Nearly finished

Today I nearly finished my project, and am very happy with how it's turning out. The previous lesson I finished the square base, and today I finished my dial.
At the beginning of the lesson I had a little setback. Having worked on it at home I managed to forget the dial  at home! Therefore, I had to spend the beginning of the lesson the sawing and sand-papering of a new dial. This time, it went a lot faster as I now knew how to do it, and overall there were some positive aspects of my stupid forgetting of the first dial. Firstly, I was now better at sawing, and the circle became more even. Secondly, the sand-paper at school was less coarse than what I used at home, making the edge of the circle more smooth. Thirdly, I now made sure not to remove the protective film before absolutely necessary  and therefore the second disk became less scratched than the first.
After that I cut the gradient-painted canvas and glued this onto the disk. Instead of spray-gluing it on, I used four tiny dabs of super-glue at the edge of the disk, and this worked very well and was barely visible.
Then I drilled a hole into the square base using a drill, widening it with a knife.
Fortunately, we got an extension to next week, and I am quite sure I will finished then.

Finishing my dial

In lunch today I finished cutting out the clock dial. After evening the edges with sandpaper at home, I am quite happy with how it turned out. Next lesson I will not have to spray-glue the painted canvas onto the plastic dial and attach this to the square base.

Starting to Work

The previous lesson I started actually working on my project. I started out with cutting the base plexiglass to the right shape. This was a bit difficult, and I got a scratch on the glass (I missed with the carpenter's knife I used), but otherwise it went well. When I started to work on the round disk, things became more difficult. I couldn't use the carpenter's knife method since if I tried to snap it off, the disk broke. On the second try I managed to find a good technique - using a hacksaw to saw the shape. This took quite a while, but at least it work. I am thinking of sandpapering the edges of the plexiglass so it becomes smooth. Then I worked on painting the base (hinterglas technique). I managed to paint the roots, something which I found very fun and created a successful outcome.
I am, however, a bit worried about time, as we will probably have to finish it by the end of the next lesson, so I will most likely have to find time outside of school to complete it.

Practising Hinterglass

This week I practised the hinterglas technique, as it is quite difficult to get right. I found out that the numbers of the dial would be smudged by the second layer, and I did not get the colour transitions I wanted. Since the dial itself will be opaque (so as to hide the clockwork machinery), and I have therefore decided to paint the dial on canvas, and attach this to the plexiglass with spray glue. I started working on the background of the dial, and am quite satisfied with my result.

Inspiration

I have decided to use idea 7th for my final clock, and started on working on elaborating my idea, and thinking of how the final idea would be. Below are some clocks that I found inspiring. Overall, The clock will be made out of plexiglass, so that it has the surface is smooth and shiny, as I mentioned in my previous post, while the painting will be behind the glass, perhaps using the "hinterglas" technique.Since I did not have the plexiglass today, I worked on creating an accurate, real-size sketch of my clock.