I'm amazed by the number of German equatorial mountings that do not preserve this option. The declination clamp is a threaded nylon rod with a knurled hand knob. In addition to not marring the shaft, the nylon acts as a slip clutch to make sweeping with the telescope a pleasure. Experienced deep-sky observers usually shun small finders. The setting circles also worked very well, though using them to swing accurately from one side of the sky to the other requires fairly precise polar alignment.
Right ascension is read directly, and no cumbersome conversion to hour angle is needed.
The operation is actually easier to do than to describe. Rather than remembering the coordinates of where the scope was pointed, I simply noted the time spent looking at an object. The right-ascension circle was then advanced by this amount just before swinging to a new position. As mentioned earlier, the telescope tube is made from spiral-wound paper Sonotube, which is finished on the outside with white Latex paint. Black plastic rings encase its ends and prevent fraying.