In order for a sundial to tell the time accurately, it has to be designed and made for its exact location.
So for instance a sundial made for London will not work in Edinburgh.
Most commercially available sundials are mass produced with no regard to where they are going to be positioned. We however make our sundials by calculating the required hour lines to take into account both the latitude and the longitude of the dial's position.
Other makers of customised sundials will normally make them accurate for a specific latitude but very few include the additional longitude adjustment to make the sundial do what it's meant to do..... tell the correct time!
As well as the importance of the hour lines on the dial face, the gnomon ( which casts the shadow) has to be profiled to match the exact latitude of the dial's position.
You will find some dial makers who simply supply gnomons with a fixed angle to cover whole parts of a country!
But it doesn't stop there.......even though we make very accurate sundials they are still only reading what is known as solar time.
We can adjust for this by including the Equation of Time , which converts solar time into clock time. You will see that some of our designs include the Equation of Time curve as standard but it's always possible to include it on any design so please ask.
So when you order a sundial from us we work out the required hour angles and accurately draw up each and every design individually. Because each sundial design is individually prepared it means we can also incorporate any motto, dedication, dates or in fact any detail you might want.....just ask and we'll do our best to include whatever you want!!
Also we don't bother with this so many letters per line rubbish.........have whatever you want. If we can fit it in then we'll do it, at no extra charge!
We work mainly in brass producing both horizontal and vertical sundials. We use high quality sheet brass which means that we don't work from blanks so you can also have any size or shape you want! Using an acid etching process we are able to produce very fine detail and there are options on the type of finish and also the thickness of material used. See specification
The gnomons are cut from plate brass and each one is hand made and profiled for the individual sundial.
There are examples of both traditional and contemporary designs throughout the website and we can adapt alter or modify any of them to meet your requirements.
