Seven Clocks

I know I have mentioned this before but I'm gonna say it again - my scrapwood bin is full. 

It’s not like I have a hoarding disorder or anything like that, it’s just that throwing away a bit of wood is hard for me to do.  See, after a large project has been wrapped up I see the potential in every tiny bit that lies scattered on the garage floor so discarding this detritus is as abhorrent to me as chucking out a blank piece of paper would be. That’s why the bin is full of perfectly good pine, birch, maple, poplar, and oak pieces… and random dowel bits, old flagpole chunks, some cool-looking sweetgum branches I’m sure I can do something with, part of a mailbox post, old paneling, some of my neighbor’s deck… and why the bin is actually two bins.

So, yeah, pretty much no hoarding disorder here…

In an effort to make the problem go away (or at least make the problem of my family, friends, and neighbors holding repeated interventions to address my non-problem go away), I decided to make a clock using nothing but the materials from these bins.  Well, not the clock mechanism or the hands… those came from a $7 kit from Michael’s.  Anyway, easy enough to do – it wouldn’t be my first clock, but it would be the first I make totally from bin stuff.  The result is below.

A piece to an old bamboo cutting board, some barnwood, old deck pieces, some pine and there you have it – a desk clock.  I hit the (lauan?) plyboard with a sander to age it up a bit, FWIW. Not bad…  I showed my wife and she said it would make a good Christmas gift.  I agreed and decided to make a few more for teachers and coworkers.  Here are clocks one through four below.

The real challenge was piecing together enough plyboard to make a large enough backing for the clock mechanisms, but it made the faces look pretty cool especially after aging them.

I showed a pic of the finished clocks to my sister-in-law and she said I should have an Etsy account.  Now, she meant it to be nice, but that’s one of those things that makes me want to angrily yell “No, you need YOUR own Etsy account!!” and storm off for, like, no reason.  But she followed up with asking for one for Christmas (destroying my totally rational bad mood) so I decided to make two more – one for her and one for my wife’s folks.

I am especially happy with the one on the right because that one has wood in it that is “doubly recycled”.  The original tray part was from a toy I made about five years ago for my son, and the wood for that project originally came from the toybox I built for him when he was one.  Plus it has pieces from his original outdoor playset in it.

Now I am working on the last one (sure...) which will be for my wife’s desk.  It is inspired by the castles my son has been creating in Minecraft and he is helping me with the design and assembly.

I will post more pics as this one comes closer to completion.

So… have I made a dent in the scrapwood bin issue? No way.  Clocks are kind of small.  Also, just because a handful of clocks got made doesn’t mean other scrapwood- generating projects got put on hold.  If anything, the bins are more full.  I suppose I could make one enormous clock and use up every little bit in the scrap bin… that might do it… Or maybe I could glue everything together into one huge pile and submit it to an art exhibit or turn it into a geocache.  I don’t know.  Have a suggestion?  Let me know.