Wanted to get this down on paper before the ideas floated away.  This dial is often referred to as a Noon Mark dial.  During those in-between times when people relied strictly on a sundial and then relied on a watch, there was a time that watches just sucked.  They were either slow or fast.  In addition, time wasn't standardized across the country as travelers moved from cross country by train.  To help folks deal with these issues, Noon Mark dials were setup in town squares and provided accurate time of noon. People would stop and correct their watches based on the indication of Noon given as the shadow passed the 'noon mark' on the dial.  In addition, homes at that time often had 'marks' on window sills or walls that indicated Noon.  

This particular design is about 183 cm tall and 40 cm wide (scale: 1mm = 10 mm).  There will be (smaller) dashes to mark the first of each month and an analemma to mark the local civil time. The analemma provides a correction for the yearly 'wobble' of the earth and is  is 'tilted' to provide correction for local longitude. The Zodiac is given to provide some reference to the month.

Covid was a very personal, difficult thing to our family this year. 

Lots of experimenting going on so the consistency is not there, but each one tested positive on good cider

I've always wanted to build a jig for forging bottle openers and with the Creede Hockey Tournament coming up in January, thought I'd give it a try. There's a few old ones in this pile, but most are from various jig configurations.  These still need to go in the tumbler and get a wax finish. However, getting closer ... 

This is the start of what will likely be the last of my gnomonic activity for 2020. Not really sure what this is going to look like, but going crazy not being in the forge. The blank is left over after the realizing that the folks who cut the numbers, cut them in reverse order ... so I turned the dial inside out (or upside down) and started fresh with a new design - TBD. 

A quick froe for a neighbor ... 

2020/11/6: Taking me a long time to recover from my injury.  Tore my bicep off, tore 3 of 4 rotator cuff tendons, tore labrum, etc.  Doing small things as the strength slowly returns.  Forged 6 wall hooks for hanging fishing gear and had to rest arm between each one.  

I've been researching this method on/off for over a year. I took a short workshop at Wrought Academy from Jim Austin using the techniques associated with Koftgari which uses a knife blade rather than a chisel. Took a very short workshop from Mitsusuke in Kumamoto, Japan. Finally, I took a Japanese inlay class in Seattle from Momoko in the fall of 2019.  All of these workshops covered little bits here and there, but most of the heavy lifting was done by the instructors. So... I decided to start with the basics and tie all these bits together. 

The first step is making a stamp for the heavier silver and gold that I will need to use for higo zogan. Higo Zogan and Kyo Zogan are Japanese overlay methods for steel, while nunome zogan is overlay for brass.  The techniques are roughly the same, but the tools are different.  I have made most of the tools, but the last challenge was the stamp for the heavier silver or gold.  

I've only tried it on thin copper and silver, but it seems to work very well.  This will be the basic segment of an inlayed aspen leaf.