I've had a cheap wall clock in my shop for the past 6 years and finally decided to replace it with something I made myself. And considering I recently picked up a CNC machine, I figured it would be the perfect project to learn a little more about the whole process of drawing up custom designs to cut out on the machine. 

I found a tutorial online that walked you through drawing a clock face with numbers using Adobe Illustrator and followed that. Mostly... As you can probably tell, I forgot to rotate the numbers! No big deal, it's still easy enough on the eyes to understand quickly what time it is. I exported the toolpath's and headed out to the shop to start the build.

First step was to break down some walnut and maple for the clock body. I resawed and glued up 2 pieces of maple and 2 pieces of walnut to get the 12"x12" panels. After the panels had dried I laminated the two 1/4" panels to get me a 12" x 12" x 1/2" board ready to make a clock out of.

Next I used the CNC machine to cut the numbers and logo using a 30 degree V-bit from Bits & Bits company. I switched that out for a 1/4" spiral bit to cut the clock face round and headed over to the drill press to drill a 5/16" hole for the clock hardware.

Before I can assemble the clock I sanded the surface up to 150 grit and made a last second decision to put a light chamfer on the edge of the face of the clock. The last step was to apply one coat of an oil/wax finish using a cotton cloth.