Well I lie, I made a clock face only I guess. I like shadow boxes and layered shapes a lot. The problem is I like them for me, because they are pretty. If I go into ok but what could someone pay me money for, I oddly move out of pretty mode and into functional mode.
So I am easy to discount most things for the sake of pretty, and this was my conundrum.
Then I saw a cheap little clock at the corner shop and the depth was pretty much that of a shadow box, hence I figured what can be more pretty and functional than a clock.
I did check online for clock movements only, but the cost is surprisingly high unless I go with something very "cheap". The clock above though is the one from the corner shop with almost an equal cost to the movements I could order. The benefit is this one comes with a glass front, and surprisingly has a working alarm. I would call that a win win.
My main concern then is to just match the glass front and work in a method to still have the alarm functional.
All in all this is how it came out.
The mdf wood I used did give me a bit of grief, requiring way more passes to cut through than I recall but it is all trial and error I guess , so be it.
I painted the main number face with a acrylic mix which gave me a copper bronze I guess given that the underlying wood is quite dark actually. I then just went with it and stuck to keeping the outer face a more rustic brown, and did the edging in black enamel since I also wanted to see how enamel actually works on my MDF wood.
I did make a bit of a blunder by flipping my back face the wrong way when painting and ended up with the white inner on the bloody outside.
So the back I will likely still just coat in black again and although I wanted the white inside for reasons to follow it is what it is now... Maybe. I will see how much it irks me.
The alarm trigger is a thin dongle I cut and sanded the edges to be bevelled and then the reverse inside of the backing boards so I would not need extra mounting to hold the trigger in place and it can slide freely as the alarm goes off or is set.
I wanted the white back to add a bit more reflection to the inner surfaces when the LED's were on, but I think it does not take much away without. As for the LED placement itself I am looking at designing the next box with a nestling space so you can't actually see the strip through the cuts and it was a bit tricky to keep the strip in place without a dedicated pathway.
I am actually not too sure how to better have directional light forward specifically by the numbers and using a single strip so for the best light but also hidden the strip starts wrapped around the movement itself and winds outwards from there behind more solid sections that do hide the vertical bits.
I think it was a good first test but I definitely have some improvements to keep in mind with my next cutfile design.
