Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Crafts: Sundial


Via: Imgur

"It is made of 29.5 x 26 x 2.5 cm polished marble that had the misfortune of having a small defect, disqualifying it from any serious project. Gnomon (a.k.a. "metal triangle") is made of 2mm thick aluminum."




The program is called Shadows Pro, it's freeware (with its basic functions unlocked) and it's awesome.


Cutting off excess paper.


The stone. There is a small defect on the right side, where this dark and lightning-ish shape is present. It's a deep (0.5-2 mm) and irregular scratch that is almost impossible to remove without the need of polishing at least 2 mm of entire stone. Luckily, it's small enough to be ignored in this project.


Test fit before transferring the design onto the stone. I glued the paper using standard wood glue. It's easy to remove from the stone yet holds the paper in place pretty well.


Drying. Using a different stone and maybe soon-to-be another sundial as a press. I'm saying "maybe", because It's granite and I don't think it will be as easy to work with as marble. Actually, I am more than certain that there will be a lot of swearing and cursing involved. This motherf... is hard and I mean: really, really hard.


The granite piece is also larger. 50 x 40 cm. Oh, and it weights around 15 kg.


Looks like a mess, it was a mess. But acceptable.


After removing all the paper and glue, and redrawing the lines with marker. Some of the lines already carved.


Work in progress.


Almost finished. Thickened and deepened hour lines, straightened and deepened them a bit. When I get some tungsten carbide chisel, I'll deepen them even more but this has to wait. All that's left is to attach gnomon and mark hours. Carving hours is currently out of question as my skills are far from perfect, so I'll probably buy or make some out of aluminum. For now, it stays as it is.


Seems that everything works, although the sundial is not aligned properly with a compass yet. My first nuclear fusion powered clock.


1 down, 20 to go.


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