[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] In previous episodes, we've built small clocks and wall clocks.

On today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we're building a tall clock.

Now, this stately piece is inspired by the prairie-style look of architecture, fellows like Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.

And you can see that in the very geometric look of the gridwork and the clockface.

Even the structure of the clock has that straight line presence that that style of architecture was known for.

There's a lot going on in this project, from a woodworking standpoint, and a lot of it is fun to do.

Throughout the clock, you'll find mortise-and-tenon joinery, along with some special skills to be able to get this gridwork to look just right and to fit all the clockworks.

If you want to build one of these for yourself, the plans are at our website...

So, I say it's time to build.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ As fun as it is to build a tall case clock, there are a couple of challenges that you'll face in making it.

The first is that you're going to be dealing with a lot of long, narrow pieces and it's really easy to get confused.

And, since we're working with walnut, it can be tough to see the pencil lines.

They don't really stand out that well on the darker-colored wood and the pencil lines often look like some of the grain lines.

So, my solution here is that I'm going to use a charcoal pencil that you can find at any hobby store or a craft store.

It makes a nice, white line that's easy to see.

It's not super precision, but I'm using it, mainly, here in order to keep myself oriented as I'm going along.

Speaking of that, let's look at how I've oriented the parts.

So, I have back posts, I have front posts, and then the long styles for the panels on the sides.

Now, for the back and front posts, you can see what I've done here on the back and that is I've drawn a triangle on the two paired back posts.

This tells me a few things.

First, this is the top of the post and then the triangle is pointing towards the front of the clock, so, that's going to help me keep things straight.

Over on the front posts, you can see that I've done the same thing.

When it comes to the side styles, rather than marking the top, instead, what I'm going to do is pair them up and then I'm going to draw a triangle on the faces... ...that are going to help me orient those pieces when I'm looking at them.

Again, they're pointing towards the top and, now, I know what the left and right of each of those pieces needs to be.

Now, there are some joinery details that we want to take care of here and we'll start with work on the posts.

Both the front and the back post have long grooves that are cut on the front face of the back post... ...and on the back face of the front posts.

These are pretty wide, 3/8 of an inch; and pretty deep, so, the best option here is to do that at the table saw with a dado blade.

There's another set of grooves that are cut on the inside faces of the two front posts.

It's going to hold the face of the clock.

Now, these are stopped grooves and, because it's narrow and stopped, it's a prime candidate for doing that at the router table, using a straight bit.

A set of layout lines on the workpiece and on the router table fence will help you to know exactly where to start and stop each of these grooves.

Now, once more, back to the rear posts.

On the inside faces of those two pieces, there's a mortise at the top and it's twin down on the bottom end.

For these, we went over to the drill press, set up with a Forstner bit, and then just made overlapping holes to remove most of the waste and then clean it up with a chisel.

In between the two posts that we've just completed, there are a set of frames that make up the side assemblies for our clock.

Now, they're frame and panel, so, I have the long styles here.

We'll connect them with rails in a little bit, but, first, what we want to do is cut the mortises at the top and bottom here.

Now, these are relatively narrow.

It's 1/4 inch and they're just as easy to do on the router table as they are at the drill press.

In fact, I think, at 1/4 inch, it's easier to do it here at the router table.

So, I've set up the bit and the fence so that we're having the bit exactly on the center line of the thickness of our piece.

Now, to mark the length of our mortises, I've drawn in two lines -- one for the upper mortise and then a longer one for the lower mortise.

We're going to make these in several passes, just to limit the wear and tear on the bit, starting with it relatively low and then raising it till we get to the final height.

The other part of the joinery that we need to take care of are the tenons that fit into the mortises that we've already created.

Now, I find that it's a lot easier to adjust the size of a tenon than it is to change the size of a mortise, which is why we do the mortises, first.

Then we can fit those tenons right to it.

For the first step, I'm going to take the two rails that'll be at the back of our clock case.

Now, these will join the two back posts together.

Now, I'm going to cut just a shallow tenon cheek on one face.

Then we'll flip it over, raise the blade until we get that tenon to fit into the mortise.

The next set of tendons that we need to make are for the rails that join the two side styles and you'll notice that these guys are pretty small.

They're only about 4 inches long, all together.

So, you want to just be careful, as you're holding on to them, that you're keeping your hands away from the blade.

If this bothers you a little bit, you can always set it up at the router table with a straight bit and do the same thing.

But I'm going to do it here at the table saw and it'll go pretty quickly.

The way we're working means that we can do some assembly as we go along here.

So, we're going to put together the two side frames with those little tiny rails that we worked on.

Our journey through basic joinery here continues right back at the router table, where I've installed a rabbeting bit with a bearing, so, I get a 1/2-wide rabbet, and that's to create a pocket on the backside of all of my frames -- the two sides and the back -- in order to hold either a piece of glass or a plywood back.

So, let's get to it.

Alright, we're still cutting rabbets, but, this time, we're cutting rabbets on the outside of our tall side frames and that's going to fit into the groove that we cut into the front and back posts.

Once that's done, we're going to head over to the bench.

We'll square up the corners with a chisel and a mallet and then we'll be able to get the main part of the clock case put together.

Alright, it's time to assemble the case of our clock here and I have the back assembly laying on its back on the benchtop.

What I'm going to do now is add a bead of glue to the groove on this side.

Then I can add the frame.

And I can add the front post now.

The last two components of the case for our clock are the bottom and top assemblies and I'm going to kind of work on those pieces interchangeably because the construction is very similar.

Only the scale is different.

What I've done is I'm setting up the router table here with a slot cutting bit to handle some grooving.

Over at the table saw, I have a dado blade installed to cut rabbets and form tongues that will interlock with these grooves.

So, this allows me to be able to have two machines set up and tackle some of this stuff without having to change setups a lot.

So, what I have here is the slot cutter setup and I have the riser pieces for the top and the base assembly and those grooves are all going to be located identically.

I've set up a featherboard here to keep the cuts consistent and I can just burn right through these parts.

The other set of grooves that we need to cut are for some trim pieces that will wrap around a plywood panel.

The panel is 1/2-inch thick, so, that's what the trim pieces are, and I've set up the slot cutter so that it's centered on my trim pieces.

Now, I can just cut through all of those and then we'll miter them to length later on.

Alright, the second part of the joinery, after the grooves, is to cut and form tongues on the different parts.

I have two plywood panels here -- one for the top, one for the bottom.

With the dado blade set up, I'll just buzz a rabbet on each side and size that to match the grooves that I cut on those other parts.

For these narrower edging pieces that I cut grooves in at the router table, the tongues that we need to form, that fit in those, are cut a little bit differently.

Rather than doing a single pass, what I'm going to do is run the piece across the dado blade, flip it over, and make a second pass to create a centered tongue.

Alright, I've glued the mitered edging onto the three different layers and I want to show you exactly what we're working with here.

So, the first layer that's going to go on the top of our clock case is that single piece of plywood with the wider edging that locks on with a tongue-and-groove joint.

So, that gets screwed to the top of our case... with it centered side-to-side... ...kind of like so.

The second layer up is an open box assembly.

It's a single layer of plywood, wider edging on it, glued in place, and then that's going to get attached... ...centered side-to-side and flush with the back... ...like that.

The final layer is made up of... ...three layers of 1/2-inch plywood glued together and then has that same edging wrapped all the way around it.

And that's going to be kind of the crown of this whole piece here.

Again, flush at the back.

You can see we're starting to develop those strong horizontal, prairie-style lines that Frank Lloyd Wright was known for.

So, I'll get the bottom assembly glued up and attached and then we can get ready to pass this off to Chris.

Alright, here we are with the completed clock case.

You can see the base assembly that I've attached.

There's the riser assembly down at the bottom and then another frame that sits on top of it.

Now, let's work our way towards the top.

And there's one other addition that I made, and that was to add a blank backer for the clockface.

Now, Logan's going to take care of the mechanicals that go on the inside a little bit later, but I needed to provide him a mounting surface for the face and where those mechanicals are going to go.

So, with this, I'm ready to turn it over to Chris, to make a really cool prairie-style door.

Well, it's time to make the doors for our clock.

Now, the first thing we do when we make doors, we measure from the actual casework itself.

So, I've confirmed all my dimensions, to make sure that they're going to fit.

Now, there's two doors here.

There's an upper door, which is made out of this 1x1.25-inch stock.

It'll be rabbeted and we'll put in glass and a stop for the glass.

The lower door is the same, except there'll be a decorative gridwork in front of it.

That's going to be fun to do.

Now, for both doors, we start with stiles and rails to create the framework and the stiles each have a mortise So, I have some layout lines -- a little tough to see on this dark walnut -- for the starting point and stopping point of each of our mortises.

So, let's head to the drill press and start drilling them out.

So, there are a total of eight mortises to make.

Six of them are a 1/2-inch wide by 1 inch long; and the other two, which are on the lower door, the bottom, are going to be 3.5 inches long.

Every mortise starts 1/2 inch from the end.

So, to keep things accurate and true, I'm using a stop block and the first hole that I'm going to drill in all the parts is going to be to establish that 1/2-inch distance from the end.

Once I've done that, I'm going to reset my stop block and, for six of these, I'll set it to create that 1-inch-long mortise and then, for the last two, I'll set my stop block for the 3.5-inch-long mortise.

And then, of course, I'll waste out all the stock in between those two holes, then.

With the mortises and tenons all cut, I've test fit all my parts.

A couple of things I'm watching for here.

One is I want to make sure the width is correct, or at least not under.

so, my reveals are correct here on the carcass.

Next, I want to make sure that, of course, everything's going to be square when we do the glue-up.

Third, I want to make sure that, when I glue everything up, that my doors are not twisted in any way because, with these doors overlaying the face here, any kind of twist is going to show up, so, we need to be pretty fussy and pretty particular to make sure that these frames are right on.

Now that the frames are dry and out of the clamps, it's time to go ahead and rabbet for the glass for the upper door and the glass in the frame for the lower door.

So, they're actually different depths, so, I'm going to do each of them in a series of steps because it's a pretty big bite to try and cut that rabbet all at once.

I've got an adjustable router bit here that I've set up for a 5/16 width of cut and we'll march our way up and get these done.

After the doors got off the router table, I went ahead and took a chisel and cleaned up the corners, like so.

Once that was done, I knew it was time to head to the fun part of this project, which is the gridwork.

Now, the gridwork looks complicated.

It's not.

It's actually pretty easy, so long as you group everything together and as long as you build it to fit.

So, the first thing I did was I cut all of my horizontal members and made sure they were just the right length to drop in the opening.

And so, I've got two wide ones, which will be the top and bottom of the frame; and then all these small 5/16x5/16 pieces are going to be part of the pattern.

And the same is true, then, of our vertical pieces.

We want to make sure those fit.

And I've got two wide and a couple of 5/16 square pieces.

Creating the frame is really about creating accurate, well-fitting lap joints.

Now, to make that happen, I've hedged my bet a little bit.

I made a custom insert for my table saw and that's going to mean that these small little lap joints are going to be crisp and clean without a lot of tear-out, and that's probably one of the most important things you can do.

Well, after completing the first round of laps, I marched on forward and completed all the other lap joints.

But remember -- I kept all these pieces full-length until the very end and then, as I began to assemble our frame, I went ahead and started cutting things to length.

And by making everything full-length and gauging it that way, to cut those lap joints, it dropped right together with no problem.

So, what's next?

Well, I've got my glue bottle here and I'm just going to start, piece by piece, marching my way along, putting a little drop of glue in the joint.

It won't take much, but we need to go ahead and tack it all together.

Well, the doors are all finished and hung.

Now, the glass comes later, with the stops, after we've finished the project.

To hang the doors, I used good-quality, solid brass hinges.

You can't beat good hardware for an heirloom project.

And notice that I'm using rare earth magnets as a catch.

A lot of catches are, frankly, kind of ugly, but the rare earth magnets are invisible -- they're not going to show when the door is closed.

So, with the doors done, let's move on to the face and the movement.

So, the inside of our clock is going to be as nice as the outside.

And that starts with a good-quality movement.

This one's all brass, so it's going to be fairly heavy.

So, we need a good way to hold it on the clockface.

So, to do that, we're going to use a series of brackets on the inside.

These are just going to become kind of braces to help hold it.

We don't want to hang it off that stem.

So, to create this brace, we're going to head over to the table saw and cut some dados.

Okay, so the brackets on the back of our clockface are going to consist of these two uprights and then a crosspiece that's going to act like a shelf.

Now, I've just dadoed the sides to fit that shelf.

Then I'll go ahead and shape these, just a little bit, at the band saw, just to kind of reduce some of the bulk, even though you won't see them, at least from the front of the clock.

The shelf's going to need a little bit more work, though.

Because our movement has weights and a pendulum, we need to create a slot in here for those to swing through.

So, to do that, I'm going to head over to the drill press and define the two ends of the slot and then I'm going to use a router bit to remove that waste in between them.

Then we can glue it up and attach it to the back of the clockface.

Once I have glue applied, we'll go and let this dry and then this thing is going to get attached to the backside of the face with a couple screws through the front.

So, we'll go ahead and get this glued up, then we'll talk about the pendulum.

The stem for our pendulum is made out of these thin strips.

I'm just going to make one of them.

I have two here for setup.

Looking at the end profile of the finished piece, it's going to be kind of like a football shape and you could shape it with a hand plane at the bench, but these are little parts, take a lot of passes in.

They're kind of hard to hold.

So, instead, we're going to cut it here at the router table.

I've already loaded up a large roundover bit, but we're just going to use a tiny, little portion of that.

It's just going to be about the top 1/4 inch or so.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to rout all four corners of this to create that profile.

Now, holding this small of a piece, especially with a cutter this big, I don't want my hands anywhere near it, so, what we're going to do is use a hold-down fence.

Now, it's just a piece of plywood that I've cut a rabbet on the backside.

I'm going to clamp it in place and it's sized so that these strips will fit right behind it.

Then a simple matter of feeding them through.

Now that we have the pendulum arm shaped, I went ahead and kind of rounded the edges a little bit and just kind of blended that shape together and I cut it to length.

So, now, we can turn our attention to the bob.

The bob is just going to be a piece of hardwood and I've already glued on two brackets.

I've notched those brackets to accept this arm.

We want that notch to be big enough that this arm slides freely.

The reason for that is we're going to use the position of this bob to fine-tune the movement.

We're going to do that by installing an additional block that doesn't have a notch in it and we're going to install a piece of threaded rod in the end of this arm.

That threaded rod is going to position that bob using this little knurled nut and that will kind of slide this up and down on the arm and fine-tune the position.

So, now, I'm going to go ahead and drill a hole in the end of this... ...epoxy that threaded rod in place, then we'll go ahead and install the bracket and talk about the face.

Now, I've positioned the bracket on the back of the face and I've just attached it with four screws through the front.

The positioning of the bracket is pretty important because we want to make sure that the stem of the movement comes through that hole nice and centered, so, I went ahead and took some careful measurements before I installed it.

Now, the only thing we have left to do is take care of the face.

The face for this clock is just this piece of aluminum.

Now, working with aluminum in your shop isn't hard.

Most of our woodworking tools will cut aluminum, especially the table saw, with a nonferrous blade.

That's how I cut this guy.

So, this will slip right in place.

That hole lines up well and it's ready for a finish.

On today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we built a prairie-style clock.

Our original version was made in cherry and has that really rich, warm red color.

The one we did on the show today was made out of walnut and it's ready for its finish.

One thing that you'll still need to do, though, is to make the clockface that goes on the inside.

If you're ready to get started on a stately project for your own home, the plans are at our website... You'll also find great information on finishing your projects, more project ideas and plans, and tips and videos to improve your skills as a woodworker.

Then we'll gather right here again for another great project in the Woodsmith Shop.

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Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... ♪♪ ♪♪