Sesame Street - Pinball Number Count clock

Step 5 Construction - Hollowing the interior.

After cutting the basic shape, it was realised that the clock mechanism wasn't designed to be mounted behind such thick wood (approximately half an inch thick), but rather designed for more thin material. The only way to mount the mechanism was if a thinner section existing in the centre.

There are a number of methods that can be used to achieve this, and it is advisable to use the method that is the easiest. If access is available to routers; use them, as this is by far the easiest method. However, I did not; so the next steps will outline an alternative method to achieve the same effect.

The idea is to make the interior section out of sheet metal, thin wood or plastic. The problem is the method to achieve this. The method used was to glue a circular piece of sheet metal into the bevel formed by slightly routing edges of the wood (the routing was all done with a hand router). Car body filler was used to fill any imperfections and make it all nice and smooth as though it were the one single piece. The reason for choosing a circle was that this was a feature of the clock face and could be easily hidden behind the printed clock face graphic if any imperfections arise.