Thread: Waldo’s Grandfather clock

Wongo, knowing you care and show it publically, gets me through each day and makes the grey clouds go away.

Well I pondered and mused as I did other stuff in the shed, and after a week of looking at the door I wasn't happy with it, I knew that as soon as I realised how nothing lined up, but I needed to know I couldn't live with it being the ay it was. So I thought stuff it, hang the expense of 2.4m of timber, I'll get it right and not have to live with it always bugging me if I didn't get it done the way I'd envisaged it from the start. The biggest drama with the new piece of timber I got, which I didn't realise at the time, until I had put it through the linear router sled and dimensioned on the thicknesser, was that it showed signs of being kiln dried too fast. If I remember I'll put some photos up. Thankfully I was able to cut around it all.

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Now everything lines up on the horizontal plane from the door to clock sides with the rails and raised panels.

There's still a fair amount of routing to door and marking the locations of the hinges yet, which will have to wait until a router bit arrives.
In the meantime I'm working on the side doors and the columns, but these will have to wait for another day as I've got a bit of navel fluff to look at etc.

Getting there slowly mate.

Slowly Wongo San, but getting towards the pointy end now.

Waldo, today is the only day of the year when you and I share same age. Have a good one old man.

Thanks Wongo, I'm touched.

I've been hard at it every weekend, but sometimes those weekends (given it's now Winter as well) are tiny steps, mainly because they're the moments that if I stuff up there's no return, especially on the front door as I have to be 100% that what I've worked out and measured is accurate as there are no tolerances now.

So continuing the front door has been incremental wins. I'm going to fast forward with a progress shot just below to demonstrate what I'm going to try and explain.

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With the column end posts and the column end caps shown above and the door having about 5-6mm clearance I needed a hinge that would allow me to fix doors in different ways to give me the clearance I needed, and inset the doors to my vision. Looking at the photo above you can hopefully see that with a normal hinge and the proximity of it to the column end posts and column end caps that it wouldn't be possible to open. So way back when I started to get together my ideas of building a grandfather clock I had to think about hinges. Graeme Brown Antiques in Malvern, VIC are my go to for hinges, locks etc. So I had a look to see what they had and work if it was fit for purpose.

I got from them some bent flap hinges, similar to these below from CMI in Brisbane. I did get these in from CMI initially, but the quality was pretty poor.

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What I did find at Graeme Brown Antiques was the same hinge type but they were in antique bronze and much better quality, which after a bit of mulling over I went with. This hinge type let me use it into two different ways to get what I wanted.

The next bit was to work out how I'd set the hinges to work so that the door lifted out and cleared the column end posts and column end caps. After a few hours of trial and error I worked out the jig setup to route the hinges and could begin. Below is a trial run.

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Happy with this, the next bit was to route the door. And as you can see things nicely aligned from the door to the carcass.

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Next with my off-sider to help it was onto routing on the inside of the front door so that it would be inset into the clock carcass.

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The holes in the hinges for the screws were of a diameter that they'd only accept 4g screws, and the only 4g screws I could get in from Screw it Screws (I really like their Robertson Screws) was a shank of 10mm. Which when you ad the door weight with glass I wasn't sure or not that 4g 10mm would be enough, so I drilled out the hinge holes to accept 6g.

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The next step was to do a test run of the hinges fitted to the door and see that it opened with clearance from the column end posts and column end caps. In the third shot below you can see the door almost kisses the column end post and caps.

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What you don't see in the first photo above is the top column end posts and the top end column caps. I've blued in the bottom pairs so I knew what I was working with as I worked out the door.

When I measured the door to each side of the carcass edge I was 3mm out to one side. So to fix it I need to pack the door 3mm of from the hinge and that is th next thing to do this Saturday and also position the top end column posts and top column posts.

In my next post I'll go into the detail of the side doors.

I've had these done for about a month now, so it's about time I put the details of the side doors up.

It took a heck of a lot of research to find just what I wanted, or enough to have something to base the insert for the doors off. Like many parts of this build, I looked at hours of Youtube videos about grandfather clocks and I saw some things I hated because they seemed too simple or just didn't fit with the style I was looking for, and finally I found something. The something that I was looking for was for a style of door insert that had a musical feel about it. So when I found it, I then jumped into adobe Illustrator to draw out what I wanted, the result is below.

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This was going to be a first for me using a fret saw, and I think this took three goes before I was happy with the first insert panel. 1 down and 1 more to go with a dry fit to see how things look.

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Just as I always do when I have floating panels in doors, on the inside of each rail and stile I hot glue a piece of fly screen rubber to reduce the insert from flopping all around the place.

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Doors glued up.

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(this has taken me over 30 ins so far to do this much, I'll come back later when someone has kicked the forum in the goolies and things are faster to upload)

Once the doors were glued up and trimmed, the next stage was to route doors to accept the hinges and the locks.

I like repeatability and given I'm doing two doors here and I'll likely be using this style of hinge later for another build in the future sometime, I like to make jigs for routing and they make my life easier.

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As always, the locks, just like the hinges are from Grahame Brown Antiques in Malvern, VIC. Here I'm using their lock, Lock Brass, U.K. plate size 38mm x 20mm.

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When I'd routered the door to receive the hinges and had router the edge profiles I found that my 4g 10mm screws just peeked a tiny bit through to the front face of the door, and so thinking what to use as a shim I glued 2 .5mm pieces of copper plate. While they look pretty and won't ever be seen again, they do the job just nicely.
I included in the shot the glue I use when I'm gluing metal of most any type. It's 20+ years old and came from my late Dad's shed. I'm glad I had the foresight to grab it as it's been so useful over the years and holds strong, even outside in the weather.

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What I hadn't yet gone into for the doors here, or previously for the main door, was that instead of using 3/4" stock I used 1" stock so that the door sat within the carcass of the clock and it also gave me the ability to have the doors built so they overlapped the carcass to stop dust etc. from entering into the g/father clock.

Final shot for this update is with the one of the doors fitted to see how things look.

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Next update will cover the top end column posts, top end end column caps and an extra bit of moulding I'd added.

Looking amazing Waldo. This is one impressive piece of work.

Well done Waldo, you've done an amazing job so far.

Looking forward to seeing it put together.

I posted a couple of months ago that I'd provide a small update of the extra profile I've put in with the ides that it adds a softer transition from the clock side to the underneath of the crown frame returns.

You'll notice some pretty ugly gaps in the mitres, these get fixed up later.

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The reason it's been so long between drinks is that getting the columns done was a long process.

First thing was to dock this long length of 90mm x 90mm x 2.9m in two for the columns. I got this length just in case I need a back up length (sometimes I can see into the future, and I needed it)

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After dimensioning it square on the jointer and thicknesses I was able to see the beautiful figure running through it. This column when it was going to get finished would come up a treat,

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Initially I'd made a jig so that I could create the columns by running it through the table saw. That was dodgy and downright scary, so that got the flick. Next I tried a router jig, when we were testing it my son reckoned it was less scary and safer than the tables jig, but when we put the stock into it to do it, it jumped all of the place and I quickly killed that approach.

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I next tried it as one length (about 1,850mm) in my lathe with a lathe steady, but that jumped all around the joint so I killed that third idea.

My only and final option was to dock the stock in half and I'd have to end glue the two halves back together.

In the process of getting ready to do it on the lathe I got from PWS a Woodpecker carbide tipped chisel, this was real nice. Once I worked out that it's better to use the cornerof it to cut in tiny roughing passes it was a dream to use. In the first column I tried I used the chisel in plunges, bad idea and this is why I needed that 2.9m length I first showed. This now got me to where I was last Sunday, when using hid glue I end glued the two halves together.

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The next step was the jig so that I could do the flutes of the columns. For this process I was going to do the same as Making fluted columns with a router - YouTube

The first step was to mark and drill the end caps of the jig

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And fix it to the sled/carrier/jig or whatever you want to call it.

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The next steps in the process were pretty nerve racking for me, as I'd never done this sort of thing before, so I took it slow and careful. Rotating the column blank, resetting the screws that held it in place as I turned it 14 times before I had all the flutes done probably took about an hour.

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Eventually I had them all done.

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But I wasn't out of the wood yet, next I had to run it through the tablesaw before I could see if everything had worked out, and it had.

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The next bit was whatI'd been looking for and that was presenting the column to the clock and glueing them in.

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All the following shots show the column in place and glued.

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Remember how I had to end glue the two lengths to form the column? While it's not what I wanted to do, it's just what I had to do and so things looked like they were meant that way I lined up the centre of the column to the centre hinge of the door, that was things do about right I reckon.

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That brings me now up to the point where I can start oiling the clock.

I just have a few things to do, like:

• some final sanding where I've still got pencil marks;
• clean the shed so there's as little dust that can fly around as possible;
• tell my dear wife that her car might be out of the shed for a while while I do the oiling; and
• a few other things which I'll update you with, including finishing dimensioning up the back panel for the clock.

What I have to do yet is order the glass for the door.

I'm pretty happy with a very successful weekend, after spending so long with iterative ideas until things worked out.