My college roommate's birthday is coming up and I wanted to make her a golden snitch wall clock. 


In Chinese culture, giving clocks as gifts is considered a major faux pas. 送鐘 (sòng zhōng, to give a clock) in Mandarin is a homophone of 送終 (sòng zhōng, to attend a funeral), so it's not great. Clocks also symbolize the end of time, and unfortunately that sentient is made doubly more effective since Harry Potter's golden snitch opens at the close. ...but oh well! We're both first generation Asian Americans so I'm sure she won't be too offended. She is also into hauntingly sad and creepy things so it should be fine. It is a pretty awesome clock anyway.

The clock is made from wood pieces my dad found lying around the house. He is an engineer and loves DIY projects so I'm very lucky- this clock couldn't have been constructed without his help, expertise, and resources.* And he has some really cool equipment. We used a CNC milling machine to cut out the body of the snitch (the face of the clock) and a pair of wings out of the wood pieces. 

Milling machine set up

CNC stands for computer numerical control. A computer can convert designs produced from CAD software into numbers that correspond to a coordinate system to direct the movement of the cutter. I needed the computer assisted help to cut the circle for the golden snitch body, the wings since they needed to look like a perfect mirror of one another, and the clock cavity to insert the actual clock mechanics.  

We worked on cutting out the circle first. Our original approach was using CorelDRAW, a vector graphics editor to draw the circle. The circle was saved as a .cdr file and exported as a.dfx file (CAD data file format to enable data interoperability). The .dfx file was then converted to G-code. Something wrong happened during the conversion process since the circle ended up being a very elongated ellipse. Instead we directly wrote the G-code for cutting a circle.**

G-code to cut circle

The circle cut out

To cut out the wings, I drew a vector image of a wing with AutoCAD. The wing was then imported into Inkscape*** and converted into G-code. The CNC milling machine is able to read the G-code to cut out the wings. Once the wings were cut, we sanded the surfaces. 

Snitch wings

My college roommate moved to the Bay area about a year ago so I would need to mail her clock. To make the clock package "shipping friendly", she should be able to attach the wings onto the golden snitch body herself so I could mail the clock in pieces. I doubt she had any tools in her apartment so we had to be creative in thinking of a simple way for her to assemble the golden snitch clock. What we did was use a scrolling saw to cut out an outline of part of the snitch wing from the circle body of the golden snitch. This way she can simply attach the wings and enjoy her Harry Potter wall decor. 

Cutting out the snitch wing outline with a scrolling saw

Everything fit snug and cozy like puzzle pieces.

Assembled wooden snitch... soon it will be golden!

Almost all the woodworking was finished at this point. We still had to hollow out the golden snitch body to insert the clock mechanism as well as to drill a hole in the golden snitch body so my roommate can mount her clock. Making the clock cavity was the part we were the most nervous about since we had to hollow out the clock to a point where the wood surface is just wafer thin to allow the clock needle and hands to attach properly. We measured the dimensions of the clock kit (2.2 inches by 2.2 inches), and my dad wrote a code to direct the cutter. Once again, the z-axis was manually controlled.

The code to direct the cutter

Clock kit

We only drilled a little bit into the snitch body piece each time (by manually setting the z axis) to prevent any wood pieces from breaking off. It took about 20 cycles to finally cut to the thickness we needed. Below is a video of a single run of the hollowing wood process. 



After about 20 runs, the piece was very hollow. It felt so satisfying tapping our fingernails across the surface where the hollowed out part of the wood was located. We were very happy., but also so very relieved that nothing went wrong. ^_^ Go team father and daughter!

Then we made a quick trip to the drill press to drill a hole for the clock needle to come out of and to drill a hole so my roommate can hang her clock. Once again, we were very nervous that drilling a hole into the hollowed out surface would cause a tear. As a preemptive measure, a smaller drill bit was first used to drill a hole for the clock needle before moving on to using the drill bit of the proper size. Luckily nothing of the tearing and breaking off sort happened. 

Using the drill press

Now all that is left is to drill a hole to mount the wall clock

Finally, after the stop at the drill press, all the woodworking was done!!! Off to paint and assemble the clock now (see part 2)! 


*Dad helped out so much. 
**We didn't do this first because we wanted to see if CorelDRAW could do the job since golden snitch wings will be tougher to make. If CorelDRAW worked, then that would be really awesome. Too bad it didn't.
***Since CorelDRAW didn't work, we researched online and found an alternative software (another vector graphics editor) to meet our woodworking needs.

IMAGE SOURCE:  Image is from the Harry Potter Warner Bros. movie.