Abacus Calendar 2.0

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:05]I've had a troublesome relationship with calendars. Oh yeah, there's calendars on my phone. There's calendars on my tablet. In fact, the two calendars can talk to each other because they're the same brand. I have a paper calendar over there that I write all the big meetings and notes and appointments and whatever.

[00:00:21]But I also used to have this little block. It was the size of a postage stamp. It was maybe uh almost two centimeters thick and it was one page for every day of the year. Just a little pad of tiny pages with a number on it.

[00:00:41]And I would keep it right here on the table and I could just look at it and see what the date was.

[00:00:48]So then after I used that up, it was only good for a year. I decided I wanted another kind of perpetual calendar. And so I started looking around online on how perpetual calendars work. And I ended up making this thing. This perpetual calendar has like uh a number of laminated cards. And there's cards for the days of the week. So this is Tuesday and you have Monday and Sunday and Wednesday. And you flip the cards around appropriately. And then here is the day of the month. And uh tomorrow will be the 20th. So I'll have to flip it around like that. And then I had this idea for a abacus calendar. I had an idea for if you could have little metal pieces that sort of acted like cribage pins in a cribage board and you could just move them around to keep track of the day of the week and the day of the month. So I created this thing. Well, let's look and see how the first prototype of the Abacus calendar works.

[00:01:51]Well, the layout is divided into four sections. So, the heart of it are these blue pockets. You can think of them as a flat squat rectangle. And these represent the days of the week, starting with Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then up on the top row is Saturday and Sunday. So, think of it as a squat rectangle. And as you cycle through the days, you go through the weeks repeatedly like that. So, uh, today is, uh, Tuesday, so that would be there. Put a steel ball on Tuesday's pocket. And tomorrow being Wednesday, I would move it over to here. The next two sections are in yellow on this version, and they represent the two-digit date of the month. So you have the 10's digit here on the left. And you would either have So for dates the 1st through the 9th, you would not put any balls here.

[00:02:44]For the 10th through the 19th, you would put one ball here. For the 20th through the 29th, you put two of them. And for the 30th and the 31st, you put three of them like that. And then the other side, the units digit of the date of the month, you represent 0 through nine. But I'm doing so with only five a maximum of five balls. And that's because I'm using what might be called quinary counting quinary arithmetic which is basically the abacus method which is these bottom four pockets count one each. So that would be four the date of the fourth for instance. But when you go to the fifth this top pocket counts for five. So that would be the fifth. the 6th, the 7th, the 8th, and the 9th, etc. So, today is Tuesday the 19th of May. So, there is 10 and 9 is 19. And there is my Tuesday ball right there. So, the maximum number of steel balls that you need for this version are eight to represent the 29th.

[00:03:56]The 29th of the month uses the most steel balls as you can see here. So that it's using seven for the date of the month and then one for the week. And then the minimal number of steel balls you need are two. So you need one steel ball here and you need one for the date of the for the day of the week. So because you have a minimum of two and a maximum of eight, you need six storage compartments for the unused beads or unused balls. So in this case, if it was the first of the month, I would be putting the unused steel balls there.

[00:04:34]And then the next day would be the second, I would increment the day of the week and the date, and then the next day after that would be Thursday, the 3, etc., etc. So, one of the faults of this original version of the abacus calendar is that these steel balls are just sitting in pockets and they're not really very secure. If you bump this thing, the balls are going to go flying.

[00:04:55]In fact, I I usually like to keep this uh on this table toward the back edge, but if I put something big on the table, like a typewriter or something, often times I'll bump this and knock the steel balls loose. They even go flying on the floor. Uh the other alternative is I could have used some rare earth magnets in these pockets. But because these are pachinko balls, they're stainless steel.

[00:05:16]They don't really have that much iron in them. The uh rare earth magnets don't really stick all that well. And so as a consequence, you can still dislodge the balls pretty easily. And also because of the way of the configuration, you can't really use this vertically. The balls are all going to fall off. So this configuration, you're fixed to using it horizontally. The other issue is these are really kind of close together. And so sometimes like if you have a lot of steel balls on the storage area, getting them out can be kind of bulky. They're really close together and it's kind of fiddly. So, I need a little bit more room around these as well. And it's for those reasons that I wanted to design a new abacus calendar that addressed some of those issues. Well, so I got to thinking if I'm going to be making a new abacus calendar, I could use a different shape piece of wood besides this long skinny piece here. So the top sketch was more of kind of like a square layout where I have the weekday balls here, three of the storage balls here, the two digit areas for the day of the month here, and then the other three storage areas here, making more of a square configuration. Here was another version of the square configuration where the days of the week up on top, the storage down here, and then I have the tens and units. I have the tens digit oriented horizontally in this one to make it more, you know, square. Then down here, I have a couple other ideas. All of these are kind of mostly like a square configuration. But I did uh finally start to go with maybe something similar to what I had before, but just a a taller piece of wood because the steel balls, as you'll see, are bigger. And then I was thinking with a thick enough piece of wood, I could put threaded little holes along the top edge and I could have the storage positions to be along the top edge. And here was another variation on the same design, but the piece of wood is now angled. The problem with this particular design is if you wanted to orient this vertically to sit on upright, when you put all those steel balls on the front here, it falls over because of the um lack of balance, especially if it's like the 29th of the month and all the weight is toward the front. This here was an attempt to bevel the piece of wood so that it would be angled. Anyway, I'm thinking I'm just going to probably go back to and use this idea here perhaps. Well, let's look at the hardware that I'm going to be using for this abacus calendar project.

[00:07:57]Well, first of all, I have some 17 mm diameter steel balls that have quarter20 threads in them. So, I'll need eight of these for this project. I bought two fourpacks off of Jeff Bezos's shipping company website. Okay, so it's metric diameter imperial threads. Well, that's the way things happen here. Then I need uh some threaded uh rod basically coming out of here. And so I bought some set screws. Now I bought these locally at a local hardware store. And I actually needed a set screw closer to 3/4 of an inch long. So what I actually had to buy were two different lengths, a/ inch and a 5/16 here. So, how this works is you have the shorter set screw. These are/ quarter20 thread to fit the hole in the steel ball. So, you will thread the the shorter one in here all the way down.

[00:08:53]Use thread lock compound. And then we'll take the half inch set screw a little bit longer and also using thread lock compound. That's going to thread together like that. And so, I'm going to have eight of these. And then I'm going to be installing these brass inserts.

[00:09:13]These are quarter20 inserts. These have a nice shoulder on them. So these are going to be pressed into a nice block of oak to make the structure of the abacus calendar. And then to uh mount the steel ball into each insert is just a matter of course threading it in like that. The steel balls won't easily fall out. uh it'll be a lot more permanent of a design. For the wood, I went to the hardware store as I usually do and uh I like to buy these near finish grade pieces of wood. This is oak. It is uh 3 and 1/2 in wide, which is about 9 cm by 3/4 in thickness, and it's 2 ft long, 24 in long. So, according to these designs that I have in my sketch journal, I'm only going to need a piece about 8 in or so wide. So, I'll be cutting this down.

[00:10:03]And also I have enough wood here if I make a mistake I can maybe make another version or whatever.

[00:11:19]Heat. Heat.

[00:11:45]Heat. Heat.

[00:12:33]Heat up here.

[00:12:57]Okay, this is Never Doll. It's this cotton wading that has metal polish embedded in it.

[00:13:04]I first learned about this back in the 1970s when I was in the Navy. We had a government issue version of this stuff in a dark green can with a national or naval stock number or whatever.

[00:13:21]And uh but this is stuff that see that it's pretty good stuff. Okay. With some Japanese carving knives. I have this thing nicely recessed about where I want it to be.

[00:14:12]So, I had this one hole where the 16th in pilot drill bit snapped off in the wood. Couldn't extract it. I had to try to drill around it and it ended up making the hole too loose. So, I'm using some plastic wood filler. Waiting for it to dry. Then I'm going to put this brass fitting back in. And hopefully it'll be fine.

[00:15:05]All right, let's try some of these out.

[00:15:21]All right. So, today is Tuesday the 19th.

[00:15:26]Tuesday the 19th. That's right. And one storage ball up here. And look, they don't fall out. So, one thing I didn't address earlier is you might have noticed on my sketch journal drawings that I have this little bar here. And if you read the notes, you realize this is the dividing bar between the lower and the upper part because this is supposed to work like an abacus in a matter of speaking. And that is what the brass bar is for. It acts like a dividing bar just to remind me that yes, this is an abacus quinary grouping. The uh balls below the bar count one each and the one above the bar counts for five. Well, I have this thing, some kind of Brazilian hardwood and brass that I used to use with my iPod touch as a little holder. Well, now that is going to hold the new Abacus calendar. So, it's kind of at a 45 degree angle, so I can see it like as if it was flat enough to the table and I can see it across the room. So, it's it's kind of nice. I really like it.

[00:16:35]Well, I think a good question to finish this video up is u do I still have that dysfunctional relationship with calendars?

[00:16:45]Well, I do like a paper calendar for writing down notes, you know, of meetings and stuff, even though you can have digital calendars that probably are more convenient. But as I look across the table across my room to the little cabinet over by the door, I can easily see the abacus calendar now. I can tell it's the 19th, it's Tuesday. I don't need to take up room on the table like the old one did because the old one wouldn't sit up vertically and across the room sitting horizontally like this.

[00:17:18]It was difficult to read it. As for whether this Abacus calendar project actually addresses the existential issues I have with calendars remains to be seen. However, oh, excuse me. Let me get that.

[00:17:36]Yeah, it's Joe. Huh?

[00:17:40]Oh. Uh, well, let's see. Today is Tuesday.

[00:17:45]Yeah. No, it's the 19th. Today's Tuesday the 19th. Oh, okay. No, no, tomorrow would be the Wednesday the 20th. Okay.

[00:17:53]Okay. Okay. I'll see you then. Okay.

[00:17:55]Bye.

[00:17:58]Well, I guess that's that.