The hands that make the clocks work

Apr. 5—The hands that make the clocks run on time

The ticking and striking of clocks of all ages, sizes and shapes fill Phil D'Avanza's Goffstown workshop. His adjoining machine shop has a hum of its own as he mills, bevels and deburrs parts for much bigger clocks.

Among other work he has in progress on the benches are parts for two extensive and highly visible projects.

Pelham's First Congregational Church needed electrified movements installed and a new coat of gold leaf on the hands for its three clock faces.

The Hancock Meetinghouse clock stopped working in December and needed attention on various fronts. D'Avanza brought that clock's mechanism to his shop, disassembled it and cleaned each component, wiping away centuries of accumulated grime and oil.

Both buildings are old — the Pelham church dates to the 1750s, and the Hancock Meetinghouse to the 1820s — and the clocks are just as old.

D'Avanza often is working simultaneously on big projects like these in distant locations. Once he was splitting his time between the Battleship Cove area in Fall River, Mass., and Franconia. He gets calls from all over New England and beyond for his expertise in repairing and restoring very old clocks.

D'Avanza enjoys working on historic clock repair and restoration. Each project is unique, because these old clocks were not made to consistent standards, and wear and tear over the centuries also takes a toll.

When clocks get taken apart, cleaned and tuned up, the reassembly and reinstallation can also yield more things to repair — often with parts that have to be custom-made.

"Most people think you can just get a part in a week," he says. "They don't realize that the parts on old clocks have to be made. Parts aren't interchangeable, either."

D'Avanza first got into clock repair when a friend was trying to find someone to fix an old clock that was broken.

He looked more closely at his friend's clock, after taking it to various repair shops where each person had a different diagnosis, "I didn't feel comfortable with that, so I looked at it and said, 'I can fix this myself.'"

His training as a tool and die maker and experience working on race car engines came in handy: "I duplicated the gears that were there, fixed the small gears myself, and the clock still works."

D'Avanza travels to his project locations with a variety of tools in case he needs to fashion a replacement part — such as the key to the winding mechanism on the Hancock clock, which he found was broken when he came to reinstall everything.

He milled a new key in his Goffstown shop, but once back in the clock tower, he discovered it needed to be filed down heavily in order to fit well, so he pulled out his file from his tool bag and got to work on that, using the wooden balcony as his work surface until it fit. Of course, all that filing slowed down the reinstallation process, which took place over a few days. And he still has a few things to go back and finish up.

Few people ever get to see the actual mechanisms that drive the clock faces people see on old steeples. "I get a lot of satisfaction out of getting these old clocks that nobody sees working again," he says. "People don't see it except for the people who go up to wind it or repair it."

Part of the reason few people get to see the clock mechanisms at work is difficult access. The clock towers themselves are quirky and often cramped, with limited light.

The Hancock tower is hard to get into, but once up inside it, you can move around and even reach the bell tower, which has balconies looking out over the town and beyond with 360-degree views.

The sounds and views in the clock towers he works in inspire him. The Hancock clock room has an old photo there and guest book to sign, and when he looks out through the portals of each clock face, D'Avanza says, "You pause and think about the building when it was built.

"You look out for miles and it's 2024; this (building) went up in 1825 and you're going through parts of three centuries. When this went up, there were no paved roads, no cars, there were horses and buggies and stagecoaches, no planes in the sky. Just picture that."

In Pelham, where the church is in the center of town, you look out to see a roundabout where several major roads meet, with sidewalks and curbing, "Imagine in 1900 knowing what it was like there, with the old buildings that were post and beam," he said.

D'Avanza's next big project will be to work on the clock in Bedford's Presbyterian Church in the middle of that town.

Learn more about D'Avanza and some of his past work on his website, davanzaclocks.com.