Following on from the success of making the two teddy bears out of MDF as gifts for new born babies, I decided to progress the clock making using MDF rather than pine. Whilst the clock I did for my brother came out OK, it took a lot of effort to get a good finish. As mentioned in my previous blog he had shown the fish clock he’d painted to a few of his piscatorial mates and they all loved it so he suggested if I knocked out a few and he’d sell them. I therefore got about designing a few different versions so they had a choice. As I was due to meet up with Alan the following weekend I had to crack on with batching them up, painting and ordering more quartz clock parts as I didn’t have enough to cover the number of units I was making.

I’d purchased some green and grey paint as Alan had suggested these colours would be popular with fishermen and who’s to argue as they did come out rather well when sprayed up. I fitted the clock mechanism and wrapped them ready for transport. I did have a couple of failures, where the numbers on the face came out uneven (a human problem rather than CNC) so decided to paint them in brighter colours and one of them is now adorned on my neighbour Nick’s garage wall. Alan already had buyers for three of the clocks and he says he’s going to put the rest on eBay. I’m not sure if they’ll sell but hey I never intended to make stuff to sell so it might help me recoup some of my costs back.

Unfortunately due to the Coronavirus outbreak, our plans to meet up at the weekend were dashed so I still have the clocks but hopefully he’ll collect them soon.

He also mentioned my ability to make clocks to another friend and was asked whether I could make one for his mates wife as a birthday present. He sent me the logo so I got to work on the design. With the holiday we had planned having to be cancelled this week, I had plenty of time to knock out the designs and produce the two new versions of what is becoming my signature product. Again, I was rather pleased with the outcome. The same mate also asked me to make two clocks for his mum and partner’s mum so again, I found a picture of a flower and added some simple text. They’ve now been painted and await the mechanism fitting and should be ready for collection before Mothers Day.

Another line I’ve been trying to produce is signs for homes and decided to try to create one out of plywood. I did try the same out of MDF but it didn’t work very well as part of the letters broke as I sanded the edges down.

Using 18mm birch ply produced really crisp edges and was ideal for creating this type of sign. I decided to spray this in contrasting colours and even got a complement from Tina, who has been pretty indifferent to the things I’ve been making (I suppose there’s only so many ornaments a woman can have :))

It’s now sitting in the windowsill in one of the bedrooms. This design came out really well and could be a best seller if I ever decided to knock out more of them.

First attempt, some of the detail didn’t cut well

With the extra time this week I’ve also been finishing off Nick’s engagement plaque and presented it to him this week, along with the three earlier versions that didn’t come out as well as I had hoped.

V Carving in MDF wasn’t great

MDF then painted

The final version in oak and finished with Danish Oil

I’ve still got loads of ideas to create more things and hopefully I’ll get some more done this week so watch this space for another update soon.