This is the book that finally helped me make a simple, horizontal sundial with paper, pencil, a protractor, a little tape, and a pair of scissors. A great deal of the mystery of making a dial was revealed to this non-math type thanks to this book.

The excellent description of the many different ways one can create the same dial is part of what makes this book superb. There are different techniques for laying out the hour lines, and I sometimes find one method easier than the other. I can try more than one method too. This author understands and respects each of these methods and his treatment of each is certain to make one or more of the methods understandable even to me. The construction of the gnomon was also easily explained.

Of considerable value to me are the tables in the appendix. These made drawing out the simple horizontal dial for a latitude of about 38 degrees very simple. I took my little dial outside, leveled the simple instrument and I was very pleased with the results of my first attempt. I must give most of the credit to Albert Waugh.

I'm looking forward to making my own polar dial and noon marks thanks to the information in this book. Indeed, I will put some other texts to use as well, but this is the one book that helps make these things approachable, and even helps one to better understand the content of more modern texts that are now available, especially in Cyberspace.

I do agree with another reviewer that little mention was made of navigation in this work, thus the importance (even today) of the solar compass is understated. This book was also published in a day when more photographs would have been too expensive, although the illustrations and photos in this volume are still considerable for the time (1973), and well chosen. I have myself seen the dial at the still functioning and historically important Brunton Parish Church in Williamsburg, VA.

The book is very good and easy for everybody to learn about sundials, I indicate the book as a great product.

I learnt a lot from this book and the one by Mayall. I strongly recommend you to purchase this if you are looking for technical details on sundial construction. My eagle eye picked up some spelling errors but none that were too serious.

No other book, as far as I know, gives such clear detail about making your own sundials. That word seems so narrow; Waugh covers much more of solar time-telling than just dials. One thing that amazes me is his passion. He writes with clear pride about his own sundials, good to within (he says) ten seconds!

This book covers graphical or analytic techniques for laying out sundials on just about any surface that doesn't move, horizontal, vertical (facing any direction), slanted, or even the ceiling. He also discusses the movable kind, like a "shepherd's dial". It has nothing inherently to do with sheep, but can be used anywhere, even without knowing true north.

The historian may be disappointed. This is not a catalogue of sundials through the ages, although bits of history are scattered throughout. In one sense, though, this is a view into the time of its writing (1973). A modern reader, with access to modern calculators and computers, will be amused if not puzzled by some of tricks used to make hand computation more feasible. I don't know anyone any more who multiplies by adding logs, and the circumlocutions around negative logarithms look positively quaint. The only real flaw in this book is its systematic omission of half the world: the southern hemispehere. It wouldn't have been so hard to add just a paragraph or two about sundials that work "backwards".

Although this book celebrates the craft and art that can go into a sundial, its real value is technical. This book gives the essential methods for the functional side of a solar time-piece; bring your own artistry.

I have read and viewed the major English language texts on Sundials. These being 1.Waugh, 2. Mayall & Mayall, and 3. Rohr.

The Waugh text has good, mostly clear, intructions and gives both graphical and equation based methods of constructions. Mayall and Mayall perhaps has better graphical constuctions but Waugh excells in the variety of tables in the appendix. Waugh also has the clearest explanation of determining the declination of a wall. This is very important as many buildings are aligned along magnetic north (& south & east &west) rather than true north ( south etc...).

A shortcoming of the almost every book including Waugh, is the lack of clear instruction on how to draw other types of hours. Most importantly of these interesting alternatives types of hours are babylonian and Italian hours. These hours are still useful today. So far I've only found the Rohr text to have any attempt of explaining how to draw these lines. However the Rohr text simply doesn't match the clarity and breadth of Waugh and Mayall and Wayall.

Waugh (and Mayall and Mayall) both could do with an update on trigonometry. With the easy availability of scientific calculators, the need for log versions of equations and the use of things like "cot" functions is not needed and simply makes the calculations clumsy to perform on a key pad.

The book by Cousins is an excellent higly detailed text if you can get it, but it seems to be out of print. It is useful if you really want to get into the maths of spherical geometry and it wouldn't be the best book you'd want to read first. It makes you appreciate the wonderful elegance of the graphical solutions but it may convince you that it is all too hard when it actually isn't in a practical sense. Just about anyone can make a simple sundial.

The text by Rohr also has a good section on how to do hour lines on just about any shaped surface (bowl, sphere, plane etc..) if you have a rod for a gnomen. This is about the only strength of this text over the others.

So to conclude Waugh would be the best first text, very closely followed by Mayall and Mayall, then Rohr. The text by Cousins is excellent but at a much higher level that isn't needed for the construction for the standard types of dials.