MYGROUNDUPSTARTUP Week 3 “Trial and Error”

January 7, 2022

It was a cold Saturday morning, I loaded up all my pallet wood in the back of my Nissan Altima and drove to work. I was excited to get started building clocks and couldn’t wait to get inside. Usually, my boss and his wife work on the weekends since their woodshop is on the same property as their house, but there was no one in sight. That made me really happy because I wanted to focus without wasting 30 minutes talking to whoever would be there.  

I took all my wood inside and began taking measurements and cutting some of it down to size. The first few clocks I made were pretty rough and I knew I had some learning to do. On the left one, I shot all my staples straight through the clock and had to take them all to the grinder and grind them down. I realize now that the connecting boards on the back are way too big. I need to make those smaller next time.

On the first one, I put a staple right in the path of where the bandsaw blade would go through and ruined the blade cutting through it. Note to self: Bandsaws don’t like staples.  

I wasn’t sure what kinds of clocks I was making, I just figured I’d make a couple, stain them and then paint on the numbers another day. I made around 3, 16” clocks and a couple of 10” ones as well. 

Researching Designs

Now that I had a few clock bodies built, I needed to decide on what I wanted them to look like. My girlfriend and I spent an afternoon together with a piece of paper and my mom’s laptop googling unique clocks that we liked and wanted to build. There were many that we liked and we had a whole sheet full of them. We were so excited about it all.

It soon became overwhelming, however, because we found that there were literally unlimited possibilities in what we could build. It’s been very hard to narrow down the unlimited options and whittle it down to just one to start with. We still have a lot more whittling to do.

How Will I Paint the Numbers On?

I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to put the numbers on, and I think I’ve had an idea. I can’t just take a paintbrush and paint numbers on. I actually have to make them look professional. So, I think I’m going to buy some number and roman numeral stencils on Amazon and use those on some poster boards to make homemade stencils to paint the numbers on. I’ll pick some poster boards up this weekend.