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Sundial blog post updates

A Ruby Wedding Dial

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David Hawker has submitted the following entry to the 2020 BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards:

This sundial was made in early 2020 to celebrate a Ruby Wedding for April 2020. It is designed to be mounted on the south facing wall of a house in Sutton, Surrey. However, due to Covid 19 it is yet to be installed.

The dial is made from Welsh blue/black slate and is 380mm high x 254mm wide x 20mm thick (15” x 10” x 3/4”). Dial furniture includes names at the top of the dial, ‘40 Yrs’ carved at the bottom of the dial and a carved date curve for 5th April, the anniversary date. A carved daffodil indicates a spring time anniversary.

The gnomon uses a 5mm brass rod with a nodus made from an 8mm rod drilled and soldered to the gnomon. The gnomon rod is soldered to a brass supporting plate with a tang that is inserted through a slot cut into the slate. The back of the slate is recessed and two brass pins are set through the holes in the tang before being fixed and sealed with two pack epoxy. The dial will be supported by brass brackets.

The design, calculations, carving and metal work are all by the dial maker.

BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards 2020

There’s still time to enter the competition, so for those who have been creating dials during lockdown now is the time to share! For more information, see details of the competition.

The Re-birth of a Large Polyhedral Sundial

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Another recent entry to the 2020 BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards is David Brown’s restoration of a large, polyhedral dial which required extensive repairs and reconstruction, fully described in the submission.

David writes:

The Gloucestershire owner of this 650kg fine-grained sandstone sundial, missing all its gnomons and delineations, wanted it restored to working order. Large holes, where the original gnomons had been fixed with molten lead, had collected rainwater and insects over two hundred years and moss, algae and grime had darkened all the surfaces. After cleaning, drying and surface re-shaping was undertaken. Plain sundials were designed and cut for the 25 exposed faces over a period of several months during the Covid-19 outbreak.The completed sundial was transported back to Gloucester in September and set on a new sandstone cube standing on its original base stone.

Here are the details and more pictures.

BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards 2020

There’s still time to enter the competition, so for those who have been creating dials during lockdown now is the time to share! For more information, see details of the competition.

Photo Competition 2020 – Winners

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Congratulations to Mike Shaw, winner of the 2020 Competition with Time…Flys, taken in a private garden in Wirral.

Time…….Flys

Congratulations also to Ian Butson who achieved both second and third places with Singing In Time, from Parade Gardens in Bath, and Amongst the Flowers, I Count the Hours from Duncombe Park, Helmsley.

Read on for the remaining entries and photographers:

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Ta Ha Sundial, Sepang, Malaysia

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Here is a recent entry to the 2020 BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards which describes a beautiful armillary dial in Sepang, Malaysia that elegantly combines calligraphy with the shape of the dial and the name of the hotel where it is located. Follow the link or click the picture for full details.

BSS Sundial Design And Restoration Awards 2020

There’s still time to enter the competition, so for those who have been creating dials during lockdown now is the time to share! For more information, see details of the competition.

Bridol for Armchair Dial Hunters

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There are now over 4000 dials in Bridol, the on-line subset of the Society’s Fixed Dial Register of British dials. The Bridol display has recently been revised and offers a number of capabilities that may interest the armchair diallist.

Chief among these is closer integration between the list and map views. Any set of dials selected by the filters can be shown as a sortable list or on a map, using tabs to switch views. Clicking an individual dial in the list view reveals it on the map with detailed information and a thumbnail  that links to photos of the dial:

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Bridol updated

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We are pleased to announce that a new version of Bridol is now available on the site, adding nearly 2,000 extra dials. Full details and photographs are provided for the majority of dials although, as before, private dials are excluded and particularly vulnerable ones have their location withheld. Those marked as ‘Access: Restricted’ may be open only at certain times and may require an entrance fee. Those marked ‘Access: Visible’ can be easily seen from a public place, but may not be viewable close up.

Bridol can be found in the menus under Sundials/British Dials/List or /Map: the list view allows various ways of filtering the dials: by location (place name or postcode), type, condition, county or date. Alternatively you can enter any text you are interested in into the search box.

If you prefer to have the dials on your own computer or tablet, the same set, in a slightly different format, is available as a pdf on DVD or USB Memory Stick. Ask for ‘The Sundial Register’ from Elspeth Hill at sales@sundialsoc.org.uk. The cost is £15 plus postage.