in a little wood handle), strike the rod and tune it using tuning
forks or an electronic chromatic tuner (about $30).  Leave the pitch
a couple of whole steps flat.  Using a wire cutter, clip the rod when
you get pretty close, but a couple of whole steps flat.

Now remove the rod from the vise and clip off 3/4 of an inch above the
taper.  Mount and tune again leaving it 50 cents flat.  Remove from the
vise.  Now, slightly sand the whole rod with 600 wet/dry sandpaper.

Prepare a pan of motor oil (can be used over and over) and also prepare
a pan of water (distilled).

Dip the rod in the oil.  With a long-necked needle-nosed pliers, hold
the rod in the center and heat with a blow-torch on high flame.  There
will be lots of acrid smoke!  Be sure to move the torch evenly and
slowly up and down the rod.

Heat the rod until cherry red (alternatively to blue or just black),
drop in water and let cool one hour.  Clean your rod with 0000 steel
wool.  Mount the rod in the vise again and check pitch and sound.  If
the pitch needs to be higher, use a file to adjust.  Rivet the rod into
the block or screw-in mount.

Note: If you don't like the sound, start all over with different rod
stock.  If you like the sound, buy more stock!

Have a Maß!

Grüße,
Karl Schröder

 [ A Maß is a measure (of cold German beer).  -- Robbie  ;-)