15 Minute Sand Timer

Time goes strange in the heat. Five minutes and twenty minutes feel about the same from the bench, and the only honest way to know is to watch something fall.

This is the old answer to that. A glass of sand on the wall, nothing to charge and nothing to check.

The run is fifteen minutes. The scale beside the glass is marked twice, once upright and once upside down, so it reads correctly whichever way the timer is left hanging after you turn it. That is the whole reason for the doubled numbers, and it is the detail that tells you the thing was designed by somebody who had used one.

It hangs on two short arms and pivots between them, so you turn it over where it hangs instead of lifting it down with wet hands. The body is 28.5 cm tall and 5 cm wide, so it takes up almost no wall.

Hang it where you can see it from the bench, and turn it when you sit down.

• Fifteen minute glass, white sand
• Scale marked 0, 5, 10 and 15 minutes, doubled so it reads either way up
• Pivots on two arms, turn it without taking it off the wall
• 28.5 x 5 x 3 cm, as stated by the maker
• 0.25 kg, as stated by the maker