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Ergh, because a mile is a minute? Or it converts nicely to radians for
spherical trig? Or, as Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, when they were
surrounded by Indians and about to be massacred "What's this 'we', white
man?"

Seriously, there is an ISO spec to use degress, just degrees, out to five
decimal places. Navigators stick to tradition mainly for tradition, because
it is already a common language (preventing mars lander type conversion
errors), and because sometimes, like "mile a minute" it can be more useful
than translating from the decimal degrees.

You certainly could get any good machine shop to replace the engravings on
your sextant, or even overlay them with stable mylar scales printed on a
laser printer. No big deal.

Similarly, any good machinist, even a hobbyist, could set you up with legs
on the busy side, or a handle that was easier to hold upside down.

As the Bard said,  "Get thee to a machinist!" 

   

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