By Brenna Wiegand
What happens when you mix the mind of a mechanical engineer with its penchant for problem-solving, exotic hardwoods from all over the world, an interest in woodworking and an eye for beauty as well as precision?
You get Bill Rickerson, whose jaw-dropping clocks are as entertaining and as beautiful as they are practical.
He has created about a clock a year since he got started 14 years ago.
Rickerson spent 30 years in San Diego as a mechanical engineer with the U.S. Navy, developing the special tooling and test equipment needed to overhaul jets, helicopters and other equipment.
“That’s where I developed the drafting and the computer skills,” he said.
It was challenging work and sometimes Rickerson would head out for a walk to blow off steam.
“When I lived in San Diego there was this real fancy furniture store near me and I’d go down there and drool all over the furniture,” he said. “I was always fascinated by a wooden-geared clock in there that somebody had made.”
Though he had been an avid gardener for years – even had a mention in Sunset Magazine – as he approached retirement his body was starting to bark back.
In their travels, Bill and his wife Barbara had scouted out Silverton as a wonderful place to retire. Lovely as it is, Silverton does not lend itself to year-round gardening.
So maybe 20 years ago, Bill began educating himself in the woodworking realm.
He subscribed to magazines, read books and perused plans, and began constructing in his mind the ideal woodshop. Nothing quite got his attention like running across an article on clockmaking.
Bill and Barbara Rickerson moved to Silverton in 1997, a year after he retired. He started humbly yet eagerly, dragging the table saw out of the garage; rigging up sawhorses, extension cords and the like.
A few years later, they moved to a new home where Rickerson built his dream shop from the ground up and honed his skills in the process, creating handsome cabinets, tools and tables throughout.
Once the dust settled, he began filling their home with furniture and other wood art at his wife’s request. But somewhere, somehow, a clock was ticking – and it was ticking for him.
“One day I decided, well, I’ve just got to give it a try,” he said, and he dove headlong into the world of wheels, pinions, weights and pendulums.
Rickerson either starts from scratch with his own design or purchases plans from clockmakers around the world.
“I usually spend about a week designing on the computer before I do any work at all; you start with a blank slate and can do anything you want,” Rickerson said.
It comes in handy when dealing in increments of, say, 90/1000ths of an inch.
One of Rickerson’s most rewarding creations employs planetary gearing, found in car transmissions but rarely in clocks. He modeled it after William Strutt’s brass epicyclic train clock of 1830.
“It’s just a mental challenge and you get the aesthetic satisfaction as well, so it’s a two-sided type thing,” he said. “I enjoy the designing on the computer just as much as I do the cutting wood, varnishing and sanding.”
Thanks to places like Crosscut Hardwoods in Portland, Rickerson need not travel the globe for the exotic materials he uses in addition to domestic woods like cherry, maple or walnut. He’s able to acquire zebrawood and black limba from Africa, jarrah wood from Australia and, from Russia, the Baltic birch plywood out of which Rickerson cuts most of his clock wheels.
In May, Barbara passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. Bill said keeping busy helps – that, and remembering the fun stuff, such as Barbara’s perennial plea, “Can’t you get them all to tick at the same time?”
“I’d be sitting in my easy chair in the living room, staring out the window or up at the ceiling and my wife would come in and say ‘I can hear those wheels spinning – what kind of a clock is it going to be this time?’”
Only once has Rickerson kept track of the time spent building a clock. His second project, a grandfather clock, took 250 hours, though he said could do it now in much less time.
Rickerson teaches a computer class at Silverton Senior Center and helps other seniors set up their home computers, charging a $5 donation for the senior center. The first clock he made sits in the senior center lobby. That way, when somebody bumps it out of alignment, he can run over and fix it in two shakes.
