Star Clock

Clocks are incredibly awesome inventions. Without them we would be horribly coordinated. Unfortunately, they are made by new materials with no regard for the old ones. Using materials that are not needed for their original purpose is a great way to help the environment. Instead of recycling them using up power, or even worse, sending them to a landfill, you can use old materials. In this case I will be using wood from a planetarium to make a star clock. Make sure your wood is colored differently on each side.

Extra stage prop wood

DIY Clock Kit

Black Paint

Wood Glue

Grab your wood and cut it into sizable pieces so that your cnc can cut them. Grab 2 pieces. Name one Moon and Stars and the other Background. Put the naming on masking tape. For the Moon and Stars place it on the blue side. Place the naming for Background on the black side.

*Note these could be other colors but for mine I used blue for the Moon and Stars and black for the Background.

Put the wood in the cnc. Then use the files I put in the step to cut out the moon and the stars. Your pieces should come out like the pictures above (the pieces cut out of the wood).

Embrace your inner Gru and glue the moon to the base clock. Make it so that it matches the curve of the circle. Unfortunately the moon and the circle don't perfectly match. So what you want to do is align one of the ends to the circle. The other can be shaved off later. Also make sure that the moon side color is the opposite of that of the main circle.

When cutting out your stars and moon it will NOT paint the sides. And do you really want to see a nice clock ONLY from one angle? NO! Paint the sides of your stars so the color of the sides of your stars matches the background. Do this as well with the star hole cut out of the moon. DO NOT do the sides of the background. That will come later.

Take some scrap wood. And run it through a table saw. Take said wood and glue it to the circle. Make sure that the wood pieces are aligned with the star cut out in the moon. They way you do that is by making the star cut out of the moon upright then make the standoffs on the back horizontal.

Drill out the hole in the middle of the circle. Use the star cut out of the moon to figure that out. Take the stars armpits and run a ruler across them. Make sure the ruler is at the edge of the moon. Then go 6 inches out. That's where you drill. Make sure the hole goes all the way through. Don't forget, use a 9 mm drill bit!

Take the stars that you cut out. Then, with these stars you glue then by taking the line you ran across the stars from last step.

Grab yourself your belt sander and your clock. Take your clock and belt sand it by slowly rotating it on the top belt sander. Do this until the moon is fully flush with your clock background.

After your newly sanded clock isn't super hot bring it over to your painting station. Take your black paint and paint the edges of your clock. Also paint the inner edge of your moon. Doing this will make the blue really pop and will get rid of that wood color. Now all you need is the clock motor!

Get your DIY Clock. Take the base portion of the clock and place it so the cylinder sticks up through the hole in the middle of the clock. After that place on the hour hand then the minute and finally the second hand. With the second hand you must have the hollow cylinder go right in the middle. Then place in the clock batteries and you're done!

You have finished the star/moon clock! Now you can do weird editing to make it look cool. Maybe hang it up near a window and watch it after dark! I hope you had a great time making the clock and have an awesome time hearing: tick, tick, tick, tick, tick until you go insane!