Keeping time: Kinkson's second career is making watches, clocks in Kennewick

By John Trumbo, Herald staff writer

At 64, Dean Hinkson passes time by tinkering with it. The retired electrician who moved to the Tri-Cities nine years ago is a master watchmaker and a master clockmaker.

Aside from three restored Model A Ford automobiles parked in the garage and shop, his mechanical world consists of tiny gears, wheels, springs and precision-made bits small enough to make a parts pile inside a seamstress' thimble.

"I just like to know how stuff works," said Hinkson of Kennewick, the son of a welder and mechanic, while doing surgery on a circa-1800 pocket watch he'd dissected atop his 1890 watchmaker's bench.

Hinkson got into timepieces as a hobby that is turning into a second career.

"This is the result of two pocket watches and a book," said Hinkson's wife, Teri, who gave the watches as a Christmas gift in 1985. One worked, the other didn't.

Six years later, Hinkson sold his interest in an electrical business and had the time to play with those watches.

Choosing to be unemployed at age 47 was too young to think about whiling away hours in a rocking chair, so Hinkson enrolled in a watchmaking program at North Seattle Community College.

"I told my wife our plans to travel could wait a couple of years," he said.

Hinkson did so well in the classes that the instructor, a master horologist -- a maker/dealer of timepieces -- from Germany, wanted to hand over the teaching duties and retire. Hinkson tried it for a time, but found more satisfaction working with clocks and watches than students.

Being certified as a master watchmaker and a master clockmaker by the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute gives Hinkson the credentials that bring all sorts of timepieces to his bench.

His clock/watch shop is tucked into a small building behind his home. He shares the space with his wife and her sewing machine.

The shop is filled with cabinets and tools necessary to a horologist.

Hinkson's fascination with timepieces may have a genetic link to an uncle from Ogallala, Neb., who made a living fixing clocks and watches.

Hinkson has a set of horologist's punches and stakes that were a gift from that uncle.

The other tools of the trade had to be acquired through contacts and diligent searching.

Hinkson has a tiny drill press, two small lathes, a hand-crank manual gear-cutting machine called a roundup that is about 200 years old, an antique watch-cleaning machine a third that age, and a large cabinet filled with drawers marked for storing watch and clock parts. Names like Elgin, Waltham, Hamilton and Illinois label the drawers that have tiny bottles inside. Each bottle has a number that corresponds to a chart that gives information on which watches and models those parts fit.

That cabinet is Hinkson's parts department, much of it old stock and items no longer available.

But when he has to, Hinkson can make parts.

"You borrow, beg and steal (not really) when you can," he said.

"These are precision instruments. You have to be patient and precise," Hinkson said.

Hinkson has fixed all kinds of clocks and watches, from the most common to the most expensive and rare.

Most of the jewelers in the region have contacted him with timepieces needing expert repair. Before moving to the Tri-Cities, he was called often to work on clocks owned by a collector of rare timepieces in Seattle.

"If I'd advertise that I fix old watches, I'd never get out of here," he said recently while giving a tour of his shop.

One of Hinkson's trickier repair jobs was to make a new escapement -- the mechanism that regulates the tick-tock of a clock or watch -- for a rare tall case clock made by George Graham with a movement by William Vulliamy of London in the late 1700s. Hinkson spent a couple of months fashioning the new "grasshopper escapement" out of ivory. When he was finished, the ivory arms were hinged, long and thin, and moved like a grasshopper's legs to regulate the clock movement.

Hinkson learned later that clock's value was in six digits.

"The only other one I've seen is in the British Museum," he said.

But some of the greatest satisfaction comes in repairing much-treasured family heirlooms, even cheap watches.

"One woman asked me to fix one of those 'dollar watches.' It was the last thing sent to her from her father while he was in Vietnam. She bawled when she got it back. That means more to me than fixing an expensive watch," he said.

The shop and home have several clocks built by Hinkson. One is a very early style wooden clock with a single hand he built from plans in a 1964 Popular Mechanics magazine when he was 19. It doesn't work worth a darn, he said.

But another just like it, only better made, hangs on the wall, too. Hinkson said he decided to see if he could do a better job 27 years later.

"I'd learned a few tricks about friction by then," he said.

Pleased with his success, Hinkson enrolled in the clockmaker classes the next year.

A copy of an 18th century Ephraim Willard clock hangs in his shop, waiting for a custom tall case that has been three years under construction at a cabinetmaker's shop. Hinkson made the dial to match photographs of an original and had an artist in Georgia paint the intricate designs that include a moon phase wheel and date wheel, that turn with the passing of time, and flowery embellishments that accompany the numbers.

The house contains many other clocks, some built from scratch by Hinkson as copies of highly collectible originals. One is an early day electric pendulum clock known as a Jubilee Clock for which Hinkson spent two weeks custom-cutting the faceplate from a sheet of silver-plated brass.

And his favorite pocket watch?

Hinkson has dozens, some quite collectible, but he likes the looks, weight and feel of a 19-jewel, size 16s Waltham pocket watch with glass front and back. It was made in 1899.

"There are lots of them out there. I just like it," he said.

* John Trumbo: 509-582-1529; jtrumbo@tricityherald.com

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Sunday, Aug. 31, 2008

Keeping time: Kinkson's second career is making watches, clocks in Kennewick

By John Trumbo, Herald staff writer