Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/23/lovely-simple-7-brass-compas.html
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“…or just wandering around my living room.”
Feng Shui tool?
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My son has a stainless WW2 aviators one like below inherited from my dad, lord knows where he got it. They were meant for using if you’d been shot down and were trying to get back to your lines.
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And only $30.48 in the Canadian Amazon store!
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But then you’d miss out on all that great service and primo customer experience! And don’t forget the exchange rate conversion!
Also a great accessory for your steampunk, Indiana Jones, or Allan Quatermain cosplay!
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I never found these basic compasses. Nor these complicated compasses:
All that useful (the later because I probably don’t understand their use). Now the flat transparent kind with the orienteering lines all printed up on their shit? Those I understood and found useful (thanks scouts!). But the things that make them more useful are kind of not their without a map. And it has to be a map that’s designed to be used with that kind of compass.
Uhm, yeah. The pocketwatch-style compasses are really hard (no, impossible) to sight accurately.
Like you, I learnt on a Silva baseplate compass. It’s almost as challenging to sight.
Lensatic compasses like the one you picture are easiest to sight, but you have to carry a protractor if you’re going to rule your sight line on a map. Also, I find that since the doc inflicted bifocals on me, lensatics have become very hard to use.
Nowadays I carry a mirror-sight compass. My current one is one of these. The inexpensive ones all get bubbles in the capsule eventually, but I can’t afford a top-of-the-line Brunton, and would begrudge the weight if I had one.
I like having a clinometer in the compass, since occasionally I hike in enough snow to need one.
Whatever you get nowadays should have a declination adjustment. Unless you’re so very sure of your technique that you think you can 100% remember whether you’re adding or subtracting, under the stress of being lost, tired and hungry.
I actually learned on various nautical compasses, the sort that are mounted and stabilized to give an accurate read on bobbing a boat. First for adhock “dead reckoning” style navigation. And later with propper nautical charting (which sadly I don’t remember much of these days). I then learned on the lensatic in the scouts, but never quite figured out how to best use them with a map. Then in highschool we were taught using the silva during a field trip orienteering class. Out of the three I’d probably only be able to navigate a map with something largely similar to the silva.
Without a map? Any compass would probably be about as useful for me as any other.
I would think these are brass-plate, but the amazon description says “solid brass”.
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