Mantle Clock 27 Sept 2014
When I helped my son, Justin, setup the bed we made, I noticed that there is a lot of mission style furniture, so I decided to merge a few clock designs together and size it to his room. This is the result. The dial I plan on making out of hand hammered copper and having a local firm photo etch. I saw a dial close to this one and grabbed a few or most of the design elements. Those are ginkgo leaves (we have a ginkgo tree) which I found on the internet and I played around with the number fonts until I found one I liked. There will be a hand hammered pendulum behind the cross pieces. The clock as drawn, will be 13" high and 9-1/4" wide. I have not decided on the depth yet. I made this dial in Powerpoint and exported it to a pdf file. The local printer shop made a transparent mask for me which will be used as described below.
6 Oct 2014
I really want to fabricate a copper dial for this clock using the design above. I really want to do this because I got a quote of $450 for a local firm to etch the dial for me. After reviewing a few youtube videos, I now know how. There are kits to do photo etching of copper on ebay, so I bought one for about $10 and will give it all a go when it arrives. Here is the theory... I will have the dial printed out on a transparency at full size. The kit has a photoresist paint which will be applied to the copper plate for the dial. I plan on hammering the copper plate to give it a good texture. Then the transparency is placed on the painted copper and exposed to UV light. The areas unexposed, that is in black on the transparency, will be washed away using the kit's developer solution. Then the plate is placed in a ferric chloride solution and the exposed copper (black in the design) will be etched away. The plate is then washed and a paint applied which adheres to the etched copper. Then the photoresist mask is washed away using the last solution in the kit. In theory... the copper will only be etched where the design shows black, and those etched areas will be painted black. Pretty cool, yes?
12 Nov 2014
I have the copper plates cut for two clocks and all the chemicals and photoresist ready. Time to get busy...
I have the copper plates cut for two clocks and all the chemicals and photoresist ready. Time to get busy...