Diamond-Shaped Vintage Clock Gets a Face Job

I picked up this great looking clock on Etsy months ago, but when it arrived, the careless seller had allowed some of the packing tape to get stuck to the face.  So when I tried removing the tape, it took part of the woodgrain face too.  Argh.

I put it aside for a while, and finally decided the rest of the clock was just too great to not have on display.  So I had another project on my hands.

Sorry I don't have a complete set of photos to document what I did, but I'll explain the steps.

First I carefully removed the hands and the movement.  All of the pieces got bagged and labeled.  I used a very small flat head screwdriver to carefully pry up the numbers and other pieces from the face.  Each piece had two small plastic prongs on the back which go into corresponding holes in the face.  That work left me with just the blank, tape-damaged face you see here.

Next I cleaned the face and used some spray primer to give myself a good base to work with.  After that I used some black spray paint to coat the face and let that paint set up for a while.  I toyed with keeping the face black, but I decided this was a good opportunity to try doing some faux wood graining.  I found a wood graining kit on Amazon and using some leftover wood stains I rubbed a couple coats of stain on the face, trying a couple stain colors to get something I liked.  Before the second coat dried, I used a wood graining comb to introduce the look of wood grain.  I let that set up and decided to rub on a couple more coats of stain.

After that all dried, I just reassembled the clock.  I did have to use a small pointed pick to open up the tiny holes which held the prongs behind the numbers and other pieces that went around the clock's face.

So here's the final product, now hanging above my office door at work.

I'm pretty happy with it, but I can see that faux wood graining like anything else requires lots of practice and experimentation.