JUST A MATTER OF TIME; LEARNING CLOCK REPAIR, WIDOWER EXPANDS ON WIFE'S BUSINESS.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

Customers had come and gone all morning at Claudia's Antiques, trying on marcasite rings from the jewelry case, checking out yellowed newspapers, fingering aged porcelain.

But the shop was empty now.

Jerry Wodarz, with his 3-year-old Lhasa apso Scooter snoozing at his feet, reached for his magnifying visor and his oil applicator and turned to his new love - repairing antique clocks.

``There's a lot of character in these clocks,'' he said, giving due respect to another craftman's work.

This certainly wasn't part of his life plans. But at 53 and recently widowed, the Canoga Park man spends much of his day learning the dying art of clock repair largely on his own while manning his late wife's Sherman Way antiques shop.

``I like to restore things, bring 'em back to the world,'' he said, tightening the mechanism of an old timepiece. ``There's a lot of downtime in the shop, and this gives me something useful to do besides dusting. I hate dusting! Old clocks are a lot more interesting.''

New line of work

Wodarz got into the clock repair business literally by accident. After working in construction, doing air conditioning and sheet metal work for 28 years, he fell off a ladder in September 1994, shattering a heel bone. He went back to work after an operation, but a reinjury required a second operation. Then he developed arthritis that prevented him from climbing ladders or carrying heavy loads.

``I decided to call it quits,'' he said.

Looking for a more sedentary but still productive vocation, Wodarz spotted an ad for a Bellflower trade school that offered a six-month clock repair course, one of only two such classes in California. He enrolled and began attending classes but dropped out to spend time with his wife, Claudia, after she was hospitalized with cancer last year.

After her death in July, he found himself with a choice: either sell the shop and find something else to do or keep her dream alive and build on it.

He chose the latter.

So he went back to finish the clock-repair course and he bought old clock parts and other inventory from the widow of a neighbor who had repaired clocks.

In a corner of his wife's antiques shop, Wodarz set up a tiny repair shop.

Although he hasn't yet hung out a shingle advertising clock repairs, he's been busy working on nearly three dozen antique clocks friends and acquaintances have brought to him to fix.

Three words sum up his learning curve: trial and error.

Learn by doing

``You're talking to a novice,'' Wodarz said with a grin. ``It's all a learning process. I tell people if I can't fix it, there's no charge.''

That's the hard way to become a clock repairman, said Thomas J. Bartels, executive director of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, a Pennsylvania-based organization with 35,000 members, its own watch and clock museum, and the nation's largest timepiece-repair school.

It's difficult to learn all the intricacies of antique clocks without thorough academic training, but mechanical aptitude and a devotion to private study can help bridge the gap, he said.

And it's a worthwhile pursuit: Craftsmen with the skills to repair antique clocks are more in demand now than they've been in decades.

``Watch and clock repair was a dying trade until a few years ago when there began to be increased interest in clocks by people who appreciated them,'' Bartels said. ``Now, the people I know in the business always seem to be months behind in their work, there's such a demand for it.''

Wodarz tries to figure out most repair problems on his own, dipping into volumes on antique clocks to figure out what's wrong with an unfamiliar mechanism or to identify an old timepiece. But more often, repairs entail correcting the maladies most commonly suffered by old clocks: cleaning off rust and dust and dirt, unwinding mechanisms wound too tight, straightening or replacing bent gears, weights or pendulums, repairing bent hands, replacing incompatible parts with ones better suited to a particular old timepiece.

``The important thing,'' he said with a grin, ``is that if you take something apart, with all the nuts and bolts, you've got to remember how to put it back together - without having any leftover parts.''

Preserving the old

Although he never thought of himself as a clock collector, both Wodarz and his wife were always antique buffs, shipping home furniture, jewelry and other items - including several clocks - from vacations to England, Germany and France. (The overflow of antiques at home provided the impetus for her shop.)

And since he's begun studying clocks, Wodarz has discovered a special fondness for the old timepieces that he doesn't feel for watches, even old pocket watches.

``Why would somebody get a watch fixed - unless it's an heirloom - when you can buy a new quartz watch for $15?'' he wondered. ``But clocks are a home piece, a piece of furniture.''

One of his favorites is a turn-of-the-century Gustav Becker clock, priced at nearly $1,500, that's almost a twin of one he has at home. The face is porcelain, the hands, weights and pendulum brass, the case intricately carved, carefully matched wood.

``This is a working piece of furniture,'' Wodarz said, winding it carefully with a big brass key. ``This bad boy is kinda like the Cadillac of clocks. This clock'll be around another 500 years as long as somebody doesn't turn the hands backward - that gets everything all out of whack - or it doesn't fall off the wall. It'll be here forever.''

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6 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) TICK-TOCK DOC

Repairing antique clocks rings Jerry Wodarz's chimes

(2--Color) ``There's a lot of character in these clocks,'' says Jerry Wodarz, making an adjustment on a turn-of-the-century timepiece.

(3--Color) Wodarz inspects a clock mechanism in her Sherman Way shop.

(4--Color) Scooter, a 3-year-old Lhasa apso, keeps his owner company.

(5--Color) Keys to wind antique timepieces are tools of the trade.

(6--Color) Sometimes all an antique - such as this 25-pound bronze Ansonia - needs is a good cleaning.

Photos by Tina Gerson/Daily News