Land Plat Surveys

Surveyors usually create a land plats using a quadrants compass.  If on every directional reference of your land plat you see two cardinal directions and no degrees are ever over 90 degrees (Something like S 34°5'30" E), then you're going to need a quadrants compass to follow your plat.  The bezel on a quadrants compass goes 0-90, 90-0, 0-90, 90-0 degrees in each quadrant of the bezel, instead of 0-360 degrees around the entire bezel.

Note: In the example above (S 34°5'30" E), this is 34 degrees, 5 minutes, and 30 seconds.  Each degree is divided into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds.  So the number above is really 34.092 degrees -- so just barely more than 34 degrees on your compass, and in the South East quadrant.  

Each of these compasses here uses a 0-90 degree quadrant scale reference, instead of the traditional 0-360 degrees you see on most compasses.