Sunday, March 7, 2010

Chrono Crusade - Rosette's Watch

The first step in the process is to get a 2" pocketwatch, a sheet of 2mm foam , some .020 styrene...



...and a cardboard tube (A toiletpaper tube works well...)



Hotglue a 2" wide band of styrene to the bottom of the tube and close it with a circle of styrene at the bottom. Then mark off where you want the top, bottom and face of the watch to go.



Cut a hole in the middle of tube, then rip the cover of the watch off (and remove the chain if it has one.) Hotglue the watch face-out into the middle of the tube...



Cut a 2" strip of 2mm craft foam and hotglue it around the top of the watch. Then cover it with styrene, leaving the hole open at the top...

The next step in the process being the building of the watch casing. First thing I did was put a sheet of foamcore next to the cardboard tube and mark off where I wanted the curve of the casing to go:



I then cut out the shape, (cut out another similar shape and glued both together to achieve a shape with the thickness of about 1/2" or so.) I then glued the shape to the side of the tube like so:



I then repeated the process on the other side of the watch. To create the front of the watch casing, I worked out the shape of the 4 sections which would make up the casing surface. I then cut the sections out of styrene and hotgluted a layer of 2mm craft foam underneath them.



I then hotglued the sections to the watch...



Here's a closer look...



That done, the next step was to create the 4 little screws in front (which I did by dabbing hotglue lightly around the face of the watch:



I made the back of the watch casing much like I did the front (only this time I don't leave a hole in the middle of the pieces for the watch face.)



The casing itself should look something like this at this point:



I now hotglue a strip of styrene over the casing edges to cover up the foamcore/clean them up.



Next step: to create the ridged look on the edges, I lay down thin lines of hotglue like so:



With the casing completed, the next step in the process is to make the watch's outer wire frame. (This frame will open and close, just like it does in the series.) The wire I'll be using to make the frame is armature wire:



I bought mine awhile ago at Michael's crafts (although I don't think they stock it anymore. You might have to go online to a sculpture supply site or look around on ebay for similar wire.) The armature wire is about 4-1/2 mm wide and is soft enough to bend in one's hands, a fact which can be problematic, because wire that soft can't have any sort of pliers used on it- it'll scratch. So you'll just have to bend and manipulate it using only your hands.



You'll have to study the reference pictures closely to get a good idea of how the wire should bend. This is, by far, the hardest part of the project. (It is for me at least, I can spend a good 1/2 hour to an hour trying to get even ONE wire shaped into a suitable bracket form. If you can manage to bend it like it is in the reference pictures, the back of the watch will look something like this:)



Cut a square out of the styrene and hotglue it over the wire and to the back of the casing, like so. (Don't hotglue the square to the wire ITSELF - you want the wire to be free to move like a doorhinge.)



With the watch's wire brackets in place, the next thing to do is to make the removable cap for the watch. (The cap doesn't NEED to be removable, if you don't have a pressing need to access the top of the pocketwatch inside the casing. ) To make the removable cap, hotglue a strip of styrene around the inside of the top of the cardboard tube in such a way that it stands about 1/4" above the edge...



I made the cap out of styrene and 2mm craft foam. (A simple circle with a strip around it - it shouldn't be too hard to figure out...)



And here's what the cap looks like when it's on...



One last detail for the watch casing - the cone-like, time-setting thingies on the sides. These I had to make out of sculpey and thick wire...



I poked holes in the sides of the watch casing and glued the cones in like so:



Oh, and because I had to suspend the watch from a chain, I needed to hotglue loops of wire to the back (making sure they were strong enough to hold the chain securely).



The next step was to paint the watch, which I did entirely using testor's model brown and gold paints. One exception - the cone parts, since they were made of sculpey, had to be painted with gold acrylic. (Testor's doesn't dry on Sculpey...) Note how the side brackets are open in this picture:


Once the watch was dry, I suspended it from a heavy gold chain that I had bought in the jewelry section of a thrift store.



And that's it. If you have any questions about anything, please e-mail me or leave a comment...

No comments:

Post a Comment