It’s About Time
“A clock more than any other piece, needs to show fine workmanship, must be made from well seasoned wood, have perfect joints and be well finished.”
- G. Stickley (American furniture maker 1858-1942)
Well, thank you for that Gustav. Anything else? Actually, he is making a good point with that declaration. Here’s my take. The only reason for a clock case to exist is to be continually looked upon, if not examined in detail. Any clockworks fixed to a bare board would be perfectly functional if referencing time was the only goal. But there’s a higher calling for clocks to be pleasure givers, and this purpose demands fine workmanship. Choosing a clock, whether as a mantle accessory or a hallway showpiece, has always been a significant decision relying largely on the quality of the case. Especially in the pre-electronics age, when everybody owned a mechanically-driven clock, clockmakers competed on the appeal and durability of the case. The variety of clocks produced in every corner of the world during the 19th and early 20th centuries is impressive! and I urge you to check it out. Clocks, and timekeeping in general, have a rich history that is fun to research, but I will save that topic for another day (exhale now).
I mention all of this because my current Project is a clock. Specifically, a clock case - that miniature furniture piece surrounding the time and gong mechanisms that gives a clock its personality. I first gave clockmaking a try down in the basement workshop, making a wedding gift for Ben and Allison. For inspiration, I found online images of some mission-style clocks produced by the New Haven Clock Co. (c. 1904) and was intrigued by their look and potential make-ability. I went on to design a shelf clock of similar proportions to their Los Santos model, ordered some mechanical parts, still being manufactured for classic clock repairs, and put the whole thing together out of quarter sawn white oak. It is definitely a “first attempt” piece but still heirloom-worthy. What’s more, I found it was a real joy to make clocks and vowed to improve my craft by building others. That was almost 3 years ago … Time actually does fly!
Design
This Project is a wall clock for my workshop based on a Craftsman design. The design comes from a published compilation of furniture plans by Gustav Stickley and originally appeared in the December 1905 issue of The Craftsman magazine. I would intend to closely follow the published plan with just a few changes to proportions and methods.
Basic wall clock plan (1905)
G. Stickley Making Authentic Craftsman Furniture: Instructions and Plans for 62 Projects Dover, 2018, p. 49.
Materials
I wanted a workshop clock with the potential to inspire whenever I looked up from my bench and so for materials I selected some wood with particular meaning for me. For the box sides and back I would use re-claimed, pecky cypress boards that had been discarded during a renovation of our former New Jersey lake house. This stone cottage, built in the early 1940’s, was completely paneled in pecky cypress. The heavily varnished surface had darkened over the years but the warm, comfortable environment provided by these walls will always evoke special memories of that lakeside retreat, recently sold after delivering 22 wonderful years of family adventures. I had salvaged these boards during the move-out for use in just such a Project. The wood is mature bald cypress, intricately grained and deeply pocked by a brown rot courtesy of the fungus Stereum taxodi. It is a unique look, for sure. The wood was a popular mid-twentieth century paneling choice and probably has never been used in clockmaking, until now.
The clock face would be made from a piece of curly maple left over from the Stationery Chest Project and the two supporting bracket arms carved from antique redwood. Both of these boards originate from the family heirloom lumber described in earlier posts. The clock mechanism, pendulum and hands were procured from TimeSavers, one of the several remaining clock parts stores. While not my preferred option, I went with a battery powered quartz movement for the workshop to avoid problems down the road with sawdust in an oiled mechanical mechanism. Quartz clock movements, of course, do not require a pendulum, but for a few extra dollars one can purchase a version that will drive a pendulum to create the illusion of a mechanical clock. The final purchase, off Etsy, was a clock face stencil that will be used to paint the numbered dial. Using reclaimed wood and a quartz movement kept the out-of-pocket outlay reasonable, around $50.
Dimensioning
Things proceeded rapidly in this phase. First, one of the pecky cypress boards was thickness planed to 5/8 in., exposing both the raw grain and fungal cavities. This plank was then cross-cut in half. The backboard would be formed by mating these two boards and so care was taken to match the grain flow prior to biscuit-joining them together. Another such panel, used to make the four sides of the clock “box”, was planed down to 1/2 in., ripped to 3 1/2 in. in width and then cross cut into four, 9 inches long pieces. Rabbets at both ends of the two boards selected to become the “sides” were then cut with the dado blade on the table saw (1/2 in. wide by 1/4 in. deep). These would be joined with a “top” and “bottom” board of full thickness to make the square case, thus necessitating that these last boards be trimmed accordingly to ~ 8 1/2 inches. All of the boards were glued at this time and then finished smooth with hand planes.
Next, a rectangular opening (3 in. x 3/4 in.) was cut into the box bottom to allow the pendulum swing. This was accomplished by drilling “access” holes at the corners of the pencil-marked piece and then connecting these with a jigsaw cut. A chisel was used to clean-up the opening and square the corners.
From here on things would become less square. It started with cutting both sides of the back to a taper using the track saw. The width was only reduced by 1 inch over the entire 24 in. length, but this slight deviation is intended to produce a refined, less “homemade” look. The top and bottom edges were then trimmed to a flowing pattern on the bandsaw. These cuts seem to go smoother for me with every attempt. A disciplined eye, trained to ensure that the penciled path, no matter how curvy, enters the cut in-line with the band saw blade is key. The curves were then smoothed-out with a sanding drum bit at the drill press. Finally, a chisel was used to create a V-shaped notch on the backside. This would catch a screw head allowing the clock to sit flat against the pine walls of the shop.
Next comes what Stickley refers to as the “brackets”: two curved arms that support the clock box. For these I chopped off a 24 in. section of an old redwood 2x4. The crusty wood was made square and true using the jointer/planer 1-2 punch. And while I could have kept planing off shavings to achieve the desired 1 1/8 in. final width, it was easier to trim the excess at the bandsaw. This was done in a manner to also remove some natural defects (splits and sapwood). A couple encore spins through the thickness planer and a chop at the midsection with the miter saw provided the roughly dimensioned stock. The pattern for the bracket’s shape was gleaned from the tiny magazine pic, sketched on graph paper, traced on to heavier card stock and then traced again on to all sides of the wood pieces. In the end, these brackets will just be affixed to the backboard and box so there is no “correct” measurement to be matched and fit. Still, it needs to have the right proportions in order to fit in. I had enlarged the plan by 33% to provide a workshop scale timepiece and so these brackets would be 11 in. long and a bit stouter than the original dimensions.
Bracket pattern marked onto redwood blocks
The marked boards were taped together and the “interior” curve was cut at the bandsaw. I thought I would shape the upper portion of the brackets before cutting the “exterior” curve to give me as much time as possible to work with square material. Using a combination of hand planes, wood files and sandpaper the top “spindles” were tapered and rounded to a first approximation of their final form. These pieces were then taped together again, with a shim wedged in between to fill the void from the recently created tapers, and the “exterior” curve was cut. Similar work on the base and exterior curves followed by a final sanding along all surfaces produced the bracket pieces. Dry redwood is an easy material to shape, making this first try a satisfying experience for me.
The last part to be fashioned was the clock face, itself. In his brief instructions Stickley calls for burning the numerated dial onto “box wood”. Ahh!, a rare glimpse into the pre-cardboard era. And while I happened to have a few old wooden boxes in the shop (trying their best to look busy as firewood bins) I decided to use a light colored maple board instead. I would also paint rather than burn the clock face with the help of a stencil pattern.
The maple board used was a discard from resawing a thicker plank during an earlier Project. To prepare this part I simply needed to thickness plane to a uniform 1/4 in. depth, sand smooth and cut it to a ~9 x 9 in. square. I sanded the oversized stock prior to dimensioning so that I would have matching, scrap materials to practice the oil finish and stenciling steps. And recalling Gustav’s maxim, I cut the face purposely larger than required, affixed it to the box with screws and then hand planed the edges flush to achieve a (near) “perfect joint”. The sharp edges of the clock face and backboard were then neatly rounded using sandpaper.
The final element of construction went beyond the 1905 plan and involved the care and upkeep of a quartz clock. Stickley’s plan called for a traditional, spring-driven movement which requires routine access to the clock face and pendulum catch, only. As such, the clock mechanism is generally secured within a dust-free chamber, only to be exposed every 5 years or so for oiling the pivots. In contrast, quartz clocks require regular battery changes, as well as a biannual adjustment for daylight savings time, and both of these operations require access to the rear of the clock. To provide ingress I could have cut-out a portion of the backboard, but this would mean regularly taking the whole clock off of the wall to perform maintenance. Instead I chose to make the clock box removable from the backboard and brackets. I toyed with hinging the clock face (or the entire box) along one of the edges but did not want the exposed hinge barrels to ruin an otherwise clean & symmetrical design, and so I chose to enable the entire box to lift off of the brackets. All that was required for this would be a reversible means for both attaching the box tight against the backboard and centering the face on top of brackets. For attachment, I used a magnet embedded within a small divot created in the box top that would rest upon a metal plate affixed to the backboard. To center, I drilled two holes in the bottom of the box, straddling the pendulum opening, that would snugly catch dowel pegs mounted to protrude 1/2 in. beyond the ends of the bracket arms. Trust me, it’ll work.
Once the parts were completed the whole thing could be dry fit, including the clock mechanism, to measure for the pendulum length and swing. Again, the pendulum is simply a beauty accessory on this clock so the only thing it needs to do is look pretty and avoid clanging into the brackets. The 2 3/4 in. round pendulum “bob” came with an oversized, 18 in. brass “rod” designed to be trimmed to the desired length at this point in construction. Once attached to the “dry fit” clock it was easy to pick a length that looked right, the question was would this length smack the bob into the redwood with every sway? Now, it is highly advised that a clockmaker purchase all of the timekeeping parts before embarking on case construction and I did just that. I also set the movement up on a stand that allowed the working pendulum to swing freely and attempted to take measurements of the moving arc along the rod. During these experiments, I managed to convince myself that all would be fine as long as I stuck to my measurements during construction. Nevertheless, there is a reason that people hold their breath whenever a new ship is launched. In the end, the rod was cut to 10 inches and I can report that the swinging pendulum floated free. (Hey! Somebody said there would be champagne?)
A postcard from the Shakedown Cruise
Assembly & Finish
All that was left was to disassemble the parts, apply the finish and clock face and then reassemble. It was the grain of all three woods that I wanted to show off and so I went with the General Finishes “Seal” products - one coat of Seal-A-Cell, followed by two of the Arm-R-Seal satin finish. These oil finishes served to nicely highlight the varying wood colors and impart a pleasing “glow”.
Time to paint with stencils - also a first-time endeavor for me. To learn the tricks I consulted my sister-in-law, Chris, who performs these things well, and her advice helped me sift through the relevant YouTube wheat and chaff. It sounded pretty easy and, in the end, it was. I used an acrylic paint color called brown and a foam cosmetic wedge to dab on the circular face borders and numbers. Stickley’s design also incorporated corner decorations of a pleasing Art Nouveau motif. I tried my best to duplicate this pattern (in a stencil-friendly version) on graph paper which I then sliced into one of the mylar corners of the stencil using a series of increasingly lethal knife blades. This small section of stencil was: mounted onto the clock face; a corner dabbed; rotated by 90 degrees and … repeat x3. I ended up with a few uneven paint patches but these look just fine in gestalt. (Happily, Gustav would approve of that word, if not the unburned wood.)
To assemble one last time, the redwood brackets were screwed into the back and the clock box mounted onto its dowels. The metal plate was “clicked” on to the magnet and then screwed firmly to the backboard. The clock face was attached to the box at the corners with four brass screws. The completed clock box was then removed and the mechanism firmly secured through the center hole using a slim brass nut, the battery was inserted and the hands attached. Finally, the box was re-mounted, the pendulum was hooked to the catch and the completed clock hung onto a screw in the wall.
A satisfying clock Project built with uncommon woods and care.
