Cottage Clock

This particular clock was the first detailed clock I ever done. It was by chance that I wound up doing it, but boy am I glad I did. It got me interested in these clocks that I love so much to build. Had it not had been for the chance way it happened, I probably would never have attempted to do something like this.



A man from Brandon, Mississippi bought one of my "Rocking Roarer" motorcycles and asked if I would deliver it. I agreed to do it since I needed to pick up a few things in Jackson anyway. When I delivered it, he told me he had a project he needed me to do. He pulled what wasn't even full plans out of a desk drawer. It was standard size paper that someone had run off copies onto of these clock parts. I didn't even have as much as a picture of a finished clock to go by. The man had bought several things from me in the past though, so I wanted to keep him happy. I looked it over at his kitchen counter and told him that all I could do was try, since I'd never built anything like this before. For reasons I'll explain in a bit, the man asked me to please try my best, that he felt I coud do it. So, I left his house with plans for a clock that I didn't really know what it was supposed to look like, but being pressured to try. I figured the worst I could do was waste some good wood.



As it turns out, the man had been wanting this "Cottage Clock" for quite a while. While doing a contract job somewhere, another contractor had one of these clocks in his RV. He asked the other contractor how much it would take to buy it but it wasn't for sale. The other contractor did agree that when he went back home, in Texas, that he would mail back the plans for the clock. The man never thought much else about it until about a year later he recieved these clock part copies I mentioned earlier in the mail. He then tried to get someone to build it for him. He told me he'd been trying for five years to get someone in this area to build it. "Noone around these parts does this kind of work anymore" was the common response he got. So now "lucky me", I thought with a frown. I actually had doubts that I could ever piece this thing together.



So, after the "plans" set in my shop for a while untouched, I decided to give it a try. The first one took me longer than it should have, but I was at that time still new to the scroll saw. I got it built though. I really surprised myself. Just think, about two months before that, when my wife wanted to get me a scrollsaw for my birthday, I asked her "What the $%#@ do I need a scrollsaw for?" In the end, the man was happy, but most of all, I was happy. I'd found a new love.



As with most of my clocks, the one pictured is made of mahogany with cottonwood trim. It stands twelve inches tall.