Hi Bob: Wishing you great success with your sundial dedication ceramony today! I know how hard you have worked to pull this off.
Finally, Dave and I will have another painted wall sundial from the United States to add to add to the tiny collection of PWS in this country! Take lots if pictures. Good luck! John -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bob Hampton Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 9:47 PM To: sundial list Subject: Burnsville Quilt Block Sundial It has been a long time since my last update to you on the progress of the Burnsville Quilt Block sundial. We've had a very rough winter here in the Blue Ridge mountains, and it slowed our progress, but it's all coming together now! As many of you will recall, this is a large (8ft. x 8 ft.) vertical south decliner that will be on the Yancey Common Times Journal building and visible from the town square in Burnsville North Carolina. We are planning to install our sundial on March 19th, and then have a dedication ceremony on the 20th, Spring Equinox. The local TV station has been informed and may be there for the installation and ceremony. And of course the Yancey Common Times Journal is giving us lots of publicity. The fire department is even going to wash Main Street for the dedication ceremony! You're all invited to attend! The metal parts - mounting frame (8x8x3 ft) and gnomon (one inch diameter rod, 4 ft long, with a 16" diameter mounting plate) - are now ready. We had a heck of a time with the gnomon, had to scrap the first one when the machine shop got the angles all wrong. I knew there was a problem when he said "it's just a sundial, so it doesn't really need to be precise". Once that misconception was disposed of they made a good one for us, close enough to be "perfect" with a small adjustment of the mounting holes. The painting of the dial face (2 sheets of 1/2" MDO plywood) is complete. Quilt Trails of WNC has a fully equipped paint studio, a staff of volunteers, and a systematic, high quality painting process they've used to make more than 100 quilt blocks, so it has been the perfect place to make a sundial! I'm fortunate to be working with a great artist named Martin Webster, who has created a stunning, fantastically colorful quilt block pattern for the dial face, based on my hour lines, EoT, and star map. It is very consistent with the other quilt blocks, but much bigger and much more intricate than the others. I'm very fortunate also to be working with Martin's wife Barbara, the director of Quilt Trails of WNC, who has very skillfully organized every aspect of this project, which has become a monster. Our sundial will show zonal solar time and zonal solar time +1 hour, and for historical purposes it will also show local apparent time. In addition to the hour lines and numerals the dial face has a graph of the EoT, the words "Burnsville NC", and a map of the northern sky as it was at sunrise on Dec 28,1833, the first sunrise over the newly formed Yancey County. We're making brochures with a short explanation of the sundial, and a booklet with a more complete explanation of the dial, how it works, how it was made, and info about the Quilt Trails. And we're making posters and T-shirts too! We may even set up a permanent webcam so local students, or anyone else, can watch the sundial in real time on the internet. As soon as it's installed I'll post photos for you and I'll try to make the publications available for you to download. Wish me some good luck. If the sundial works properly many people can rightly take the credit for it, but if it's wrong the blame will be all mine! Bob Hampton www.thunderstruckobservatory.com --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
