Kitchen clock

We've been to countless shops, including a dedicated clock shop in Amsterdam, without finding the right clock for our new kitchen. So I decided to make my own. One of the challenges was to come up with some sort of hoop to surround the face. The solution was to use a 30cm springform cake tin. The clock face was made from the 22mm-thick top of a once-loved but now out-dated oak side table that had been sitting in the loft for years. This was stripped of varnish and given 4 coats of satin white cupboard paint. Although it felt sacrilegious to paint over the oak, the grain is still visible and I know it's there.

The design of the face was based on various station clocks we had seen and the springform tin added to the industrial feel of the design. I used black upholstery pins for the hour markers except for the 12, 3, 6 and 9 positions where I used black polycarbonate cut into strips, rounded to the same curvature and height as the upholstery pins and polished.

By chance the hands of the mechanism have much the same curvature as the pins and polycarbonate strips so that all the elements of the clock face tie together. I chose a ticking mechanism rather than a silent sweep movement in keeping with the more traditional design.