I decided I wanted to make a mosaic out of old mechanical watch parts. I like the old technology and the association with the steam punk aesthetic. I'm also interesting in functional mechanical watches, so I figured a bunch of time taking apart, staring at, and working with old watches and watch parts would help me learn about them.
When I started, I wasn't sure what kind of mosaic I wanted to make. Lucky for me, I was hanging out with my friend Erika and her family one weekend and she decided she wanted to make a watch part mosaic, too. Erika, being one of the most creative people I know, sat down and started putting together a really cool character straight out of her head. If I was inclined to be envious, this would be yet another talent I could envy about her.
Being the design challenged person that I am, I flailed around for quite a while before I settled on the idea of making more of a face/portrait as opposed to the complete figure Erika was working on.
When I started, I wasn't sure what kind of mosaic I wanted to make. Lucky for me, I was hanging out with my friend Erika and her family one weekend and she decided she wanted to make a watch part mosaic, too. Erika, being one of the most creative people I know, sat down and started putting together a really cool character straight out of her head. If I was inclined to be envious, this would be yet another talent I could envy about her.
Being the design challenged person that I am, I flailed around for quite a while before I settled on the idea of making more of a face/portrait as opposed to the complete figure Erika was working on.
I started pushing parts around on the table to see what came of it.
That's when I realized that I don't actually know the detailed geometry of the human face (as should be obvious from the picture at left). I knew I needed a picture to work from. Erika is a MD, so she has no such limitation. Her character was put together a lot like the human body actually goes together! |
At some point the white enamel dials I put in for eyes reminded me of sugar skulls and calavera art, parts of the Mexican Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) tradition. Calavera art has seen a big rise in popularity over the past few years. I'm a big fan of the cool and fun calavera artwork of Jose Pulido of MisNopales Art. I must have about 100 of Jose's prints from over the years and it's still exciting to see an envelope in the mail from him containing his latest work. |
The first page of google images gave me plenty of designs to choose from. I wasn't looking for something to copy as much as something to help me get the parts of a stylized face in the right places. I chose a fairly bold, graphic design that looked good in scale to the watch parts when I printed it to fit on an 8"x10" backing board. I couldn't find any attribution for this image. It's originally in color and widely available on the internet. If anyone knows who drew it originally, please let me know so I can credit them in the caption. |
Basic concept in hand, the rest of the project was many, many hours of looking at all the different parts I had and trying out different ways to use them in the design. Another thing that I could envy about Erika is how freely she works on creative projects. She started and finished her piece over the course of one weekend. It took me about 2 months of on and off work to get mine "just right". I guess that's goes to show that I'm a process guy. Or maybe that I'm wound too tight to be doing stuff like this? |
Here's a shot of what my bench looked like during most of the the design and assembly work on this mosaic. Some important features of the process:
First, a geezer like me needs good light and magnification so I can see what I'm doing. For magnification, I alternate between an Optivisor and a second pair of reading cheaters worn over my regular glasses. Neither one will win any fashion contests. For task light, I have a few Ottlites kicking around.
Second, a ridiculous number of different kinds of old watch parts from which to choose just the right one for any part of a design.
Third, tweezers to move things around. It helps to have brass tweezers. If you use steel tweezers that are even slightly magnetized, all the tiny steel parts will stick to them. Very annoying.
Fourth, gel superglue. The gel part is important because you can put the tiniest amount exactly where you want it with the tip of a toothpick and it will stay put. It also cures very quickly so you don't have to hold each piece down for a long time waiting for it to cure.
Finally, some sort of substrate onto which you can build your mosaic. I used a black, semi-matte art board (Canson maybe?) bought from The Loft, a tiny craft store above the grocery store in Gualala, CA. I've been pleasantly surprised a number of times at the variety of things they carry in such a small space.
First, a geezer like me needs good light and magnification so I can see what I'm doing. For magnification, I alternate between an Optivisor and a second pair of reading cheaters worn over my regular glasses. Neither one will win any fashion contests. For task light, I have a few Ottlites kicking around.
Second, a ridiculous number of different kinds of old watch parts from which to choose just the right one for any part of a design.
Third, tweezers to move things around. It helps to have brass tweezers. If you use steel tweezers that are even slightly magnetized, all the tiny steel parts will stick to them. Very annoying.
Fourth, gel superglue. The gel part is important because you can put the tiniest amount exactly where you want it with the tip of a toothpick and it will stay put. It also cures very quickly so you don't have to hold each piece down for a long time waiting for it to cure.
Finally, some sort of substrate onto which you can build your mosaic. I used a black, semi-matte art board (Canson maybe?) bought from The Loft, a tiny craft store above the grocery store in Gualala, CA. I've been pleasantly surprised a number of times at the variety of things they carry in such a small space.
In addition to the design and assembly time for this project, there were also hours spent taking old watches apart. I'm glad to have had good audio books to listen to and the beautiful Northern California coastline to look at out the window when I needed to give my eyes a break.
(This isn't quite the view out the window, but how can you not like Jeanne Jackson's photo of Black Point Beach?) |
After disassembling lots of watches, I also spent time cleaning the oily parts so glue would stick to them.
Because all the watches were basket cases, some of them were pretty nasty. I didn't want or need to restore them to like new condition, but I didn't want anything crusty. I tumble polished the worst of them to get the accumulated crud and tarnish off. Tumbling with stainless steel shot is really a burnishing operation, but people call it polishing. |
I also cheated a little and bought some lots of random watch parts from eBay. There is a thriving trade in mechanical watches, watch parts, and watchmaker's tools on eBay.
The parts I bought were usually less crusty than the parts from the dead watches but equally useless to a watch repairer because few of them were properly labeled. |
I would be nice to have a picture or two of the little motifs to put here.
Too bad I never took any. |
After a lot of pushing tiny parts around on the backing, I realized that I was ignoring the potential depth of the design. I started thinking about height off the page and that in turn led me to the idea of stacking up parts to make more complex motifs. I had some contrasting colors to work with in the faces, hands, wheels, and jewels and tried to make a few interesting little designs from them.
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After far too long, I declared victory on the design and started fixing the parts down to the backing. It was a bit nerve racking because I had to use only the barest amount of glue possible because I didn't want any glue squeeze out to show around the parts if I could avoid it.
I started out using the Loctite brand gel in the blue squeeze bottles, but I found the packaging to be a disaster. The nozzles clog easily, the squeeze-to-dispense didn't work reliably, and you could actually burst the bottle without even trying too hard. What a mess... |
I went back to the good, old, reliable Crazy Glue brand and got some of their gel formulation from Amazon. It's less expensive that the Loctite gel and it comes packaged in small foil tubes just like the old school Crazy Glue from long ago. I figured that if the packaging turned into a fiasco like the Loctite stuff did, at least I'd only lose the couple of grams in a given tube instead of the whole bottle. Turned out I needn't have worried. The material worked great, the packaging gave me no hassles, and I completed the entire piece using less than the contents of a single tube.
Yay Crazy Glue! It's good for more than just gluing your hard hat to a i-beam and hanging from it. |
It took me a few sessions of gluing stuff down with breaks in between to breathe to get the entire design mounted. It's harder than I expected to put a truly tiny dot of glue right where you want it on a tiny part and then get that tiny gluey part right were you want it on the backing.
Overall the gluing went okay with only one major "Oops..." to remedy. I got a smear of glue on the backing where I didn't want it and didn't notice until it was too late to wipe it off. So, I had to readjust the design a little to hide it. Yay for mosaics! I hope that I'm the only one who will ever know where it is.
Overall the gluing went okay with only one major "Oops..." to remedy. I got a smear of glue on the backing where I didn't want it and didn't notice until it was too late to wipe it off. So, I had to readjust the design a little to hide it. Yay for mosaics! I hope that I'm the only one who will ever know where it is.
The finished piece, ready for framing.
Just last weekend (March 2015) I met up with Erika and we went off to Michael's to have the pieces framed. Some people like to bash Michael's for being a faceless megastore where you can't get any real help from the employees. You'll not hear anything of the sort from me about Tim and Viggo, two excellent framers who work at the Michael's on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, CA. I've been very happy with everything they've framed for me over the years. Between the two of them they have over 25 years of framing experience and it shows in how quickly they can coax out of you what you want and then map that onto the mat and frame options they sell. Tim help us frame the two mosaics, as well as three other pieces for Erika. I hope we get them back soon! |
I've called this piece "Fine Temporum," Latin for "End of Time". I hope the title conveys that as time passes, the end waits for us all just as is did for the obsolete technology of the mechanical watch. Using Latin adds to a sense of times past as well as being the language frequently used in science to name things...like bones and other parts of the body.
The name plaque design at left uses Retrotech, a font I created in 2014. Seems tailor made for use on this project. Now, where to put the plate? |