Sacrifice Skovel and Rusch on the altar of Noir

Materials: Skovel, Rusch

Description: I used the Skovel wall clock to replicate Kirika’s pocket watch (not to scale, obviously) from the 2001 TV series Noir. An extra Rush was sacrificed for the clockwork of the off-center seconds hand.

I was inspired to make this geekish hack by the 10th anniversary of the Noir DVD release, and the availability of the eminently hackable Skovel clock, which is relatively cheap, simple and straightforward in its assembly, yet with a steel and glass body.

Removing 4 screws is enough to take off the glass. I carefully lifted the hands off of the clockwork with a fork. After this, unscrewing a single nut separates the clockwork from the body.

I removed the paper clockface with the aid of heat from a hairdryer. In retrospect I should have simply pasted the new face over it, because the sticky goo that remained was nearly impossible to get rid of.

I created the new clockface in a graphics program, printed it out on A3 paper and glued it on the body after drilling the hole for the seconds hand.

Because the seconds hand revolves under the minutes and hours, I had to make sure it didn’t protrude too high above the clockface. I therefore used a spacer (made of scrap wood) between the back of the clock and the Rusch mechanism. To limit the size needed for the hole, I removed the hour and minute axles from the Rusch mechanism, leaving only the parts needed for the seconds. Both the mechanism and the spacer are held in place by 2-sided adhesive tape.

The new clock hands were cut from paper card stock, and glued on the cut-off hands of the Skovel (and the seconds hand of the Rusch). Finally I added some accents with silver-colored marker.

In all, it took only a couple of hours to turn the rather unexciting Skovel into the envy of all Noir fans.

~ Eli, A place forgotten by time