Cast Iron Style Clock

I’ve been producing a number of cog based clocks with an amazing rust effect finish and decided to make something similar based on a clock face of an old Gents electric clock – hence the Cast Iron Style Clock.

I also wanted to make something that could be personalised as these would be going in to my Etsy shop and it seemed like a neat idea that a clock could be made a little more special for the folks buying the item. The first design has the name Watson & Co and the year 1936 in memory of my late dad – in – law who was a truly wonderful bloke. These designs are typically around 400mm in diameter and made from a good quality 18mmMDF. A challenge in machining these was the letters are relatively narrow and given the nature of MDF I found that parts of the letter could break away. My solution was to form a bit of a sump where the text will be placed and soak this with good old super glue and wait for this to go hard. Now I’m machining a hardened fibrous material and generally everything stays in place.

The finished machined item has the central bezel and the text as upstands and the hour markers and the roman numeral hours and recessed cuts. Once machined and everything cleaned up, the fun part of the rusting starts.

I tend to seal the MDF with a matt black paint – this seems to give the rust treatments a good foundation to work from. The paints are specific rust effect mixes that contain very fine particles of iron so when you apply water or other rusting friendly solutions the paint starts to develop a rust effect. there are so many factors that will influence the rust development process – the weather, how quickly the solutions take to dry, ambient conditions etc. Putting a rusting solution on is just one part of the process, I found that by adding iron filings, copper filings etc the final result can be altered quite dramatically.

To add to the interest, the raised bezel and the text are treated with a copper based solution so that these elements will go a copper / verdigris green.

This image was taken from a recent design and shows the way the text pops out with the copper effect. It’s also noticeable that the rust below the & looks like its starting to flake off.

There’s a bit more detail about these on my Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1668783421/a-cast-iron-style-industrial-inspired For UK based customers a clock with out any personalisation is £115.00 and with a name and date £160.00 with postage. I’m more than happy to quote for overseas destination and I’m also more than happy to make larger versions. Just drop an e mail to daveworxwood@gmail.com if you would like more information.