The Curling Stopwatch Project

I won't pretend it's never been done before... It's just a stopwatch, after-all! Curling-specific products have been hitting the market at a growing rate, but this one's just for me!

Every stopwatch that I've ever used for curling has suffered a few major flaws.

First off, curling has become a game of very close precision.

When I started to play in 1986, we used stopwatches to measure the length of time it took the stone to come to a complete stop from a start marker, usually the first tee line. That was an acceptable way to judge what the overall draw-speed of the sheet was at the time. "It's 24 today... A little heavy!" You'll still hear some long-time curling spit out those close-to-30 times like they really mean something. Recently, it's all about "split" times. Measuring the time between the back or tee lines and the nearest hog, while a player is delivering. This will help the sweepers judge the force of a stone's throw much sooner. For a player who has a consisteny delivery and clean release, this time can quite accurately determine where a stone should come to rest...

Second, stopwatches have not changed in decades!

Every stopwatch is essentially the same, and this is why they all suck! Even on the lightest ice, a player will never have to time anything longer than (let's say) 30 seconds. So why do we need all those digits? Even more importantly, if players are split-timing; it is more important to see the tenths and hundredths more clearly than the seconds! Almost every stopwatch currently on the market suffers this problem! The lower digits are too small!

Third, size does matter!

I wear mits to curl. Big, clumsy, comfortable mits. So do a lot of people. I don't like bumbling with those cheap, delicate buttons that break. I also draw mine from the hip, as a gunslinger might say. My eyesight is great, but it wouldn't hurt to have a bigger display.

Ok, enough ranting. Here's my plan:

Produce a very simple stopwatch that has large, easy to read seconds-to-hundredths digits, suitable buttons, and simple functionality for split-timing...

The results so far... October 2005.

While working on the specs to produce my stopwatch, I researched a number of available products and finally found a potentially suitable candidate! Control Company (www.control3.com) wake a wide range of NIST-certified stopwatches, including a jumbo-numbered model... So, I've ordered one, and we'll see what it's like before moving on...

September 2006.

This project is still on the books. I went a whole season with the jumbo stopwatch mentioned above, but I'm still not satisfied. I know I can make a better product, it just needs some time. I'll see what I can come up with this season and post some more info later...

Spring 2007.

Although the stopwatch that I bought (mentioned above) was adaquate, it is just that modiocrity which will drive me to have several working prototypes of my design before the fall 2007 season. The 'precision calibrated' accuracy of my current timer is hogwash! It has a rather evident bias for numbers in steps of 3. Through two whole seasons, I could stop the timer at 3.97, 4.00 and 4.03 seconds, but nothing in between! This actually got me thinking: I should add a bias switch to my design, rounding results to the closest 5 hundredths of a second. No curler out there is accurate enough -- or needs to be -- for the difference between a 3.67 and 3.70 second split!

Anyways, the project is still on the go, and I have started a specific forum thread for this project...

One of my fellow Glenmore curlers is looking for a good stopwatch and found this page in a Google search result. If you found this page and are curious to know more, let me know!

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