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Clocks Make Him Tick

Tampa Tribune staff photo/Greg Fight.

Tom Wheeler fits the pieces together for a cathedral clock. He is working in his shop in the garage of his Valrico home.

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By TOM BRENNAN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 2, 2008

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VALRICO - While stationed in Germany, Tom Wheeler loved to visit the country's churches and cathedrals.

It was more than an appreciation of their architecture, statuary and stained glass.

"They had these lovely clocks and chimes. They just pulled me in," he said.

Wheeler is fascinated by timepieces. When he retired from the Army in 1982, he had a six-month wait before taking a federal civil service position, also in Germany. So he decided to turn his captivation with clocks into something more.

His wife was German. A friend of her family was a Bavarian clockmaker and agreed to take on Wheeler as an apprentice.

"For six months, this old German guy took me under his wing, taught me the trade, and I've been doing it ever since," he said on a recent afternoon in his workshop.

He figures he has made more than 5,000 clocks since. His first three hang in the couple's bedroom in their Valrico home.

The first two were cuckoo clocks made under his mentor's tutelage.

"When I left, he told me, 'You made them, you take them with you.'"

The next was a Black Forest wall clock, the first he made on his own. Black Forest clocks have woodland motifs. His wife, Ursula, refused to part with it.

"I told him he wasn't going to sell it, that it was for me," she said.

Wheeler doesn't limit his creativity to clock-making. He also makes toys, small-scale classic cars, pickup trucks and airplanes, knickknack shelves, cabinets, trinket holders and any sort of wooden gewgaws that catch his fancy.

A carousel horse, grand cathedral clock, miniature grandfather clock and one in the shape of Ohio are among projects he's working on.

"It goes pretty quick, once you know what you're doing," Wheeler said. "The first time you make something, you have to keep going back and looking at the instructions or pattern. Now, I can just lay out the parts because I know where they go."

The couple's three-car garage has been converted to a craft-making workshop. In one bay are power tools - a scroll saw, radial-arm saw, band saw, drill press and dual-action sander.

The other bays hold Wheeler's assembly table, tool cabinets and plastic boxes that hold wood, patterns and other items. He scoots between them on a rolling chair. Most everything is within arm's reach.

The neatness and order seem amazing enough.

"The Army taught me organization," he said.

But Ursula Wheeler isn't impressed.

"He just makes too much mess," she said. "We are always cleaning up."

Tom Wheeler creates the wooden shells of the clocks and buys the mechanisms that power their timepieces from a company in Wisconsin. He uses batteries, chains and pendulums to turn the hands, whatever the customer wants or is appropriate for a particular type.

"The hardest part is having patience," he said. "Sometimes, things don't go together like they are supposed to.

"But a sander cures a lot of mistakes."

The fretwork of the casings is as intricate as it is striking.

The grand cathedral clock he's making, modeled after a church in Munich, has more than 1,000 saw cuts. Wheeler said it would take 12 hours to complete the woodwork, but he stretches it out, only working about two or three hours a day. With assembly, he said it would take eight weeks to create the clock from start to finish with its main church and four spires.

His prices range from $10 for a clock with the outline of a state to $1,700 for a grandfather clock.

"It depends on what you want," he said.

He used to travel the craft-show circuit.

"I've got a bad heart, so I no longer load and unload stuff or stand out in the heat," Wheeler said. "I now sell by word-of-mouth."

He isn't looking for new customers, but if someone shows an interest, he'll listen.

His hobby has had its benefits. Wheeler said he bought a Lincoln Town Car with sale proceeds.

But he said no one should expect to get rich making clocks.

"I figured it out once, and I made only 13 cents an hour," he said. "If I had to charge for my real labor, the clocks would never sell. They would be too expensive."

But money isn't why Wheeler does it.

"The enjoyment on a person's face when they take one of my clocks, the enjoyment they take from something I made, is priceless," he said.

Reporter Tom Brennan can be reached at (813) 657-4528 or tbrennan@tampatrib.com.

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