Sunflower Clock

Shooting Board Jig Makes Duplicates Easy

When I first looked at this Sunflower clock plan from Rockler it was obvious they wanted to sell their taper and small parts jig for the table saw.  I started thinking about how I would do this by hand and immediately knew my shooting board would be the solution.  This sunflower clock is a great little project that doesn't take but a few hours to complete and allows you to use up some leftover stock while making a great gift.

Once you glue up panels or flatten a wider board to 1/4" thickness the fun begins with the turning saw to cut out 8" and 13" circles.  This is great turning saw practice and the closer you can get to the line the easier the spokeshave refinement task will go.  I used 2 shaves for this, one set up with a rougher cut and one with a very fine, smoothing plane style cut.  This process is just working to the line and taking your time to make sure the circles look like...well...circles.

Making the petals is a lot of fun and you really get into a groove cranking out the 24 pieces to identical shape.  The key is a stop block on the bench hook and a small plywood jig that holds the pieces at the right angle to create the petal taper on both faces.  But to make that jig you have to shape one petal first and that is just careful work to a line.  You can see how it could be done piece by piece but also can see how it would be very cumbersome and lend itself to a bunch of petals that aren't quite all the same shape.  I suppose there is a certain hand made charm to that but I wanted to make them as identical as possible and the shooting board "sled" makes that not only possible but super fast.  

Get The Plans from Rockler