Plan B Forum

Did all y'all remember to move YOUR clocks ahead last night?

-"BB"-

The only thing I have to adjust anymore is my microwave - all my other timepieces are digital and self-adjust.

I have a spring-driven pendulum clock with a very fussy chime system. The maker says NEVER turn the hands forward. So I stop the pendulum for 11 hours each spring.

Lots of other gadgets that also need tending, all with their own way of doin it. Finally my Seiko perpetual calendar, solar powered wrist watch died. It was 19 years old and kept time plus or minus 5 seconds a year! Until it didn't. It was an absolute pain to adjust for daylite savings time.
But once it was set up right, it was wonderful. Now I forego the pleasures of a perpetual calendar and do a simple adjustment on Feb 29 this year.

I have a couple of mid-priced auto-mechanical wrist watches, but they have been put away in the archives. I found my normal activity now does not keep them running reliably. I am too lazy to even load them in an electric auto-winder each nite.

Typical problems of the modern over-indulged.

snailgate

I adjusted my sun dial yesterday.

Just to let you know, BSG, it IS possible to "set" a sundial to DST in the spring (and of course return it to standard time in the fall).  It usually involves rotating the entire sundial — base, gnomon, calibrated dial, and all — until the shadow cast by the gnomon falls onto the dial at the desired time.  And given most sundial installations, that's a heckuvalot of work.  Although I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that someone, somewhere has designed a sundial where the calibrated dial is held in place by setscrews; loosening the setscrews allows one to rotate the dial until it is displaying the desired time and then all one needs to do is re-secure the dial by tightening the setscrews.

Personally, if I were to install a sundial I would set it for daylight savings time year-round, since
1) despite many years of dissent and discussion, it looks like DST is never going to be done away with; and
2) DST currently runs from the beginning of March to the beginning of November, a total of eight months in which it is the de facto default time.  During the other four months of the year (November thru February), at least in my neck of the woods, it would be outside in the cold or under too much snow to be readable anyway ...

-"BB"-

Burning Petard wrote:I have a spring-driven pendulum clock with a very fussy chime system. The maker says NEVER turn the hands forward. So I stop the pendulum for 11 hours each spring.

Lots of other gadgets that also need tending, all with their own way of doin it. Finally my Seiko perpetual calendar, solar powered wrist watch died. It was 19 years old and kept time plus or minus 5 seconds a year! Until it didn't. It was an absolute pain to adjust for daylite savings time.,,,,

snailgate

Take it to a jeweler/watch salesman who sells them and they can send it back to Seiko for a new battery. Which will cost about the same as a new watch. I love the watch and now I have two of them!

yrs,
rubato