OK, Here's my entry for the August contest. I got the idea of doing a 13 hour clock because my theme this year is a haunted castle. I looked around and saw
http://www.bastardrat.com/2005pics/clockvid.wmv
on HF. But then I was given more inspiration by this illustration:
http://davelandweb.com/hauntedmansion/DSC_0732.jpg
So I decided to try to make the clock from the Disney's Haunted Mansion.
I found 2 vacuum boxes sitting by the garbage, and I couldn't resist. I took them home and duct taped them together to make the center section. I cut a hole in it to put the pendulum inside. At first I was just going to use the two boxes as the base... I later changed up the design.
I got a square shaped box to use as the clock face. I cut the hole for the pendulum further down to have a longer opening. I then decided the best way to do this project was Papier Mache. So I started covering the whole thing with a water/glue solution papier mache. I put 3 wood pieces on the back and inside front corners of the pendulum area for support.
I used foam to make the teeth of the clock face. I should inserted the plexiglass first to give the styrofoam something to hang on to when I started macheing it.
Here's what it looks like from the inside after the mache has been applied to the foam teeth.
And here's a bad shot of the outside already mache'd.
The top part of the clock was also made of styrofoam. I had gotten a copy of the actual design of the clock from DoomBuggies.com. They actually have the blueprints to a lot of the mansion props.
Here's the top section mache'd.
Looking at the illustration of the Haunted Mansion clock, I saw that the base was made with four legs, so I had been looking for a nice wooden foot stool that already had that style of legs. I found a metal one for $9.00 with just the right curvature on the legs, but I would have to do some mache and plaster cloth work to build it up.
Here, I screwed the base into the cardboard box and used a lot of gorilla glue to help secure the sections together. Painted it with oops paint from Lowes and dry brushed the black on.
Unfortunatly, for some reason I stopped taking pictures at this point until I was finished. So I'll have to finish the tutorial without pictures.
I found a perfect piece of plexiglass for the door to the pendulum. It was one of the poster frames, I cut the piece with an Xacto blade and used cheap molding to make a frame for the door.
I then used small hinges to attach the door to the frame and used magnets to keep it closed.
The pendulum was made with a long piece of carboard cut like a devil's tail and built up with paper mache mulch, then painted the same color as the rest of the clock. I decided to make the pendulum static, so it's just hanging there with a cup holder.
The clock face was made in Adobe Illustrator and printed out on poster paper. I cut the hole for the center and taped it up on the inside. I then drilled the center hole for the motor to go through.
The hands are copied from a photo I found online and I cut them out of cardboard and painted black. I glued the hour hand to the 13 position and used a christmas reindeer motor for the minute hand. I have a small lightbulb on the inside of the clock face to make it glow.
Here are pictures and video of the finished product:
Here's the link for the movie:
http://s112.photobucket.com/albums/n200/maureenpr/Halloween%202008/?action=view¤t=13HourClock Final.flv
