nvrtd.design Blog

I've been able to get lots done on the clock over the Thanksgiving weekend.  I haven't been able to work on it for a while.  I needed to make the hands for the clock and wrap it up to finish the top section with the actual functioning clock.  I drew out some hands in AutoCAD that I thought I could cut out by hand, but then I thought about having them laser cut and wanted something more intricate.  I had poked around a bit at having them cut, but couldn't get motivated to redesign the hands.  I opted to go back to my original plan and cut them out by hand.  With some sheet metal I had, an air nibbler, and a hand nibbler I set to work.  I managed to get them all cut out with only a handful of blisters and sore hands.  Here are some photos of the cutout hands: Hands cut out, but still with the paper templates attached. The templates have been removed and the hands cleaned up, ready for paint. With the hands cut out, I had to shorten e...

I figure I should post something non-clock related.  One of my other hobbies is collecting firearms and target shooting.  It's a hobby at this point as I'm not shooting competitively yet, but I have wanted to build a target rifle and/or hunting rifle for some time. I ran into a guy at my last range trip that was praising his Millett TRS scope .  I took a look at it and also liked it.  I also liked the price.  For $300 you get a 4-16x50mm scope with illuminated mil-dot reticle and other nice features.  I ordered one from Cheaper Than Dirt and it arrived very quickly.  I just ordered a mount for it from Wilson Combat.  I got the Accu-Riser scope mount for 30mm scopes. My plan is to see if this will fit on my current AR15 carbine, and if so I should be able to play with it for a while.  If it won't fit (it's a large scope) I plan to get a new 20" upper and be able to switch out the carbine or rifle uppers at will.  Right...

I was able to get quite a bit done on the Whereabouts Clock this weekend.  I had previously posted that the brass face for the clock has been silk-screened and it looks great.  I did put some clear lacquer on the front of it to protect it from tarnishing.  I had also been working on a frame to hold the face in the clock.  The original design of the grandfather clock had the face-mounted to the clock internals, and it left a lot of empty space surrounding the face.  It looked really bad, according to my wife.  I purchased some 1" x 6" red oak stock and built a frame to fit inside the cabinet and hold the brass face. The oak frame and brass face are glued to some 1/4" hardboard and glued inside the case.  In the original design of the grandfather clock, the front face was the only maintenance access to the internals. With the oak frame and face in place, there's no way to access the clock internals from the front.  I bu...

I got the silkscreened brass back from James at Preston Screen Printing this morning. He did a great job with it. I was able to work quite a bit more on the clock today. I need to clear lacquer the brass face to keep it from tarnishing, but I have to do it when it's between 50 and 90 degrees. Our string of 100+ degree days isn't helping on that front. I got a lot done on the frame for the face. The original grandfather clock frame left a big gap around the brass face and looked rather bad, so I'm constructing an oak frame that will fill the gap. This will make the face a permanent fixture of the clock, so the mechanism will have to be accessed from the back instead of the front door of the clock. It's gluing this evening, so hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get the router out and put a decorative finish to the face frame and start to get it installed.

I just dropped off the brass for the clock face and the design to James at Preston Screen Printing . His rate is very reasonable. When I get the piece back in a few days I'll post results pictures.

Aside from the clock face itself, I started work on the hands. I wanted each hand to be slightly different and hold a photo of each family member. I haven't figured out the photo mounting mechanism yet. I want the photos to be fairly easy to replace since I have young children and their appearance is likely to change over the years (imagine that). I got a trial copy of AutoCAD and drew up the five hands . I have a couple thicknesses of sheet steel I want to use for these, but I'm not sure yet how well I can cut and drill these out. I think between my drill press and nibbler that I should be able to do pretty well, but I'll have to try out a couple first.

I was able to work a bit on the clock for the past couple of weekends. First, an update on the clock face: I found that ironing the toner to a clean, shiny piece of brass was a non-starter. I found the best technique to be scrubbing the brass with a green Scotch-Brite pad in perpendicular directions improved the toner adhesion quite a bit. The second was to thoroughly clean it with acetone to remove any oils or other dirt that may have accumulated. Regular alcohol was not sufficient. After I did both of these I got what I hoped would be two good sample tries. The first was using laser printed on inkjet photo paper like many online sites recommend, and the second was a glossy laser paper. I liked the second better because I was able to get it printed at tabloid size, whereas the inkjet photo paper was letter size only. I should have grabbed some shots of the two samples. The inkjet paper left only toner behind and it was nice and shiny, the glossy laser paper left quite a bit ...

I haven't touched the whereabouts clock in quite a while. A few weeks back I did complete the woodwork on the upper third of the grandfather clock that I'm using to house the project. I think it looks pretty slick. I also was able to mount the mechanism inside, so now it's on to creating the clock face. I studied up on how previous folks have etched brass. Mostly here and here . I took my design down to Office Depot to print since I don't have a laser printer. They didn't have ledger size inkjet photo paper, but the guy did say he had some glossy ledger paper. I gave it a try on a sample piece of brass. I ironed on the paper like the instructions said and soaked it in water to dissolve the paper. What a failure! I think that 1) I didn't have him print it with enough toner, and 2) the paper is not quite right. Large chunks of toner stuck to the paper and came off instead of sticking to the brass. Fortunately, the prints from Office Depot cost me les...

I've been working on the whereabouts clock in fits and starts since I got the grandfather clock body. I've disassembled the top third of the clock (since that's the part that I really care about at the moment) and started stripping off the old stain and making some small repairs as needed. I've polished up some of the hardware to make it a little shinier, but still retain some antiqued look to it. I bought some glass to insert into the door, but it might be too thin. I may need to have Heather get some from a stained glass shop or custom glass shop to get it to fit right. We'll see what happens when we get there. I finally found a decent supply of brass for the face. I tried all the big-box stores first (since I was there anyway) and got nothing. The hobby shop had some, but only tiny pieces. I ended up going to Metals4U up the road and got a pretty big piece for about $30. I hope it's thick enough to etch. I will have to glue it onto some thin ply o...

I've been looking for the past several weeks for a suitable clock body to install the whereabouts clock. I tried calling around to a few clock shops to see if they had any busted clocks with intact frames, but I didn't have any luck with that. Seems that most people have busted clock mechanisms in pretty frames that they want to be fixed. I pretty much left my search up to Craigslist after that. I found a guy in Austin selling a broken wall clock that I thought would work. $50 later and I have a clock that is too shallow for my parts. It's a beautiful clock, so for a few more bucks at Hobby Lobby I replaced the movement. Of course, after doing that the old movement works again. Oh well. I kept looking through old posts and found someone selling a "Baby Grandfather Clock." Its design is more like a mantle clock, but it was really about the size I was looking for. However, it too was too shallow. If I left it as a tabletop clock (as it could be) the dept...