How to create tick marks within an arched area

Question

I need to recreate this dial and I've learned how to create evenly spaced tick marks within a circle, but this is an ellipse.  Here, I attempted to draw two ellipse then used the scissors to cut them to size.  Then I used the line tool and drew each of the tick marks.  Then I adjusted the weights of each tick.  This is not a good method because the end ticks are not meeting the ends of the ellipse perfectly, leaving a tiny bit of tick mark outside the ellipse.  There must be a better way to do this. Here is what I ended up with:
But this is what I need to create:
(I only need to create the arched part with tick marks of this dial)
Any help is appreciated, but please note that I am familiar with only the very basics of illustrator, I simply don't do this type of work often enough to completely understand the software.
Thanks!!!!

Answer 1

Jber,
And this is an attempt to give a (hopefully sufficiently) more complete description of the ellipse way, as an amendment of post #4 (overdoing silly things like this makes it difficult to remember to mention all the crucial steps that seem to hide somewhere in the fingers):
One way that results in constant thickness tick marks might be to (using Stroke>Round Cap/Join or Stroke>Projecting Cap/Miter Join or Stroke>Butt Cap and Miter Join depending on the desired end shape and length, see below, with the layer expanded in the Layers palette, and Smart Guides are your friends, telling you when you when you are in the right spots):
If you wish to have the tick marks follow an ellipse and at the same time have constant widths (two different widths), you may (see below):
0) Lock the image of the dial (shown as a grey area below), you may place it at X = 0 to facilitate symmetric building;
1) Create the thickest tick mark and move a copy to the right, then create a one step blend (Object>Blend Options>Specified Steps = 1, then Object>Blend>Make);
2) Create the thinnest tick mark and move a copy to the right, then create a five steps blend (Object>Blend Options>Specified Steps = 5, then Object>Blend>Make);
3) Either of two ways (in both cases make sure to make it as symmetrical as possible):
3a) Create the midway ellipse, adjusting the top of it to be midway between the two arcs (this is the first way I thought of and the way shown below), or
3b) Create two ellipses corresponding to the two arcs, then create a one step blend and Object>Blend>Expand to get the midway ellipse and delete the other two;
4) Drag horizontally with the Line Tool (hold Shift) to make a path between the two spots where the midway ellipse crosses the ends of the dial image (Smarts Guides say intersect), or just create a horizontal path and place it so it crosses the ellipse in the right spots (you can see the symmetry here);
5) With the horizontal path still selected Object>Path>Divide Objects Below;
6) Delete the lower superfluous part of the ellipse, then with the Direct Seletion Tool click the horizontal segment and delete it (only click delete once);
7) Select the remaining midway ellipse part and Object>Path>Offset Path, using half the height of the dial image (at the middle), you may retry until you have it right, this will recreate the top and bottom of the dial and also make ends;
8) Select the midway ellipse part and Object>Path>Add Anchor Points a few times (see below), and copy the midway ellipse, now you have two on top of each other, one for each of the blends;
9) Select one of the midway ellipses along with the thin blend from 2) (hold Shift to have them both selected) and Object>Blend>Replace Spine, this will make that ellipse part disappear;
10) Select the other midway ellipse and the thick blend from 1) (hold Shift to have them both selected) and Object>Blend>Replace Spine;
11) Hide/Delete the image dial.
Now you should have the whole dial with both sets of tick marks on top  of the elliptic arch set. In 9) and 10) you may select on the Artboard or through the Layers palette (you can see what you are selecting in both places), and the order (and stacking order) in 1)/2) and 9)/10) can be changed.
If you wish to move/extend the thick tick marks upwards or both up and down, you may:
12) Select the thick ticks blend and Object>Blend>Expand, and then Select each of the thick tick marks and tick the appropriate Reference Point in the Transform palette (if you want to extend upwards use the bottom ones (Right for left, Center for centre, Left for right), if you want to extend both up and down use the Center one), then multiply the H value by the desired amount and click Ctrl/Cmd+Enter to make them a bit longer up/outwardly.
The Object>Path>Add Anchor Points in 8) is to get a even distribution of the thin tick mark blend (not necessary for the thick tick marks blend because it only has one step).