I have been working on this Pallet Wood Guitar Clock Project for a little while now, it’s one of those learn on the job projects and this latest session has thrown up a few things to resolve.
The first thing to overcome was to figure out how to mount the clock movement as the shaft that the hands fit onto is quite short and the guitar body is quite thick. In the end I decided to bore a hole all the way through the body that was big enough to accommodate the clock movement. You can see the big hole on this image below, the idea is that in collaboration with Shalini. We will create a clock face from copper sheet. This will have to be about 10mm bigger in diameter than the hole so that it can be glued in place over the big hole.
This clock face will have a hole drilled in the centre for the clock to be mounted to it and the clock face is going to be embossed and then enameled so should look good.
The picture below shows the large hole for the clock mechanism and the 3 pickups in place.
The next issue was how to accurately fix the head stock to the top of the neck, for some reason this really messed with my head. But then I had a “light bulb” moment and a plan was hatched! I want to glue the head stock onto the neck but also want to have a couple of dowels in there for strength. So two nails were hammed into the head stock in the right position to about half of their length. Then I took the nails out and ground the heads off and made a point on each nail so I ended up with two nails with a point at each end. These double ended nails were pushed back into the holes in the head stock.
Now I laid the main guitar body down on the table and brought the head stock to it and made sure it was aligned properly with the neck. Once I was happy with this I pushed the head stock against the neck and then tapped it all the way home with a bit of scrap wood. When I am ready I can remove those double ended nails and have the holes perfectly aligned, ready for drilling to fit the two dowels and final glueing together.
As you can see I have also cut slots in the bridge on the head stock for the strings and drilled the holes for the tuning screws.
I will write another installment once further work has been completed on the Pallet Wood Guitar Clock Project .
