Inspiration — childhood revisited. Hayao Miyazaki’s works have a special place in my childhood. As a kid, the movie time after dinner was one of my favorite family rituals. Dad sat us down in front of the TV, discussed what we like to watch, then he went up to the giant glass cabinet, got the tape out of the plastic case and put it in his big old VHS player to play. As soon as the theme music came on, my brothers loudly sang along and started silly dance around the house. Usually, the rest of family didn’t have a preference of what to watch, so they followed my likes — となりのトトロ, 天空の城ラピュタ,風の谷のナウシカ are among my most favorites.
Object — With projects finals and less than a week to complete the task, a time machine to travel back in time is not practical, so I decided to make a minimalist Totoro clock. The clock itself will be wooden, with a acrylic belly on the surface, where the clock will go. Something looks like this:
I started by looking for workable silhouettes, but couldn’t really find a minimal style I like, so I drew it myself. This is what the shape of the clock would look like:
And the belly is where the clock will go:
Then comes collecting the parts for the clock. I saw one of these kits on Kmart website, and thought it would be easy to pick up one at the local store:
Unfortunately, Kmart, Lowe’s, BBB, Home Depot don’t have it. I need these parts, so I purchased a real clock and disassembled it:
Next, I picked up some woods from Chinatown building supply:
Cut them into smaller workable 12×12:
In the middle of it, bandsaw decided to snap, thanks to Edson and John for replacing the blade:
Then it’s laser time:
The result looked fine, except it’s too thin:
So I decided to make more and glued three of them together to create more thickness:
To the back of the clock is where the hanging mechanism, and the battery case will go. The battery case is the main component to hold/connect the clock-hands in the front. I tried my best to eyeball the best location for it.
Next, not sure what works best to affix the plastic battery case, I went to “this to that” to figure out, and Epoxy it is:
Clamped it down for good 20 minutes:
In the front is where the acrylic belly and clock-hands will locate. A proper-size hole needs to go through acrylic belly and the wooden body to fit in the clock-hands. When I laser cutted the acrylic belly I forgot about this, so I had to use either the drill press or the hand drill to make that happen. I tried the drill press first, and the delicate acrylic belly broke.
So I hand drilled the hole, it was successful.
Almost done:
Before affixing the clock-hands, I used the polyurethane as finish to make the font surface look better.
Front:
Back:
Project with a smaller object is not necessarily easier. When there is little room to try/make mistakes or the material is delicate, failure is almost guaranteed. In this project, the clock-hands are not attaching to the surface steady enough so they can’t really appoint for time. I think it is because three layers of wood is too thick, and that affects the proper attachment of the hands to the battery in the back, the functionality is affected too. If I can start over , two layers should be good enough.