NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Sisteco Prismatic Compass
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2004 Mar 19, 13:17 -0500
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2004 Mar 19, 13:17 -0500
Robert, consider that a new US Army M2 compass (of reasonable quality with Tritium dots, not a single capsule) can be bought for less than $70 now. Assuming you had a watch maker (or a compasswright?) go to repair your compass, they would charge you as much or more for the hour of their labor here. Substantially less in Khyber and other places, but I expect something similar in your own home. Then there's the matter of the tritium in the used capsules, classes as an ecohazard and toxic waste--so you can bet you'd pay a disposal fee. Plus the cost of new capsules. I'd suggest that what you want is indeed still possible, simply "not economically feasible" at the local level the way you'd like it. Replacement capsules do exist, they are used in several brands of watches. You could obtain a replacement dial from those firms, or capsules from their suppliers, but I'm sure you'd wind up paying more than the replacement cost of the compass. Yes, times are changing. Overall, thousands of ships are not being lost at sea or wrecked on the rocks every year compared to what once were. So this may not be a bad thing after all. After all, tritium capsules are hardly "traditional" in any sense of the word, they just shouldn't be used for Real Celestial Navigation, now surely?