How to Make a Resin Clock

Intro: How to Make a Resin Clock

This project started with a gifted piece of red cedar. The original owner of this piece of cedar had intended on turning it into a clock for years. I thought that was a great idea, but wanted to shake it up a bit by adding some resin, A LOT of resin!

STEP 1: Making the Mold

The very first step in the process was to make the mold. Since I wanted a pretty unusual and funky shape I decided to use corrugated plastic to make the mold because it is much more flexible then melamine. Then, to connect all of the pieces of the mold I used hot glue.

**It is really important to make sure all of the joints are sealed properly with the hot glue. It is also important to go along all of the seams with a bead of silicone. All of this will help prevent leaks of the resin.

STEP 2: Adding Color in Layers

I poured a thin base layer of resin with white tint added just to provide a nice background for all of the color. For the rest of the color, I had been thinking a lot about trying to recreate that view when you stand beneath a beautiful tree in the fall and look up. You just see all the bright beautiful colors woven together. You see greens, yellows, oranges, reds. I did the color in two different layers on top of the white. I also put in some cedar wood shavings I had left over from another project, to give the look of tree branches. Basically trying to just take a cross section of a tree in fall, and what that would look like.

STEP 3: Removing From the Mold

Remember back in step one, that additional note about sealing the seems. Well, I did not do a fantastic job of that, so I had some leaks of resin, which meant just using a box cutter to cut along the seems and remove the clock from the mold was not going to work. Jigsaw to the rescue. This really worked out for the best anyways since I wanted the corners of the clock to be more curved rather then angular. So I just used the jigsaw to kill both birds with one stone, it worked really slick!

STEP 4: Sanding and Final Coat

Once removed from the mold, I used my orbital sander to sand smooth some places where bubbles had formed in the resin. I just used 60 grit sand paper. I wiped off all the resin dust with a damp cloth, let that dry, and then poured on a thin top coat. To make sure that the resin would not drip down and solidify on the bottom, I used painters tape around the bottom edge. This way, the drips go all the way down the tape and when the resin fully cures you simply just peel the tape, with the cured drips, off. I did a top coat on both the front and back of the clock.

STEP 5: Clock Mechanism

Given the size of the clock, I purchased a high torque clock mechanism and large clock hands. The diameter of the clock face is 14", so I purchased clock hands where the minute hand was 6.5 inches long. The clock is roughly 1.75" thick, much thicker then the length of the shaft on the mechanism. I laid the mechanism in the center of the clock face on the back, then traced around it with a sharpie. I drilled a 7/8" diameter hole in the center all the way through for the shaft to go through. Next I used a 1.5" forstner drill bit and my drill to make a pocket larger then the size of the mechanism. I kept drilling until I could put the shaft through and use the nut on the face to tighten it in place.

STEP 6: Done in the Knick of Time

The last step was to apply the clock face numbers that I had purchased. The numbers had adhesive on the back, making them super easy to stick on the front. After putting the numbers in place, I put the hands on the mechanism and voila, completed mantle clock! Check out the video for the full process from start to finish!