Woodwork Clocks
Try making clocks, it’s fun, it’s creative and it’s profitable!
If you’re a woodworker then clock making offers not only a wealth of opportunities for fun and creativity, but also the possibility to make a few bucks!
The range of clocks you can make is limited only by your imagination. Grandfather clocks, mantle clocks, moon phase and tide clocks, whatever takes your fancy. They can have plain faces, fancy ornamental faces, caricature faces, sports team faces, whatever you can design can be turned into a clock.
And people love them. If you count up all the clocks around your house – in the kitchen, bathroom maybe, lounge, bedrooms – how many do you have? What sort of price range do they cover? If you’re a woodworker, all of them could be replaced by something unique you make yourself. OK, maybe you can’t duplicate the digital alarm in your bedroom, but why make something so boring? Clock movements with alarms are readily available so why not make something special. Even if your current bedroom clock has a radio or CD player in it, a little ingenuity can soon re-case it.
In most cases I am of course talking about buying the actual workings, not making them (whether that’s a cheap quartz movement or something of heirloom quality from a company like Hermle), although for the scrollsawer who wants to test themselves you can find a number of wooden gear clocks. Except for a few nylon washers, some string and weights, these are made entirely from wood, and the gear cutting should provide an adequate challenge for anyone!
I’m going to concentrate on those where you buy the base movement and work from there. You can pay anything from $2.00 for a quartz movement (as I write this, Clockparts.com have a special offer), through $10, $20 or more dollars for clock movement with chimes, pendulums and other options, and from there right on up to hundreds of dollars for the superbly crafted instruments made by Hermle and others that go into heirloom-quality grandfather and grandmother clocks. Even at the very top end of the market, the movements are not difficult to source so whatever kind of clock you want to make, you shouldn’t have difficulty finding the parts.
A quick search of the internet will find either a supplier near you or a mail-order specialist. Rockler.com are well-known and well-respected supplier of tools and equipment for woodworkers and I highly recommend them. Alternatively you might try Clockparts.com who, as clock movement specialists have not only the largest selection I have seen but also very keen prices. I haven’t yet moved on to the high end clock movements myself so I don’t have a particular company to recommend but there are plenty out there, some of whom will even sell you a compete kit - wooden case and all.
There are plans available for immediate download from people like Murray Clock Plans, Barley Harvest and plenty of others (just search for scrollsaw patterns) or you can go your own way. A simple plywood disk with a hole in for the movement is a clock - all you need do is add something to make the face – paint it, decoupage, add scrollwork (there’s a good article over at ScrollsawSegmentation.com that might give you some inspiration) – the choice is yours. An attractively figured board could just be finished and have some numerals added to make an attractive clock – and if it’s waney edged it might well add to the appearance. Why should clocks be round?
I could go on and on about this (and probably will in other articles!) but I’ll stop now because writing this has got me thinking about the scrap wood pile and what treasures there are in there that might make a good clock. Perhaps I’ll just glue a variety of pieces together and then put them on the lathe and see how it turns out…
