MYGROUNDUPSTARTUP Week 6 “New Designs”

January 28, 2022

It’s design time this week and I’m creating some new clock designs. In the first 2 weeks, I spent a good deal of time googling unique clocks and getting ideas for things to build. I found several different designs that I have saved on my phone that my girlfriend and I picked out.

One of them is what we’re calling the “Staggered Clock.” I think it will be a new favorite of mine. I got the idea from a YouTube video that I watched and decided to make it myself.  

I’ve gotten almost all my ideas so far from googling what other people have done and tweaking them to be unique to myself. I don’t believe that there’s any problem with “stealing ideas” like that. In fact, I think that it is a very good thing to do and have written an article about why you don’t have to be one-of-a-kind to be an entrepreneur that you can read here.

Building The Clocks

It was a fairly simple clock to build and a lot of fun to do as well. I’m also lucky that I get to use my boss’s wood because it’s so much easier to work with and looks so much better. 

I started with a small sheet of plywood and used my circle cutting jig to cut out a 16” circle. Next, I cut out several pieces of wood at a few different widths and varying lengths and placed them all on the piece of plywood to see what it looked like. After that, I smothered the plywood in glue and laid the pieces of wood on it. I then flipped it over and stapled all the wood to the plywood. Here is the finished product.

After I finished gluing and stapling the Staggered Clock, I gave it a good sanding and then used linseed oil to finish it. I know that I want clocks that people haven’t seen before because I understand the importance of finding a niche and creating products that aren’t the norm. I think this clock would look good on a future website where people can go on and look through various products.

After I finished building this clock, I started on another wackier-looking clock that I had seen. This clock is a half-circle with descending planks of wood on the other half. It took me a minute to finally decide on how big I wanted to make it and how to space it all out, but I finally decided on 20 inches.

I glued 2 boards together and cut them out on my circle cutting jig creating a half-circle. Next, I cut out 4 planks of wood, each 2 inches smaller than the last. Then, I painted all those planks black and waited for them to dry. While they were drying, I stained the half-circle but didn’t like how dark it was so I made another half circle and oiled it with linseed oil. After they dried, I attached them all to the clock. I really like this clock as well.

I also put together a 22” clock which might be my new favorite. Very exciting. I wasn’t sure about the 22” but now that I’ve seen it, I know that I will be making more of them. I had planned on making 10” clocks, 16” clocks, and some little tiny desk clocks as well but now that I’ve seen this 22” clock I realize I need to have a bigger size.

New Problem 

The clock stencils that my girlfriend and I made are a bust. This is so frustrating for me. I really thought this was going to work. The reason why I now know it won’t work is that they’re too fragile. I need something like plastic stencils that won’t tear as paper does. Even from just cutting the numbers out of the paper it’s tearing. If it can’t even handle being cut out it definitely won’t be able to handle being painted and used.

I’ve been doing some shopping online for different stencils and bought a 16” one and a 22” one. They should get here next week.

I feel very accomplished this weekend, and I think I got a lot done. I’m not sure what next weekend will hold for me, but whatever it is I can’t wait.