This will take some telling ...
In the Router Joinery episode from season 12 of the Woodsmith Shop TV show, I showed a photo of a Stickley-inspired clock I made for my brother.
The case of the clock features finger joints created with a finger joint jig we demonstrated in the episode. Credit James Bruton a editor with ShopNotes with the idea and design of the jig. He built an end table and wanted to incorporate graduated finger joints. This made it difficult to use a typical finger joint jig. To ensure that both halves of the joint fit together perfectly, he designed the jig. The simple design creates a hassle-free setup for perfectly sized and aligned joints. The keys on top of the jig are sized to match the fingers of the joint, ensuring a perfect fit. And there’s only one setup to complete both sides of the joint.
The clock was inspired by a Stickley clock featured in Popular Woodworking:
The original clock had dovetails on the upper corners of the case. I figured that graduated finger joints would look great, too.
Here’s the finished clock. The case is white oak, the front is apple that came from a friend of mine, Randy Maxey who worked at ShopNotes. The bottom of the clock is joined to the case sides with through tenons. The sizing and spacing of the tenons matches the spacing of the finger joints at the top.
One of the stand out details of the clock is the dial clock face. I wanted something fun and quirky since my brother and I are somewhat nerdy.
The hours and minutes are read from rotating dials rather than moving hands. Making the dials is actually easier than you might think — and it uses an ordinary quartz clock movement.
I won't claim any credit for how to do it. The clock face idea came from a clock I saw on Instructables. BTW — this site is a rabbit hole of project ideas, too.
If you read the article, you can learn how to make the clock face with a standard quartz movement. One twist, is that for the clock dials to rotate "corrcectly" the movement needs to spin backward. Also really easy to do.
I created my own dials using a drawing program. I'm an editor not an illustrator, so this shouldn't be a big issue for you. In fact, you can probably use the image below if you like how it looks. The background is an antique paper background that can be found easily online.
Here's a pdf that may be easier for you to adjust the size using the print sizing features in Acrobat Reader.
If you make a clock like this, I'd love to see it. Send us some photos.
