I decided to make a clock. I started with an offcut of 4/4 cherry, planed it down to 7/8 or whatever it wound up being, and cut it square to 10-1/4”. Creating the clock dial required going corner to corner to get center, then bisecting those quarters to get the cardinal points. Radius = circumference/6 gave me the remaining points.
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Making the markers was a dilemma because I didn’t have a lot of dark options on hand; just walnut, purple heart, and sapele (I tested finish on end grain of a few light pieces of wood, but they all darkened too much to contrast easily with the cherry). Walnut was a no go because the cherry will get dark and the walnut will get light and at some point a few years down the road they will meet in the middle and I’ll have a hard time figuring out what time it is! I didn’t have wide enough scraps of purple heart. So by process of elimination it was sapele, which I read will darken with age and should keep pace with the cherry over time. When I bang out pigs I have a piece of poplar with a 5/8 hole (largest hole on the plate). That hole goes over a dog hole. This prevents me from a) denting the bench from the plate, and b) accidentally whacking the edge of a dog hole with my peg and damaging it (did that once on my previous bench!). It works really well.
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To make the clock appear thinner I put a hollow radius on the back edge. Most of the waste was done with the combination plane with the rabbet blade. I would normally just use an unfenced rabbet plane, but because I also had to go cross grain, it made sense to use the combo for the whole thing. Then I went with a round plane to get the curve. I don’t have western hollows and rounds so I use these Asian ones of which I have a few pairs. Their only quirk (besides being small) is that the hollow planes need a minor modification to work for molding, then they work fine. The round ones work as-is. I used the ½” for most of it and then did a little tidying up with a 3/8th.
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Drilling the center hole required a pretty accurate 90*, but the others did not require being that exact. ½” holes for the cardinal points and then 3/8” for all the other numbers.
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I used hot hide glue for all the dots. It makes them go in easier and also ensured I didn’t have any nasty blemishes when finish was applied. I am very guilty of finish blemishes rearing their ugly heads when I use PVA glues.
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The clock motor shaft is way too short to go all the way through the clock face so I mortised out a spot for it. This needed to be dead flat so that the shaft protrudes through the face at a perfect 90*. I couldn’t drill most of the waste out for fear of running a bit thread through the front, so I just whacked it out with a chisel and got to final depth with a router plane. Little blocks glued to the bottom on the back allow an offset from the wall when hanging.
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(continued....)
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Originally Posted by chris carter
