Navigational Sextant

Hello! I've been a fan of Lego for a very long time, and recently I've started to rekindle my love for it after a long hiatus for college. I have love sailing and the sea, and I thought, "What is something practical that could be realized in Lego form?" And now, after some tinkering, I give you: the working Lego Navigational Sextant!

By no means is it perfect (the telescope doesn't magnify and the graduated arc for angle measurement is unlabeled), but the Master Builders at Lego always think up genius solutions. Regardless of the flaws, everything with the design is sound, with functioning articulation and no illegal connections, and I believe if I had the pieces to build this, I could use it for actual latitude/longitude readings (with a healthy margin of error, of course).

I envision that if this set were made, it could be included with a Lego display stand that would allow it to be tastefully shown in a home or a ship. The set's building guide could also include a short explanation of how to operate a sextant, as well as simple sight reduction tables that would allow to perform actual celestial navigation.

Thank you for viewing/supporting, I hope you enjoy looking at this as much as I did designing it!

Share with friends who sail, who love the sea, or are just fans of Lego!

Features / Parts of the Sextant:

- Fully articulated swinging index arm

- Graduated arc for measuring angle (not perfect, could use improvement on accurate measurements)

- Functional micrometer for fine adjustment of swing arm angle. This part was tricky, since I didn't design a perfectly circular arc, so to let the tire element that I used for frictional adjustment maintain constant contact with the arc, the whole micrometer is an encased floating setup that is constantly being pushed against the arc with two shock absober elements (which are made out of other Technic parts to simulate a compressed shock absorber, since LDD doesn't let you do that).

- Hollow telescope for actual viewing (unfortunately doesn't magnify vision)

- Two sets of glass filters (each set with 3 colors) that allow for shading sunlight

- Horizon mirror and index mirror for actual viewings of the horizon and sun (requires a really good mirror plate to work)

- Handle on the back for easy grip while using

- Nautical themed decorations on the index arm (seashell, crab, starfish), telescope (seagull), and micrometer (ship's wheel)

- A whole lot of gold pieces. Lego is free to pick another color if that's not feasible for some reason.

- Number of pieces: 1377