Traditional Barometer wall plaque design beautiful wood. Percison Mechanism

Why would anyone want to buy a barometer when we have frequent, often hourly, weather forecasts from the Met Office or BBC? The answer is that these national forecasts are insufficiently specific for local areas. I was once half-drowned by heavy rain at the far-point of my local golf-course only one hour after checking on the BBC weather page on the Internet that it would not rain on the course that day.As acknowledged by the English manufacturer Woodford, a German company provides the pressure-measuring apparatus, while the wood-working specialist Woodford makes the superb mounting for it. The result is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, to be hung on the wall near the front door (where pressure changes will affect it.)The accompanying manual is considerably less beautiful. It has apparently been provided by the German company (the English is good, but idiosyncratic, and the European comma is used in place of the full-stop for decimal points.) The device has to be set up for local barometric pressure and the manual gives detailed but rather unhelpful information that assumes the reader is already familiar with barometers. For example, it refers to ‘the pointer’ At first glance, the barometer has two pointers. (In fact, the black pointer points to the barometric pressure; the gold pointer is moved by the user to the last black-pointer reading made, so that you can see whether the new reading has gone up or down, or remained steady, since the previous reading.) The black pointer can be moved by inserting a small screw-driver into the tiny slot on the back of the barometer. This is used to set ‘the pointer’ to the correct local barometric pressure. Which apparently is easily obtainable. Only it isn’t; not in the UK anyway. I had to do a Google search to find a web-site that would actually give me today’s local pressure readings. However, tedious though it is to do this, it is actually quite simple. If your local pressure is said by your nearest local measuring station to be (say) 995mbars and your black pointer shows (say) 1000mbars, use your screw-driver inserted into the back of the instrument to rotate the black pointer to 995mbars. It should best be done during a period of high pressure according to the manual, or it will be necessary to check local air pressure several times to average out differences.The other item about the manual that fascinates me is this gem:“We recommend to adjust the aneroid barometer in the same way [ie, to Sea-level] so that your readings will be based on sea-level air pressure. The barometer is set by the manufacturer for a determined height above sea-level which is shown on the box.”1. The manufacturer’s height is not shown on the box.2. Anyway, why don’t you set it to sea-level (that’s 0 ft everywhere, guys) in accordance with your own recommendation?!!This is a fine piece of equipment, and it merits five stars. But I have to subtract one star for the flaky instruction manual. I’d be fascinated to know how many purchasers of this and other Woodford barometers have actually set their instruments as recommended. I couldn’t find a word of advice on how to do it in other reviews.Finally, don’t forget to tap your barometer every time before you read it.

Great item purchased for my partnerI have a set in my home not this make but a smaller dialShe has always liked themOnly thing that gripped me was the wall mount fixing that would be ok for hanging a small picture I would have expected something more robustFind your barometer setting on line from the Gps position of we're you live or from your local weather forecaster or you local TV news channel weather forecastWell made worth every penny

Looks like a proper precision instrument

Exactly what I wanted. Very pleased with this, the only thing I would have liked is a better description of how to set it up.

The barometer is a replacement for one I won many years ago which no longer works. I am delighted, it was well packaged and delivered as scheduled, well done.

Beautiful piece, a furnish to any room, and accurate in it's weather predictions. Thank you I love it and look at it every day

Excellent, great quality and works perfectly.

a lovely and accurate piece of equipment to follow our strange weather