I know that I posted about these in parts and pieces, but I thought I would write one post with all of the pictures in one place. It’s more fun that way.

At my previous job one of my coworkers had seen the cat clock that Jay had made me years ago.

Teasingly, she told me that Jay could make a dog clock for her. Then she added, “As a retirement gift!” I chuckled, but tucked that thought in my mind’s filing cabinet.

Well, today is her last day of work before she retires. Technically she was supposed to retire a month ago, but her boss talked her into staying for another month. This worked out perfectly for me because I had asked Jay to make her a clock.

First he found a picture online and, using SketchUp, he drew out all of the tiny little details. He then fired up the CNC router and produced the clock.

We ended up making two because his mom saw it and loved it. Not a big deal. Twin dog clocks were now on the docket.

I wanted to stain it, but I had to be careful. I wanted the lines to really stand out without the rest of the wood being too dark and obliterating the lines.

Here you can see the difference between the non-stained and stained clocks. Quite a difference! I couldn’t decide between two of the colors, so I used them both. Each dog is a different color.

Since this is a clock I wanted to be able to easily tell the time when glancing at it. That means the hour ticks have to be made more visible than what they were at this stage. Jay and I decided to deploy the use of acrylic paint. First, however, you have to lay down a base coat of poly so that if you color outside the lines it’s easier to clean off of the wood.

(You can’t tell, but these have one coat of poly on them)

Then it was time to do some painting. I like sparkle so I found some metallic-ish paint with a hint of shine to it. There were two colors of this paint, so keeping with the theme, I used one per each dog.

Mint:

Sapphire:

I think the colors worked out really well with the stain.

After the paint was dried and cleaned up, I added two more coats of poly to the front and back. They were then handed over to Jay for installation of the clock mechanisms.

I had him color the hands of the clock black because I was afraid the gold wouldn’t stick out well enough to be able to tell the time. I’m really glad that he did because I like the look of it.

A hanger was also added to the back and they were done!