Many years ago, I built a rocking horse for my oldest niece on my wife's
side. You can see that on this site. This year, niece #2 gets her own
creation, a craftsman mantle clock.Here it begins on the table saw
and with a set of chisels. This clock uses mortise & tenon joinery so it
is very durable. This was my first experience with chopping out mortises
and cutting tenons.
![](../../../Miscellaneous/Mantel_Clock4_small.jpg)
This clock was built from plans from Woodsmith issue 199. The plans
called for a shop-made clock face. However I thought it looked too
'shop-made' and was more difficult to read for a child since it didn't
have all of the numbers represented on the face. So I set off to
Woodcraft and bought a $2 clock face then took it to Staples and made a
number of differently sized clock faces for another couple bucks on 100
lb paper. Here
you can see my process.
![](../../../Miscellaneous/Mantel_Clock5_small.jpg)
This project took about a week and the finished clock is below. A
Christmas gift for niece #2.
![](../../../Miscellaneous/Finished_Clock_small.jpg)