my take on nelson ball clock

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Originally uploaded by minhi.

Ok so i've been wanting a nelson ball clock for quite a while. However i did not want to pay the ~$300 for one from Vitra that is a reproduction.

At the same time i did not want to buy a vintage one on ebay either, they're still pretty expensive for a design that is knocked off a lot. So what to do? Well i was at a discount store (Marshall's maybe?) and found a ball clock missing the hands, it was also in natural wood finish. I bought it for $5 with a plan of 'remixing' it.

It cost me about $15 in paint, spray lacquer and brushes to get it to this point. I used acrylic paint over the natural wood, hand sanded it to smooth out the brush marks and 3 coats of spray lacquer. I still need to finish the hands but you get the idea.

I picked colors similiar to the original pictures i found, but there are many versions of this clock. I also chose to use a glossy finish which is not true to the original.

I'll post a follow up once the clock is complete. I'm not sure it will keep time because i made the new hands from flashing and they are much larger then the hands that came with the quartz movement. but it should look good.