YOU COULD OWN a Mystery Shack Cuckoo Clock!
The product of my labors! I've been working on this on and off since the spring and I'm so proud of it. I designed and handcrafted this Mystery Shack themed cuckoo clock from scratch. I bought the innards of a clock, then designed a Shack around it. It's primarily laser cut, but is covered in hand-stained and cut dowels. A few other things are 3D printed, made from various boxes, moss, scrap wood, acrylic, and even from a stick I found outside.
The best part about this clock?
YOU could own it!
This baby is going up for auction by me and the rest of the @mystery-twin-mystery-bags team on September 26th. All proceeds going to Palestinian refugees via the Sameer Project. Keep watching our socials for more information! I'll also be sure to post about it again when it happens.
If you're curious to find out more about my process, production details under the readmore!
THE IDEA!
I'm an engineer by trade, but I don't get a ton of time to make things nowadays (i'm finishing my PhD right now, which is largely in simulation). I jumped at the chance to make some handmade items for MTMB, all of which I could gush about too but will just show off here:
(I believe some of the Cipher Wheel wooden pins will be available in the leftovers sale!)
Hana floated the idea of doing an auction fairly early on in the process, and I knew I wanted to make something big for it. When I think about Gravity Falls, I think of the shack before anything else. If I wanted a functional display of the Shack, what would it be? I thought for a while and eventually settled on a clock.
This was my first sketch, with ideas for specific details. Some of these stayed the whole time, some of them got discarded. The biggest difference between the concept and the final version was Soos. I originally wanted to change the kit to make Soos saying "soos-koo" and to make him come out the front door. Unfortunately, I both could not figure out how to hack in a custom sound and the clock kit was set up to only work with the birdie coming out the top. In hindsight, I should have realized this, since the pendulum needs to go down and the birdie would be in the way.
I knew from the start the proportions of the Shack would need to be squished so it wouldn't stick out from the wall too much, which lead to a few odd looking things later on.
2. THE PLAN!
First thing I did was get a TON of reference images for the Mystery Shack to finalize which details I would or would not do. The Shack is really inconsistent between episodes, so some details (like if the gift shop sign says GIFT or GIFT SHOP) I had to just make a decision on. I also had to simplify a few things, which I'll explain later when I go into the parts in detail. I pretty quickly changed my mind on making glass windows and stuck that on "stretch goal" which I ended up not doing because of both time and shipping concerns. I also decided not to prioritize anything on the opposite (Wendy's secret hangout spot and another entrance) and back side (since it would be against the wall) of the Shack.
Next, I made a budget/parts list based on the rough sketch of what I would need. Even if I didn't have the size of everything finalized, this helped me space out shopping, know what I needed to order ahead of time, and know what I still needed at every stage. In my case, I also applied for a grant from my school's makerspace to help pay for it, which was fantastic and I appreciate them so much.
The only item I had trouble with procuring was the shingles for the roof. I got them online, but then the shop I got them from shut down between my first order and when I realized I needed more. I knew I could laser cut my own, but I didn't have a perfect match for the stain color and I really didn't want to have a fifth partially used bottle of stain that might be the wrong color. I ended up making do with what I had and I think it still looks good.
Last, I made my CAD model to make the patterns for laser cutting and to make sure everything would fit. I am SURE there is a much better way to do this then what I do, but I:
Make a 3D model of the final shape of the object
Use the shell tool to make it hollow
Cut off each face one by one
Add in the jigsaw to attach things and any other details
Make a new assembly to make sure everything fits
Convert the outline of the jigsaw design to vectors to open in Illustrator for the laser cutter.
The final CAD looks like this:
Pretty close to what I ended up building! The shape of the Shack is not consistent at all in terms of how much or which sides are sloped. The slightly more consistent way is for the right side to be sloped, so that's what I went with, but, man, it changes so much.
3. THE BUILD!
I laser cut all of the pieces and made sure they all fit. I've you've been wondering this whole time what laser cutting is, it's a technique where a laser precisely cuts the material you're working with. You most frequently see this done with wood, acrylic, and paper. If you're interested, check if your local library or school has a public one! They're really cool!
Anyway, I stained the shell, even though I knew it would be covered in dowels in case anything showed through. Staining the dowels was a bit of a pain, because I had to sand down the surfaces first so the stain would stick to them, but it wasn't too bad.
Then I started cutting down dowels. I figured that it would ultimately be harder to pre-measure out exactly the lengths I needed, since I'd have to also keep track of which length went where. Instead, I cut a bunch to roughly the right size and started gluing them to the surface. The plan was to use a Dremel afterwards to cut anything hanging off to size. (A Dremel is a handheld tool that is used for small-scale cutting and sanding jobs)
Here you can see some progress on various parts of the project. That piece of aluminum I salvaged from a scrap bin to make the gift shop overhang. I was having fun layering shingles on the roof. Here you can see a minor oopsies: on the CAD, I remembered to put a hole where there Mystery Shack roof is broken on the actual roof part, but I ended up putting the shingles on the wrong side, so the final product is missing that detail :(
The Mystery Shack sign took SO many coats of paint.
This was where I made my biggest mistake of the project: I decided to glue the front and sides of the structure together first and put the dowels on after.
Why I did this, I have no idea. Literally in no way did that make sense except to feel more like I was making progress. It made SO much worse. If I did it in pieces, I could have cut off all the dowels at once with a bandsaw! The Dremel was SO much slower than I thought. (Oh, also, that hand saw in the picture? It sucks. Don't buy it.)
Here it is, post sand down of the dowels. It turned out quite nice, despite all the problems. You can see a lot of the electronics here, too. Hi, birdie!
However, now we come to the second problem of gluing things together early: I didn't glue the whole thing together all at once. Nothing, and I mean nothing, ever fits together perfectly. Little imperfections of glue and misalignments propagated and the back I designed did not fit. My solution ended up cutting the back in pieces and re-gluing it together. What a pain. Could have been completely avoided.
4. THE DETAILS!
Someone once told me that the key to making something look good is to remember all the little details. And man, that was super true for this project. Let's go through a little tour.
I would often joke to my roommates while working on this that the Mystery Shack was a great thing to mimic, because if anything looked a little sloppy and messed up, it was completely in character for the show. I don't think my "MYSTERY" looks perfect, but that's fine! Stan did it! The little lamps on top of the sign vary a lot between shots, both in size and in shape. I designed and 3D printed these as an okay compromise. One of the biggest losses by shrinking the Shack to fit on a wall better was I (and my friend who helped, ty <3) didn't get to put as much Aesthetic Moss as I was hoping. Ah, well...
This little ENTER sign I swear is the least consistent thing in the show. Sometimes it says ENTER with a little arrow, sometimes it says ENTERS, sometimes it's light text on a darker background, sometimes it's darker text on a light background... I ended up picking this one from the last episode as my model. I made the weather vane out of three toothpicks that I stained.
(By the way, I did make a 3D print for the pipe, but I honestly think the Shack looks better without it. I'll include it with the package so the person who wins can pick if they want it or not)
The gift shop was 100% modeled on this screenshot. In wide shots, the sign usually says GIFT (s1) or GIFTS (s2), but when zoomed in, it usually says GIFT SHOP. I was extremely pleased at how well I captured the sign itself. Had to play a lot with different mirroring tools in Illustrator I haven't used before.
The piece of aluminum I bent myself from a piece of scrap. The little yellow signs are made out of a Wheat Thins box. The soda machine and the ice box are both 3D prints. Because I squished the shack, though, I didn't have enough space for everything that's supposed to go here. I did make a version where I fit the pressed penny machine, but it looked way too silly and I decided the Pitt Cola machine was more iconic. Goodbye, pressed penny machine :(
By the way, the door is an open hole because the speaker for the clock is in there and the sound needs to come out.
(this screenshot also shows how inconsistent the shape of the Mystery Shack is. Look at how crooked the left side is. What)
Those little letters. My god. That was the MOST frustrating part of this project by far. They were way too small, so they kept falling through the bed of the laser cutter. Once I finally had all of them, sticking them in place was a nightmare. SO tiny. I got absolutely covered in superglue trying to get it to work. Here, you can see the only part of the outside of the shack that really doesn't make any sense: the Bill A overlaps the outside of the door in a way that's physically impossible. I just put it on top.
The outline of the door is a stick I found outside, cut to size, and stained to be the right color. The door was a leftover piece from an old project. The MR MYSTERY stand is far too big to be realistic, but I decided being able to read it at a distance was more important. The next tour sign is also a Wheat Thins box. Very useful box, surprisingly.
The Dipper and Mabel pendulum was actually born out of necessity! I somehow lost the pendulum that came with the kit! Instead of buying a new one, I realized I could super easily make something cuter. I just cut two pieces of acrylic and glued a print out of Dipper and Mabel on the inside. I spent one Pathfinder session painstakingly cutting them out with scissors...
And that's my design diary. Let me know if you have any questions or want to chat. I love making things and love talking about making things even more.
And, most importantly: YOU CAN BUY THIS! BUY IT! TAKE MY BABY FROM ME!!!! DO IT!!!
