The purpose of this project is to recycle objects and to make them into something nice. Today our world is overly polluted and if we recycled more we could make our world a better place. For this project I decided to use a scrap of butchers block, a scrap metal rod, and an old vinyl.

Supplies

7" Vinyl Record
Metal Rod
Butcher's Block
Clock Motor and Hands

Step 1: Designing on Inkscape

Before doing anything with your materials, one should plan ahead and draft your design. Once you know what you want, you can go on Inkscape to designing what you want to be engraved or burned on. Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor. This software can be used to create or edit vector graphics such as illustrations, diagrams, line arts, charts, logos and complex paintings.

Step 2: Preparing Your Wood

After knowing what design you want and you've already planned it out, you can start preparing your wood for the carver and/or the engraver. One can prepare the wood by planing it down and sanding it before sending it through the engraver/carver.

Step 3: Cutting the Metal Pieces

So, I came up with the idea to use pieces from a metal rod to mark the hours. I decided that the pieces that marked 12,3,6, and 9 would be 1" and the rest of the hours would be 1/2". I cut my pieces with a chop saw. Unfortunately, after my clock was carved I realized that on the inkscape file I placed the the holes for the metal pieces too close to the edge. I ended up having to go back and grind every metal piece by hand on a metal bench grinder/buffer..

Step 4: Cutting Out the Wood

After preparing your wood you send it through the carver/ engraver. Make sure to specify the center of your clock before sending through the machines. Keep in mind the thickness of your wood. For example, my wood is fairly thick and the bit sizes were too small to cut down entirely into the wood. So, after my wood was ran through the engraver I went on the jigsaw and finished cutting the clock completely.

Step 5: Stain

Before stain, poly or adding in any finishing touches to your wood you want to smooth it out. You can do so by sanding the wood. As you sand you want to go from low to high numbers. Start out rough to get rid of big scratches and slowing go up in numbers gradually smooth out the wood. After sanding your wood you can stain. I highly recommend taking a scrap of the wood you are using to test out the stain before using it on your clock. After testing it I decided to stain my clock with the espresso color. After staining I glued in the record.

Step 6: Glassing

Instead of applying poly to the clock I decided to epoxy the clock, creating a glassing effect. I used a 2 part epoxy resin. I followed the manufacturer's instruction, and mixed equal parts of the epoxy and resin for 10 minutes.The mix was then poured onto the clock and spread across the surface. It takes a really long time for the mix to then dry. As it dries one should have a blow dryer handy to get all the bubbles out. It usually takes at least 2 coats of epoxy resin to settle down nicely on the clock. For me it was 3 due to a scratch that appeared on the surface after the second coat.

Step 7: The Finished Product

After everything is stained and glassed, it was time to install the clock motor and hands. Since the record and hands were black I painted the clock hands silver so that they stood out. Finally, I finished my clock.