Hale, too, admits if he were “just” a clockmaker that he would probably have found it more difficult to find his own voice and his own niche. I love the idea of combining clockmaking with woodworking, which sees two distinct crafts coming together. “A lot of that comes with just designing so that the wood can breathe in different directions without warping and things like that.” Wood for wheels, wood for gears, wood for clocks Or at least not have it be a disadvantage,” he explained. “But there are ways to use it to your advantage. He explained that the hardest part was figuring out how to use wood as a material to make a clock or a watch, which has to be very stable. “As soon as I started reading about clocks and the standards to which a lot of the classic watchmakers and clockmakers held themselves, I was just blown away. Hale began reading about clocks, describing himself as something of a perfectionist and compulsive, which led to him wanting to make his things to a high standard. So that momentous event was like the turning point that kind of enabled me to think, okay, what do I really want to do? Those kinds of things make you question a lot about your life direction.” “It didn’t work it was very, very bad,” he laughed. It was during this time that Hale made his first clock. I guess it was coping it felt like I was trying to escape.” Hale’s father, a mechanic, showed him things that he likely internalized from cars and how mechanical things work. When that happened, I went through this really difficult time, which is normal, and latched onto getting into the workshop and making stuff. “Soon after that I moved to Kalamazoo, and – it sounds unrelated – my father passed away in 2012. “I thought I wanted to teach, but it wasn’t as fulfilling as I thought it would be in some ways.”Īfter some time spent doing odd jobs, reading, and trying to stay fulfilled in other ways, he got into woodworking. “And after that I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” Hale said, seeming to me to echo the mantra of a generation. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Michigan State University in 2011 in his early twenties. Hale, like all good autodidacts, did not learn watchmaking in the classic sense – or anything even close to it. ![]() How Rick Hale found clockmaking through wood So, on a recent trip to my alma mater, I made a very slight detour on a foggy Sunday morning to meet with Hale at his workshop to get a first-hand idea of what he does. And coincidentally that is also where I attended university. Hale lives and works in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA. In fact, his entire clock is made using wood – every part except for just a few tiny brass elements in the gears. Hale is not unlike Harrison in that he is self-taught, comes from a whole other vocational background, and works with wood.
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