I had some pearl blue acrylic I really liked the look of, and didn’t know what to make with it. Then this idea came to mind. My daughter and I really like watches, and there’s one with a pretty blue dial we’d seen recently that inspired me to create this. I ordered a few other kinds of acrylic for the project and got started on Friday designing the dial, the black surrounded mirrored indices with lume, the floating disk they live on (read on for why), the black ring with pearl white tick marks, and the bezel.

I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted the waves in the blue ocean-like dial to be oriented, so I built the clock so it rotates. The waves can flow in whatever direction, and that will eventually be automated so it turns almost imperceptibly slowly. The indices are on a fixed floating clear disk above the blue dial. The whole thing is encased in layers of silver metallic and black acrylic rings and another clear acrylic “crystal” seals it up. When the lights go out the lume glows from the front and through the clear ring to add a glow onto the “ocean”. 

The “case“ isn’t done yet. Still working out how I will motorize the motion of the ocean. I’d originally planned to add a crown to the side that would turn the ocean when you twist it, but then when I showed the clock to my wife she said “awesome… make the blue part spin automatically”. Challenge accepted.  

PS: this was cut on my P2S 55w CO2 after cutting a complete prototype out of basswood first. 

Time well spent - from idea to this in five days