Kingwood Veneer Clock

I’m preparing a presentation on Veneering for our Woodworking Guild in Lynchburg VA. I’ve been busy gluing up some samples of book matching and slip matching and things to look out for. Cutting, layout etc.

I’d been thinking of something that would be dramatic. And during this time I had been helping some of my grand kids to make a clock for their rooms

So I was going to make it out of veneer and I realized that 12 hours on a clock meaning, 12 pieces of veneer and how do you do it and make it manageable.

The veneer that I selected was purple with light strips and an Ivory stripe in one side. Book-matching would mean that you’d have double ivory at 12 o’clock, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. Not very symmetric for a clock. Then I figured that I could do a slip match and have the ivory stripe at each of the number points. Cutting 12 pieces of veneer to the correct shape and accurate became the next trial. I put 1/4” plywood on each side of the 12 pieces of veneer and then I screwed it all to a piece of 3/4 pine. So my lamination was about 1 1/2” thick. Picture #3 shows the laminated piece. There was a slight bow in the middle but I was hopping that it wouldn’t impact any chip out. I was going to micro pin in the middle but opted to skip that step.

I trimmed up the edges to be flush on all pieces and then I cut a 90 degree base. I cut a square piece of plywood to support the tall narrow piece as it went through the blade. When I was cut I ended up with two identical sets of veneer. One had the ivory strip and the other is all purple king-wood. I haven’t designed the use of it yet.

The 2nd picture shows that don’t attempt this unless you get 3- 30 degree cuts to fit tight in a 90 degree square. ( I didn’t do that part until it was all taped together and it didn’t fit. I then made 2 – 6 pieces taped together and then sanded the base to be a flat straight line and then the 2 halves went together. I glued the taped up clock to a 11 1/2” piece of plywood. Anything larger and it would encroach into the void area between each piece.

There was a little slippage sliding it into the vacuum bag and so there was a small piece of ply visible in the area meant to be void free. A jig saw fixed that imperfection.

My plan was to cut the clock to the edge of the 11 1/2” glue board, But my wife thought it looked better with all of the ends flying out. The ends of each of the boards still have the screw holes that held them all together. I plan to leave them there. Pictures 2 and 3 show the king-wood veneer that I selected. The veneer was just a little shy of 3 1/2” wide and it was then trimmed to the 1×4 and the plywood lamination.

The veneer was long enough to make 4 of these and I’ve only cut one to make this clock. The matching piece from the cut has been trimmed to be 30 degrees other than the 29 and something less than 1.

It was then that I attempted the 3 – 30 degree cuts to equal 90 degrees as seen in picture 2. If you are going to attempt something like this, make this step one of the first cuts you attempt.

One other note The veneer pieces were not assembled in the order they were in the tree. 1 thru 12. I did odd down one side and even down the other side. This allowed me to have only 1 count between each leaf of veneer 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2. That was was numbering of the slices going clockwise around the clock. If I did 1 thru 12 then veneer sheet 1 would be beside sheet number 12 and the color and veneer match could be dramatic.

Plan your design in your head before it gets glued together.

Always work safe especially working with small pieces next to a spinning blade. Double check and save your good wood. Practice on scrap.

Things I learned: Practice your 30 degree cut so that 3 would equal 90 degrees. – Only tape a 90 degree section together and not 180 degree section because more pieces equal more variation.