Choice of Sextant?

[Kukri]

I found this thread whilst Googling for something quite different and thought I would exhume it. After all there is always an anchor thread, so I thought we ought to have a sextant thread too!

Today’s eBay bargain - for lovers of Ancient British Engineering - is a Hezzanith three circle job for £125.00 Looks well used and good to go again. And a very clean looking Sestrel (which I strongly suspect was made by Hughes!) at £150. Another Hezzanith and a Brown and Perring both at £250 and an RN one (also made by Guess Who!) at £300. I remember Brown and Perring and Kelvin Hughes having chart and instrument shops in EC3 within a stone’s throw of JD Potter in The Minories.

Sic transit the British Merchant Navy.

These are all look like perfectly good instruments, with micrometers, quite decent mirrors, and decent telescopes, made relatively recently, not antique vernier sextants, or fakes.

 

[[70521]]

Might not get an answer, the guy made a total of 1 post over 6 years ago......

Darn, caught by a phoenix thread.

 

[Caer Urfa]

I'd appreciate opinions on choice of a sextant.

I've been using a Davis plastic model to learn Astro Navigation and did not have high expectations of it. Now that I know enough to work out what it should have read I discover that the readings are quite variable. I'm intending to buy a proper sextant and have narrowed the choice down to four options:-

1. A new Celestaire - made in China, modern and functional.

2. A secondhand Hughes Royal Navy three ring circa 1968.

3. A Royal Navy surplus Hughes circa 1985 (grey warpaint).

4. A Royal Navy surplus Hughes circa 1985 that has been professionally stripped and polished. This looks beautiful but I'm concerned that stripping it down will have spoiled the calibration although I'm not sure.​

My primary concern is precision as I want to get my fixes as accurate as possible but I can see the fascination in the instrument itself so ideally I'd like to have one that was worth owning. I guess the thing I'm most unsure of is how much, if at all, the calibration will have changed through time or dismantling.

Regards

BobC

Hi Bob I do not know anything about Sextants but funny enough a guy in our sailing club is selling one, its a Davis Master 25 at £120, if interested send PM and I will put you in contact
Mike

View attachment 71295

 

[JohnMurrell]

I have a sextant and quite proficient at its use as well.

My sextant is one of the better "plastic" ones and I get correct fixes from it; YES, I could get more accurate fixes with a top quality unit but what for???

I have 3 different GPS, complete with their own antennas.... other than WW3 starting while I am at sea what is the problem?

You can never get a great fix when you are sitting atop a rock & roll sailboat!

Just to add some lateral thinking of course. Enjoy your sextant!

GL

If you sail in some of the areas such as the West Coast of Scotland where the military play war games you may find your GPS jammed or spoofed though they issue warnings. The other thing that could stop GPS working or produce large inaccuacies is a solar storm - that may well take out all four ( USA,European, Russian & Chinese) navigation systems at the same time. Still it is a once in a 100 year event and last happened in the mid 1850's

 

[Praxinoscope]

I have a ‘Zeiss‘ Freiberger drum sextant, it’s an excellent piece of kit, well made, accurate, good bright and clear optics, and the drum design is I think easy to use.
Used ones seem to go for about £200-£300.

 

[Refueler]

You can tweak most sextants to a level of accuracy more than sufficient for your purposes. It all depends on how much you take pride of ownership from a object.

I have a beautiful reconditioned old ships sextant from some liner or something. Lovely to look at, needs an occasional polish, but I love it.

Where the new ones win is the quality of the viewing optics.

If I was buying again, having had an antique, I would probably buy a modern one.

Polish ?????

Please don't ... as an ex navigator who used sextants every day ... last thing you ever did was polish .... you used a leather or cleaning cloth for eye-glasses to wipe it down ... treat it like you 'love it' ... stroke it ...

 

[Refueler]

For most work ... one of the best proper sextants .... is the 'Mate' ... an all metal Kelvin Hughes production - rebranded sometimes as 'Davis'. Primarily intended for sun sights, but fully capable of doing stars. It was supplied to many Shipping Co's and provided accurate results. Simple design .. light and easy to use. My Brother when he visited from USA - unknown to me - took my Mate back to USA ............. of course when asked about it ... What ME ????

Many Cadets who excelled and won a prize would be presented with a 'Mate' ..... with their name engraved into box lid.

The Rolls Royce of course on ships was the Plath .... but be prepared to pay good money for one .... and only 2nd hand.

The one that was generally looked on as best for stars .... Tamaya ... yes Japanese ... but a masterpiece of precision engineering ... but heavy.

 

[Kukri]

The Tamaya that I had has a 7x50 scope and was made for submarines (which tended to rely on star sights, for obvious reasons!). Indeed, as Nigel says, very heavy, so I passed it on to a friend to celebrate his passing his Master’s Orals. After a long career in P&O, it’s back at sea in CNCo.

The Astra is a Chinese sextant with an alloy frame and big mirrors. It’s pretty good - some have “full view” mirrors which are nice.

 

[Praxinoscope]

Ouch! just had a look at new sextant prices, the Freiberger is now over £1000. Thankfully I bought mine many years ago and it still is as accurate today as when I bought it, when using an artificial horizon.
As for accuracy in use, depends a lot on your boat, trying to get an anywhere near accurate reading on a 26’ under sail is like trying to eat peas off a knife, probably a lot easier on a 40’ but never tried it.
Although Spike Milligan had the answer to the latter:

“I eat my peas with honey
I’ve done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But keeps them on the knife”

 

[AndrewB]

I'd buy the new one.

If you go for an older one, insist it is certificated. I made that mistake many years ago and bought a sextant that proved fit only for converting into a table-lamp. Realising this only shortly before I was due to leave, I rushed out and bought a new Davis Mark 15 plastic sextant which got me across the Atlantic (pre GPS). It was good for a couple of years, eventually with regular use the plastic cogs wore, creating considerable back-lash and reducing the accuracy.

But if I was buying again, for light use as a practice instrument and emergency back-up, a Davis Mark 15 would be high on my list.

 

[lustyd]

Personally I think the OP should invest in pharmaceuticals rather than waste his money on a sextant…

 

[Kukri]

I'd buy the new one.

If you go for an older one, insist it is certificated. I made that mistake many years ago and bought a sextant that proved fit only for converting into a table-lamp. Realising this only shortly before I was due to leave, I rushed out and bought a new Davis Mark 15 plastic sextant which got me across the Atlantic (pre GPS). It was good for a couple of years, eventually with regular use the plastic cogs wore, creating considerable back-lash and reducing the accuracy.

But if I was buying again, for light use as a practice instrument and emergency back-up, a Davis Mark 15 would be high on my list.

I don’t know where you could get a sextant re-certificated these days.

I bought a Plath from JD Potter in 1983 and they re-certificated it. A few years ago, thinking that thirty years had gone by, I asked B. Cooke if they could re-certificate it again. They said they could. I sent it to them and after a pause they sent it back, saying that it did not fit their collimator.

If Britain’s most old fashioned nautical instrument suppliers can’t do it, I don’t know who can.

C.Plath, like JD Potter, ceased to exist some years ago.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

I have a loadstone and sunstone glass, being fashionable when the OP first posted this thread.

 

[Kukri]

For most work ... one of the best proper sextants .... is the 'Mate' ... an all metal Kelvin Hughes production - rebranded sometimes as 'Davis'. Primarily intended for sun sights, but fully capable of doing stars. It was supplied to many Shipping Co's and provided accurate results. Simple design .. light and easy to use. My Brother when he visited from USA - unknown to me - took my Mate back to USA ............. of course when asked about it ... What ME ????

Many Cadets who excelled and won a prize would be presented with a 'Mate' ..... with their name engraved into box lid.

The Rolls Royce of course on ships was the Plath .... but be prepared to pay good money for one .... and only 2nd hand.

The one that was generally looked on as best for stars .... Tamaya ... yes Japanese ... but a masterpiece of precision engineering ... but heavy.

This one is on eBay right now; looks not to have had much use.

Boxed Kelvin And Hughes 1950’s Naval Sextant No 65179 With Original Receipt | eBay

At that sort of price I’d risk it.

 

[Praxinoscope]

This one is on eBay right now; looks not to have had much use.

Boxed Kelvin And Hughes 1950’s Naval Sextant No 65179 With Original Receipt | eBay

At that sort of price I’d risk it.

At the current price a real bargain, I would guess the next few hours will see a steady rise, with 8 bidders already, Looking at the certificate quite surprised at the corrections +20” @ 30* -50“ @ 120*..
I found it quite amusing to read the sales receipt, at a glance it reads ‘ I Hate Sextant 65179) .

 

[Kukri]

It lives in its box “handle up”, a thing that I never saw before but which saves the need to swap hands, though you would have to position the index bar to 55 degrees each time.

Bargains do turn up. This is an unused aluminium frame Plath from the German Navy Stores Depot. Sold without a telescope, but I looked at the 6x30 on my other one and, remembering 1970s maritime Hamburg and its firms’ propensity for “doing deals over the border”, I thought “I bet that’s a Carl Zeiss Jena military monocular, rebadged”. Right first time… readily available and cheap.

Incidentally there is a tendency to worship the name of Plath. Two points - just as the Russian Poljot deck watch is a precise copy of the Ulysse Nardin one, so the Russian SNoM sextant is a precise copy of the WW2 Plath, and the SNoT one is a modified -arguably an improved - Freiburger, which is itself based on the Plath.

see here (good book by the way):

The USSR SNO-T sextant – The Nautical Sextant

And the light switch and battery housing on the Plath is utter carp.

 

[Kukri]

Still sitting there at the same price, three hours to go…

 

[Kukri]

It went for £98.63p.

That seems a very reasonable price for a three circle micrometer Mate’s Sextant, which cost £48..0s..0d in 1957, all present and correct.

There are people asking more for plastic ones. I know which I would sooner have.

 

[emandvee44]

I own 5 sextants, as I got into collecting a few years ago
I have a Hezzanith which my parents purchased for me when I passed Second Mates certificate; it went with me through Third mate, Second mate, and Chief Officer, and is in near original condition. It is also very accurate - we never hit anything.

My favourite is the Freiberger (not the yacht version), and I have 3 grey ones and a black one as per the image.
They are always coming up on ebay,. which is where I purchased all mine and they are in near perfect condition. I did have to purchase two replacement rubber eyepieces, really necessary for comfortable use.

M.

 

[Kukri]

I thought I was bad with my two Plaths!

But I do seem to have acquired two Ulysse Nardin, one EMT, one Hamilton and one Russian deck watches. The Russian is an exact clone of the Nardins.