Bradford Woods man passes time creating clocks

Bradford Woods man passes time creating clocks .A downed tree may be a nuisance when it's in your yard, but to Richard Mowrey, it's raw material.

Most weekends, Mr. Mowrey, 55, can be found in his back yard, hollowing out 10-foot-long logs in a first step toward creating unique grandfather clocks .

As the year drew to a close, he was outside his Bradford Woods home working on an enormous white oak. He'd salvaged the tree trunk from a home-building project under way next to his house.

In the chilly morning, Mr. Mowrey used hand tools to hollow out the trunk and to strip off the bark.

When all that work is done, he will move the 500-pound chunk of wood into his basement workshop, where it will be dried for months. If the wood survives the process without cracking, it will be carved into a grandfather clock, sanded, and waxed.

The whole process takes about eight months, but Mr. Mowrey is fine with that timeline. This is not a job, just a possibility to one day make a little extra money for tools or, perhaps, retirement.

For now, Mr. Mowrey works as director of marketing and business development for Centria, a Moon-based supplier of metal roofs and walls.

Before settling on making grandfather clocks, Mr. Mowrey dabbled for years in woodcrafting and working with slate. But those hobbies did not consume his weekends the way clock-carving has.

"I wasn't excited about anything I made," Mr. Mowrey said. "It wasn't until I found I really enjoyed making something totally different that I really got into it.

"I finally stumbled onto something I can create myself," he said.

The clocks are shaped out of a single piece of wood.

He usually works with wood he salvages; he found a nice, workable cherry stump on a friend's property after it was logged, for instance.

The wood is dried out in a controlled process that Mr. Mowrey has perfected through research and trial and error, and that he won't discuss in detail.

Because every tree is different and responds differently to the drying process, no two look alike.

In fact, Mr. Mowrey is drawn to raw materials with odd characteristics.

One piece ready for carving in his basement now has a dark scar emblazoned on its trunk. That scar won't be removed, but instead will be a highlight of the final product.

"That will be front and center," Mr. Mowrey said. "It's the artwork Mother Nature gave me."

Mr. Mowrey said he is not sure if his clocks should be considered art or furniture, but he displayed some at the Three Rivers Arts Festival last summer. The most popular piece was an Austrian pine clock with a pronounced bend to it.

"The kids liked it," he said. "They thought it looked like the 'Beauty and the Beast' clock."

One little girl even hugged it, he said.

Despite the favorable responses, no one bought any of the pieces, so Mr. Mowrey is now displaying his works at a furniture shop near Seven Springs Mountain Resort. He envisions chalets and ski lodges as the perfect environment for his timepieces.

He doesn't build the movements that are placed in the clocks, but buys them from Hermle, a German company. The movements themselves cost from $100 to $300, Mr. Mowrey said....

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