small measurements stephanie white
S White
1:1
No information on this. I use it to level clocks, of which I have many, sitting on old chests of drawers which warp and unwarp with the seasons. If the clock mechanism is slightly atilt the clock doesn’t run for very long. Big fat mantel clocks bonging out their Westminster chimes every 15 minutes are rather looser in fit than the three Japy Frères clocks which are like skittish racehorses: elegant and termpermental. Sometimes just a piece of paper is enough for a shim. Longer levels skip over small variations, this little 4 1/2” level is for very local changes of grade. The eye can see when things aren’t quite square; the level indicates the degree. Contemporary levels centre the bubble between two lines; with this one you have to balance the ends of the bubble in relation to the middle. You can level clocks left to right by ear. The tic and the toc have to be absolutely equal or the clock won’t run. The small level is for front to back levelling, perpendicular to the pendulum arc: the clock will run if it tilts slightly to the back or the front, but eventually it will loosen the mechanism. Clocks communicate with each other when they are fairly close. Slowly, they will coordinate their speeds. I don’t know how this can possibly work other than something happens when sound waves meet brass. We can do fairly fine adjustments using the pendulum length, but the perfect adjustments are done at some molecular level and involve temperature and gravity: any change and things all go agley.
This level lives in its little case in my desk along with other rarely used but lovely metal things — letter stencils, WWI binoculars, a 50’ black steel tape measure in a leather case, a set of draughting instruments — all tools, meant to be used and which over their long lives have accrued a powerful presence. Even small penknives worn smooth by years in a pocket full of change have an insistent longevity: they might be beautiful, but they also work. They illustrate nothing but themselves. Is this my cabinet de curiosités , tools so far removed from contemporary daily life that they constitute an archaeology of things? But I have used most of them, I remember whose they were and where they came from. They are hardly curated — a compass, a mechanical dash board clock; there is a kukri and something else deadly I cannot bear to look at. But there is also a slide rule and my much-used ruling pen. We were once fluent in these tools. And we once fixed things. But we have become inarticulate and impatient.
q
on site review 39: tools
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