The Sun Newspaper

AroundTown                   The Sun/Thursday, May 23, 2002 - 3

Tick-tock DOC

man has remedy for
broken clocks

By Colt Foutz
STAFF WRITER

Ever heard a clock explode?

Lee Marinaccio has, and he swears it makes a "BONG" when it blows. You see, Marinaccio was trying to fix the clock when it blew up on him, spitting gears and parts all over the place. He admitted he didn't mind the mainspring, the coiled length of steel that, when compressed in the clock mechanism, gives the timepiece its life, its tick.

In the ordinary course of clock repair, the spring is tied down to avoid the disastrous release of tension. Marinaccio forgot, and the spring sprung. "I gently lifted the top plate away from the rest of the mechanism," he said. "And of course, as soon as I did that, the spring was released. BONG! It expanded to, like, five times its size and all the parts flew to every end of the room." Marinaccio gathered up what pieces he could find and put them in a box with the rest of the shattered clock body. A box fit for burial? Fortunately, no.

There's life after death for clocks in , and it is dispensed by Ron Hughes, known as the ClockMD, whose Main Street Workshop has been the site of many a restoration - and more than a few resurrections.

Hughes calls them "basket cases," the jumble of blown parts and thrown gears forlorn clock collectors bring to him in boxes, hoping they can be made whole again. In his garage workshop, Hughes pores over the pieces, adding up the parts, seeing which ones can be salvaged and which ones are lost. There are cookie tins filled with replacements he can choose from, or a corner filing cabinet through which he searches for solutions. Inevitably, Hughes works his magic and the hands move again. For clock lovers like Marinaccio, time ticks anew.  "He has to be a very patient man, I think, because it can get very frustrating on occasion," Marinaccio said of Hughes. "He always been very good at correcting my mistakes or making work that which I cannot."

Timing is everything

Hughes began his career as an apprentice, dismantling clocks while working at a Hinsdale flower shop as a teen. Under the tutelage of the shop owner's uncle, Hughes learned a little about the inner workings of clocks by reading - and a lot by taking them apart.

The first clock he owned - a small, Ingraham Beehive Clock - he couldn't help but disMantel. "I remember the fear with that first clock of not being able to get it back together again," Hughes said. "There was the fear of the mainspring, all that power. I've heard of people who have lost fingers."

Hughes kept all his digits and set about becoming an expert in the field. He absorbed books about cleaning and repair. He learned by taking clocks apart and putting them together again.

He set up shop - first at other locations in and Woodridge, before settling on Main Street in 1986.

He acquired clocks - thousands of them. From kitchen clocks to cuckoo clocks, school clocks, and steeple clocks, beehives, gingerbread, chimers and strikers, Hughes approaches his craft with the craving of a collector, a trait his customers have noticed and that keeps them coming back.

Out of the 50 clocks resident Mary Vath keeps in her home, she estimates at least 20 have ended up on Hughes' workshop table at some point. Vath grew up in a home filled with clocks. Her mother was an avid collector of antique Westminsters, which filled the house with chimes every hour, on the hour - and on the half hour, too. "When I got married, I swore we would have no clocks in our house," Vath said. But her mother had a surprise. "Lo and behold she gave me one of her clocks as a wedding present," Vath said. "And my husband really enjoyed it. And I thought, 'Oh no!' So we've pursued chime clocks and cuckoo clocks through the years."

For better or worse, through 37 years of marriage, countless time changes, repeated windings and too many ticks and tocks, Vath has lived with the hobby. And she'll trust her clocks to no one but Hughes.

"Many years ago I went to a certain clock company," Vath said. "They worked on my clock for over a year, and afterward it still wasn't quite right. I was not happy. "I took it to Ron, he worked on it and now it runs fine. And it didn't take him a year to do it."

Time is something Hughes doesn't mind spending, whether it's replacing a battery, cleaning a clock face or dedicating hours over a scroll saw to construct clocks of his own. A few of his originals stand on the shelves in his shop. Oak is his favorite wood, and in one piece he stains it dark, accentuating the stained-glass windows of the Gothic church that serves as the clock's case. He carves and assembles the ornate frills and fretwork piece by piece, squeezing in time for his original projects between repair work. "I enjoy the whole process," he said. "But when I'm working on other clocks, I don't have much time for it."

That's fine, he said, because he enjoys the challenge of determining why a clock won't run.  It can be many things - excess grease gumming up the gears, a damaged lever caught in the strike, an immovable part blocking the power. Or, it could be a grandfather clock someone hit with a car. He hasn't seen it all, but he's seen most of it. What he hasn't, he's eager to learn about.

Accompanying Hughes on his exploration is his wife, Mary, a craftswoman in her own right. Mary is a porcelain artist, and she sells hand-painted items for sale on her Web site, at www.maryhughesstudio.com, as her husband sells clocks on his, www.clockmd.com. She also helps with his business, taking calls and making appointments, and runs a mean scroll saw when she's called upon. "We've talked about doing a clock together," Hughes said. "We're together 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we enjoy it very much."

Leave it to a clock lover to keep good time.

Contact staff writer Colt Foutz at (630) 416-5196 or cfoutz@scn1.com.