13 HOUR CLOCK What do you need for materials? Cheap stuff, of course! Buy a 5 buck plastic clock at WalMart. You know, the ones that take 1 AA cell battery to run. Now, go to a home improvement store and buy a sheet of translucent ceiling plastic panel (frosted white). These cover lights in a basement, whatever. About $3. Youll only need a small piece of it for the new clock face. Then, get some one inch thick cedar wood (a plank that is about one foot wide is good --cedar isnt cheap, but you want something that wont break down in rain like chipboard or plywood).You can buy a 8 foot length for about $10..but you can use it for other projects too. Youll need a length of extension cord attached to two C7 Christmas light sockets (with bulb color of your choice, but green looks best, IMHO). Make sure you make good safe electrical connections. Remember, this prop is probably going to get rain on it. I solder my connections, then use the heat sensitive shrink tubing to insulate the soldered wire. Then, another wrap of electrical tape. Use GFIC outlets for all outdoor electrical items. If you are not comfortable with electrical stuff, then just leave it unlit. Up to you. First off, you need to remove the clock plastic dome cover (little tabs come right off), the face and clockworks can easily come right out too. More tabs. You need the paper clock face for a stencil later. Toss the other stuff in your parts bin. So now you only have a plastic ring! 5 bucks for this? Well, not quite. Get some half inch wood dowels to attach the black outer clock ring to the appropriately sized cedar wood backing. You can paint the backing green or let it weather to cedar silver, you choice. Now, you want to cut four dowels to about 3 inches in length. Drill a hole through the ring (4 holes spaced at the 12,3,6 9 positions. Screw it into the backing where they will just fit into the back of the clock outer plastic ring. Screw the ring to dowels. No glue! You want to remove the ring to replace bulbs as needed later. Remove the ring and then drill a hole in the middle to fish the extension cord through to the lights. Then position the two lights, one pointed up and one down (use tie wraps to hold the sockets to the backing). Now, be creative with that clock face. I used the old paper click face as a stencil (clever huh?) and used an xacto knife to cut out the little triangles on the dial where the numbers go by. Then, I choose to print out a BIG number 13 to dominate the place where 12 would normally be. You may want to add the numbers 3,6,9--but I choose not to because I wanted the 13 to stand out. I used the word processor with a big font to do this. I used the old clock face to trace out a new face on the translucent panel. I used a dremel tool to cut out the plastic round face (cutting with anything else will just crack the plastic). Then, attached my handy stencil with the 13 on it, used a little art brush to apply black epoxy paint. Then, attach the face to the outer clock ring with epoxy glue. You can add the hands to the face (I choose to make it 15 til 13 oclock. I also made little plastic spacers so I could glue the hands in place. (think about how windy it can get outside). Attach to the clock to a post, bush, or tree, and you have a very spooky prop indeed.Clock side view (with bulbs showing):
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 13:12:46 +0000