Woo-hoo! I drilled the hole for the dial door knob and installed the knob. There are actually 2 knobs and they are interchangeable. The one I put on is the one I like. My wife likes the other one. Maybe I'll try that one later. Then I set the glass into the door frame and fastened with 3 screws. Then I puttied the glass to the door frame [messy work]. Then, I installed the 2 dial door hinges. And all fits perfectly. You may recall that I had already performed a run-through earlier this month. It tuns out, the glass is quite wavy. Perhaps it just doesn't look that way when it's close to the dial. Then, I put the hood assembly back on the case. I had planned to put the movement back on the seatboard today, however, that will wait until tomorrow, April 1st. I started the clock project back in April 2015 when I bought the clock movement. So it is fitting that I will be wrapping up the project in April 2016. It's been fun all the way through except for my whacking my thumb on the router [still hurts!]. Enjoy the slideshow below! Thanks for visiting!
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Last night, my wife took a look at my clock case progress and declared that my case was way too glossy. So I investigated my options and, today, applied a final coat of wax with my #0000 steel wool and immediately wiped it off. I had to be sure I was applying the wax uniformly. The result was a more satin sheen that I'm happy with - and my wife is too! The waxing is now complete. I also put the waist door back on and installed the key escutcheon on the waist door with my wife's help. Next up tomorrow, is putting the knob on the dial door, installing the glass in the dial door and, finally, adding the dial door hinges. I'm hoping to have the clock dial door installed into the hood, and may even have the clock movement back on the seatboards by tomorrow night! That will only leave the penning of my name to the dial, a task now scheduled for April 23rd. Enjoy the slideshow below! Hello! Welcome back to all my blog followers! I have been away in CT for almost a week. While at a church on Easter Sunday, I noticed that both the windows and wall clock on this old CT church had wavier glass than my clock will have. In doing some research, it tuns out there is the old glass-making process and there is the old, old glass-making process. The glass I have is not as old as it probably should be [200 years], and after thinking about going through the effort to find old, old glass and have it cut, I decided what I have is just fine.
Today, I continued my quest to find paint that properly matched my dial face and, after several more trips to the store and test painting, my wife revealed that she thought it looked best before I started messing with any touch-ups. So, I went back to the store, bought some mild paint remover, and removed the touch-ups. I then needed to use polishing compound to bring back the sheen and I'm now where I was following the removal of Henry Botley's name and town. And that means that I'm all set for whenever my artist son can come here to pen my name and town. Tentatively, we had scheduled that for this coming weekend. Following getting the dial ready, I proceeded to put on another coat of wax on the dial door, hood and the entire clock case. I will put yet another coat on tomorrow. Shortly, I should have enough shine on the dial door to go ahead and add the knob and install the hinges and the glass. The case will need several more coats of wax. Please enjoy today's pics below! click to enlarge. Today I made a few trips to Home Depot for paint to touch-up the dial's paint chips and dings. I found the perfect color and had it mixed, however, it did not match the paint sample. I made a few adjustments to it. Some areas look OK and some not as good. Since the two largest paint chips are a result of the welding of the back posts, they are precisely equidistant from the bottom and sides. Therefore, I may get creative and ask my artist son to paint something over my attempts at covering them up. Not sure what we would paint there but it is certainly worth considering. All the dings are in the vicinity of where I want my name penned. BTW, I'll be taking a few days off from the clock to enjoy Easter time! Enjoy the pics below and click to enlarge!
OK, so I think I'm done with the dial cleaning. I still need to touch-up a few ding areas. I'll be going to Home Depot tomorrow to get some paint chip samples to see how close I can get to the current dial color. I thought I knew what color it was but all the sample chips I got at Lowe's today were way off. I'm going to Home Depot as I have Behr's app for color matching and Behr is only sold at Home Depot. I checked-in with my artist son and we have tentatively set Saturday, April 2nd as the date he will pen my name on the clock and paint-over the fading numerals and perhaps the points that mark the seconds and minutes. If that date doesn't work, we will try another. I put yet another coat of wax on the hood and dial door and I must say, they are starting to look like furniture. I want to get the hood and dial door done as I still need to install the glass and the dial door knob but have to finish waxing first. Enjoy the pics below! Click on photos to enlarge.
I worked all afternoon on cleaning up the dial in advance of my son doing his magic with the name script and numeral repair. It's definitely looking better. At least one more day and I should be all the way around the dial. Since the dial hands need to be out of the way, I reposition the movement back on the case every night and make sure I stop the clock where I want the hands. I also put another coat of wax on the hood and hood door today. Enjoy the slideshow below! Last night I put another coat of wax on the hood. First time in two months. It soaked up the wax and buffed-up to a nice hard shine. Today, I spent many hours in the workshop removing the existing town name, Salisbury, from the dial and then continuing to clean up the grime on the dial. I only got about halfway with the clean up and will get back to that in the next day or so. I plan to go to Lowe's tomorrow to see if I can find a small can of egg-shell paint to touch-up the spots remaining on the dial. For some reason, the paint can come off the dial where the back-side has a weld from the posts that hold the dial to the movement. Some were already poorly painted over and another two newer ones are just bare metal. I could paint the entire dial, but I'll likely leave that for my son to do one day. I continue to put coats of wax on the hood door as I am waiting to add the dial door knob and the putty, both of which are in-hand. I was able to find some walnut-colored putty that should work fine. I have two knobs. My wife likes one and I like the other. Enjoy the pics below! click to enlarge.
Henry Botley, the prior owner of my clock movement, penned his name on the dial around 1840. He was a jeweler and perhaps he would be pleased to know that I used a jewelers tool to remove his name from the dial. Actually, he probably would not! Today I tackled that frightening task and I am pleased that I was able to remove his name without also removing the just-as-old background paint. While I considered paint thinner and stripper, I decided that the best procedure to try was simple automobile polishing compound [less abrasive than rubbing compound] and a very small jewelers tool wrapped in a soft cloth. I applied very little pressure and let the compound do the work. I was satisfied in how it's coming out. Today I removed H Botley and tomorrow I'll remove Salisbury. I will likely also carefully go over the entire dial face as I ended up removing grime in the process and the color change is noticeable. Please enjoy the slideshow below! We picked up the cut glass today and it looks and fits good! Now I just need to make sure I don't break it. I don't want to install it with putty until I get the knob on the dial door. I expect to get that in tomorrow's mail. I decided on the font style that my son will be using as he writes my name and town on the dial. I have chosen Zapfino for my name and Landsdowne for the town name. Today I tested some additional detail that I was hoping to add to the inner edge of the dial door. The test worked but also told me that I didn't have sufficient door thickness, due to the rabbet on the back side, to go ahead and add it. I had wanted to add a cove & bead moulding similar to what is used on the hood shelf. But that's OK. I'll pickup some putty tomorrow and by Saturday I expect to be painstakingly removing Henry Botley's name from the dial and more importantly without messing up the field underneath it. I would rather not have to re-paint the background as it would be noticeable. The clock is still ticking away! Enjoy the slideshow below. Yesterday I sent my artist son our top choices for the dial name font styles. Today, he sent me samples of the candidate scripts with my name so we can review. We will be adding the town name as well and it will likely be in a different, but compatible, font style. Please see the candidates below. For the name, our top choices are Zapfino, Heaven's Gate and Byron. We will next decide on the town name type style. Also shown below is the current name that I will need to remove from the dial before replacing with my name. I will be experimenting with that task later this week. Thanks for visiting.
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AuthorI hope that you enjoy keeping up with my clock's progress! Archives
June 2016
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