Glass Sundial

[Mike]

I've finally finished (except for one final detail) my first sundial. I figured out what to do about getting the gnomon to stand up, which was to put a slit in the disk that I placed at the center of the lines. So the disk hides the un-eveness of the ends of the green number lines but also is the support piece for the gnomon.

It took a couple of tries to get the slit the right size and I still ended up using a small diamond bit in my grinder to grind it out though. I also used my bigger dimond bit to grind the bottom of the gnomon flat. I thought it would take a bit of grinding to do, but the dimond bits I have for my GlasStar G8 made very short work of getting a flat edge so that it would stand on it's own.

After I finished with the disk I ground down the edges of the sundial, placed the disk where I wanted it and did a fire polish/tack fuse. The one thing I have not done yet is to actually glue the gnomon in the slit and to the plate of the sundial. I'm not sure what I'll use yet, but it will probably be a clear silicon glue of so kind so it will also be water proof. And it won't be so obvious along the eges of the gnomon since it will be clear.

Here are a couple of pictures of my sundial:





This has been a fun and interesting project and I have a number of ideas to try when I do the next one. I did find out that the calculations I used for this one was Standard Time rather than the summer Daylight Savings Time. Since there is more sunlight in the summer months, the next one I'm going to find out how to adjust it for DST. For this one I'll tell people that, just like with the VCR, I lost the remote and can't adjust it for the time change.

Mike