I wouldlike to make a horizontal sundial for my garden. I recall seeing an English Medieval sundial (at Huntington Gardens in San Marino, CA)…and I would like to copy this design.
Anyone ever made one? What materials did you use?
There’s a good book on Sundials published by Dover books – It’s entitled Sundials, and tells you all you need to know about Gnomons and The Equation of Time.:
If this is a new edition of one that I have, it’s pretty good, too. Explains the Analemma:
Believe it or not, when I was a kid I had a portable sundial. Boy Scouts Of America sold it. It folded up to a size you could carry in a shirt pocket. Had a compass on/in it, and a little fold-up gnomon (the little pointy thing that casts the shadow).
The owner’s manual had a chart for how you had to orient the thing to compensate for the variations between Magnetic North and True North anywhere in the North American continent.
Best I can recall, it was accurate to within half and hour.
I guess you’ve aslo heard of those gardens where various flowers and plants bloom or do something unique on the hour?
The simplest way to emulate a sundial is to poke a stick in the ground and tilt it toward north. Then just mark off notches on the ground as each hour arrives. Copy those marks onto the surface of whatever dial face you want to use.
I bet there are dozens of websites with better instructions.