EELK RAPIDS NNEWS LK ERAPWIDS S · 2018. 10. 10. · Tick tock, fi x the clock the Kewadin...
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1 October 11, 2018 NEWS NEWS ELK RAPIDS ELK RAPIDS PRESORT STANDARD U.S. POSTAGE PAID ELK RAPIDS, MI PERMIT NO. 10 Postal Customer SERVING THE ELK RAPIDS ALDEN KEWADIN RAPID CITY EASTPORT TORCH RIVER BRIDGE WILLIAMSBURG ACME AREAS Volume XIII Issue No. 20 75¢ October 11 2018 BY BARB MOSHER, CONTRIBUTING WRITER COVER STORY continued on page 6 Doug White has been taking things apart and putting them back together for as long as he can remember. “Bicycles, lawn mowers, anything mechanical just drew me because I knew I could make it run better,” Tick tock, fix the clock the Kewadin resident said. “As a teenager, it was car engines. I was always working on something.” These days, Doug applies his fixing magic to mechanical clocks—mantel clocks, wall clocks, grandfather and grandmother clocks, even cuckoo clocks. “People are really attached to their clocks,” said Doug, whose business is called Tick-Tock Broken? “I get a great deal of satisfaction in restoring a clock that means a lot to someone else. They all have their own idiosyncrasies, and I enjoy working on all of them.” Putting the tick- tock back into clocks is a relatively recent endeavor for the retired school band director and Marshall Music service representative. Prior to clocks, the restoration of jukeboxes satisfied his passion for tinkering. It began when he rescued a broken-down jukebox from a school band room he visited. “They were going to throw it away, so I asked if I could have it,” he explained. “I started messing with it, and the bug bit me. Music and mechanics—what better combination could there be?” Doug guesses upwards of 70 jukeboxes found new life in his Sutter Road garage workshop. Most were sold to those looking to reconnect with a by-gone era, although at one time he and his wife, Kathy, kept six on display in their living room. “They were all from Doug White makes crucial adjustments to the movement of a clock in his clock repair workshop. He’s been taking things apart and putting them back together since he was a child. Doug White displays an employee time clock he restored. The antique clock was made by the International Time Recording Company, forerunner to IBM. Photos by Barb Mosher the 1930s and 40s,” he said of the keepers. “The wood styling, the Bakelite plastic, they were works of art. I got them all working, and we always lit them up at night.” When Doug and Kathy moved to their current home on Indian Road, the only place he could set up his workshop was in the basement. Jukeboxes weigh an average of 350 pounds, and lugging them down and back up the stairs proved too difficult. While sorting through family belongings after the death of his father, a couple of old clocks got Doug thinking. Smaller than jukeboxes but equally challenging to work on, clock repair might be the perfect fit. He started with a 100-year-old Seth Thomas mantel clock that had belonged to his great-uncle. “It has a Sonora chime, actual cast bells inside it,” he said. “It sounds really nice. It’s different, and that drew me to it right away.” Doug and Kathy have always enjoyed antiquing, picking up a variety of unique and fun items over the years—an arcade bowling game, an early 1900s wall phone, electro-mechanical pinball machines, and gumball machines. But it’s clocks and their chimes that they search out now. “The first thing we look for in a clock is a good chime,” he said. “If the chime is tinny, we don’t bother with it.” The couple currently has 20 restored clocks scattered throughout their home, with five more in various stages of repair on the workbench alongside those of customers. Every hour, three or four of the working clocks fill their home with a concert of chimes. “People ask us how we can sleep with all that,” Doug laughed. “We don’t even hear them. But we do alternate the ones we let chime.” His “pride and joy” is a Vienna regulator clock that had been cast aside in a garage for years. The combined effect of humidity, cold, and heat had taken its toll, and the clock’s owner decided against the cost of restoration. “It was a wreck when it came to me. The case was in pieces. There was no luster to any of it. He told me to just keep it,” said Doug, who repaired the clock’s movement and then built a new case for it out of hard maple. “It cleaned up real nice.” Another favorite is the grandfather clock that
Transcript of EELK RAPIDS NNEWS LK ERAPWIDS S · 2018. 10. 10. · Tick tock, fi x the clock the Kewadin...
1Elk Rapids NewsOctober 11, 2018
NEWS NEWS ELK RAPIDSELK RAPIDS
PRESORT STANDARDU.S. POSTAGE PAID
ELK RAPIDS, MIPERMIT NO. 10
Postal Customer
SERVING THE ELK RAPIDS ALDEN KEWADIN RAPID CITY EASTPORT TORCH RIVER BRIDGE WILLIAMSBURG ACME AREAS
Volume XIII Issue No. 20
75¢
October 112018
BY BARB MOSHER , CONTR IBUT ING WR ITER
COVER STORY continued on page 6
Doug White has been taking things apart and putting them back together for as long as he can remember. “Bicycles, lawn mowers, anything mechanical just drew me because I knew I could make it run better,”
Tick tock, fi x the clockthe Kewadin resident said. “As a teenager, it was car engines. I was always working on something.”
These days, Doug applies his fi xing magic to mechanical clocks—mantel clocks, wall clocks, grandfather and grandmother clocks, even cuckoo clocks.
“People are really attached to their clocks,” said Doug, whose business is called Tick-Tock Broken? “I get a great deal of satisfaction in restoring a clock that means a lot to someone else. They all have their own idiosyncrasies, and I enjoy working on all of them.”
Putting the tick-tock back into clocks is a relatively recent endeavor for the retired school band director and Marshall Music service representative. Prior to clocks, the restoration of jukeboxes satisfi ed his passion for tinkering. It began when he rescued a broken-down jukebox from a school band room he visited.
“They were going to throw it away, so I asked if I could have it,” he explained. “I started messing with it, and the bug bit me. Music and mechanics—what better combination could there be?”
Doug guesses upwards of 70 jukeboxes found new life in his Sutter Road garage workshop. Most were sold to those looking to reconnect with a by-gone era, although at one time he and his wife, Kathy, kept six on display in their living room.
“They were all from
Doug White makes crucial adjustments to the movement of a clock in his clock repair workshop. He’s been taking things apart and putting them back together since he was a child.
Doug White displays an employee time clock he restored. The antique clock was made by the International Time Recording Company, forerunner to IBM. Photos by Barb Mosher
the 1930s and 40s,” he said of the keepers. “The wood styling, the Bakelite plastic, they were works of art. I got them all working, and we always lit them up at night.”
When Doug and Kathy moved to their current home on Indian Road, the only place he could set up his workshop was in the basement. Jukeboxes weigh an average of 350 pounds, and lugging them down and back up the stairs proved too diffi cult.
While sorting through family belongings after the death of his father, a couple of old clocks got Doug thinking. Smaller than jukeboxes but equally challenging to work on, clock repair might be the perfect fi t.
He started with a 100-year-old Seth Thomas mantel clock that had belonged to his great-uncle. “It has a Sonora chime, actual cast bells inside it,” he said. “It sounds really nice. It’s different, and that drew me to it right away.”
Doug and Kathy have always enjoyed antiquing, picking up a variety of unique and fun items over the years—an arcade bowling game, an early 1900s wall phone, electro-mechanical pinball machines, and gumball machines. But it’s clocks and their chimes that they search out now.
“The fi rst thing we look for in a clock is a good chime,” he said. “If the chime is tinny, we don’t bother with it.”The couple currently has 20 restored clocks scattered throughout their home, with fi ve more in various stages of repair on the workbench alongside those of customers. Every hour, three or four of the working clocks fi ll their home with a concert of chimes. “People ask us how we can sleep with all that,” Doug laughed. “We don’t even hear them. But we do alternate the ones we let chime.”
His “pride and joy” is a Vienna regulator clock that had been cast aside in a garage for years. The combined effect of humidity, cold, and heat had taken its toll, and the clock’s owner decided against the cost of restoration.
“It was a wreck when it came to me. The case was in pieces. There was no luster to any of it. He told me to just keep it,” said Doug, who repaired the clock’s movement and then built a new case for it out of hard maple. “It cleaned up real nice.”
Another favorite is the grandfather clock that
