Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
When I finished up my latest salvage project we put some stuff on it and me and my wife both agreed that it needed something on top of it. I showed her some pictures of several clocks I'd been eyeing for a while and she agreed that a clock would look great there. I narrowed it down to two designs pretty quickly. In the end this one won out. I owe the Woodsmith group a big thank you because I used their video on YouTube for inspiration ( plans can be found here if needed https://www.woodsmithplans.com/plan/craftsman-style-clock/). I found their site where they sold their plans. I'm a tightwad so I didn't bother buying them. Instead I drew my own design up based on how high I wanted and on a decorative tile that I already have on hand. Without buying the plans they don't mention the size of the tile so I chose to not waste my money on a gamble. In the end my clock was made for a 4 inch by 4 inch decorative tile that I've held on to for a few years that was left over from some tile work at my old house. The build was pretty simple. I used a salvaged 1×12 for it. By my guess I used less than 3 feet length of it which is impressive in my opinion that with a board of 8 feet in length you could probably make 3 of these clocks. One thing I did vary from the Woodshop folks is that I didn't like the way their sides mounted with the front face. I chose to leave a 1/8 strip of wood and cut a dado groove in the back of the face to glue the sides into. The front horizontal pieces were planed down to about 5/8 thick. The only issue I had was when doing the lighter piece that the clock face mounts on. I had just put a beautiful poly finish on it when I realized that it was 3/4in think and that the clock mechanism wouldn't be able to go all the way through due to the shorter design of the shaft. After running the backside through the planner I flipped it over to view the finished side. It was now nasty with dust smashed into the finish so I had to plane that side too. I again sanded and finished it again. I then drilled the hole for the mechanism to stick through. As luck would have it when lifting it off the drill press I lifted it right into the sharp drill bit that gouged a big spot in it…... over to the planer again to remove about 1/8in then a fast sand (at this point I was fairly aggravated and ready to finish it) and a fresh poly coat. For the hour marks I used old nails that I'd pulled from the board that I cut down real short which seemed fitting since this was done with salvaged lumber. I glued the piece in place with some super glue so I wouldn't have to wait long for it to dry then mounted the clock mechanism…. which I apparently broke when I installed the hands because it won't work now. I'll be replacing the mechanism this week I hope. Aside from that I am satisfied with it and happy to build my first clock in probably 15 years. I thought when I built it that I have tools now that I never even knew existed when I first started making clocks. Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading! Read more here