With Time on His Hands, Connecticut Man Winds Up With a Hobby in High Gear

George Bruno has made a hobby of turning, making and repairing the hands of time.

He is a horologist--a maker of clocks--and an expert on the wooden-gear clocks manufactured by early Connecticut industrialists during the 19th Century.

Bruno can look at the guts of any wooden-gear box and identify its maker, age and problems. He can just as easily pop open a wooden-gear box and send its parts tumbling in disarray, then quickly put it together with hardly a thought.

15 Years of Work

It has taken the 64-year-old Bruno 15 years of collecting, tinkering and what he calls “re-inventing” to reach his level of expertise.

Re-inventing is what he refers to as the six years he spent researching the methods and equipment used by Connecticut’s early clock makers.

Combining what he learned from research with his own inventiveness, Bruno has created machines that enable him to mass-produce replacement parts that will fit any wooden-gear clock.

As far as he knows, he is the only person, other than his son, who knows how to machine-produce wooden gears.

‘Something to Do’

“I was working in a foundry as a sales agent, and I saw many guys hanging around after they retired, and it was a waste of time, ridiculous,” Bruno said, recalling how his hobby began. “I didn’t want to be down in the park just watching the girls going by. I wanted to have something to do.”

A friend got him started by giving Bruno a wooden-gear clock, an 1825 model made by Norris North of Torrington. The clock raised in Bruno’s mind questions about how the timepiece was made.

“In asking questions, I found there was little known as to the actual production methods,” he said. “I started to go back and dig into it and I found out for myself that there was nothing really available.”

Collects Equipment

Rather than give up, Bruno took his clock apart, measured its parts and set out to develop designs for the machines needed to duplicate the gears and pinions. A former machine and tool designer, Bruno collected unwanted equipment from local machine shops and went to work.

“I was just interested in making the drawings of the items as a record, just to keep out of mischief. And from then out it developed. I decided to re-invent the machinery,” he said in a recent interview.

His basement is full of machines, each a conglomeration of different parts. Some make pinions, others make the different gears. Throughout the basement, gears with tags hang from the ceiling and wood is neatly stacked in a drying area.

Bruno harvests his own lumber, wild black cherry for the gears, laurel or dogwood for the pinions, and pine for the gear base. He also mills it into the various dimensions he will need for cutting parts.

Artistic Drawings

Also scattered about the basement are sketches of clock parts. The artistic drawings, done freehand by Bruno, carefully detail all dimensions of the parts in the event Bruno should ever forget. He might someday use the drawings for a book.

Bruno will occasionally repair a clock for a friend, but he stresses that he is not in the business. His son, however, has started a business to repair the antique clocks.

Bruno’s main project now is to build his own tall clock, or grandfather clock. He has a working model, having pilfered the best ideas from earlier clock makers. He made every bit of it, from its gears, to its pewter hands, to its cast-iron bell, to the French-style legs and cabinet.

“I work on them just when I feel like it,” he said.

Becomes Well-Known

Bruno, who retired in 1982, has become well-known among those who collect wooden-gear clocks. He says the collectors mostly are in New England, California, Pennsylvania and New York.