When Gary Sellick bought a surplus Navy chronometer a couple of years ago, he thought he was just adding one more timepiece to the collection of 50 clocks and watches he's acquired over the past 20 years.
But that surplus chronometer started him into a lucrative sideline that now takes more of his time than his building construction business. And what's the sideline?It's a 7 1/2-inch wooden box - just like the boxes the Navy used to keep the chronometers on all its ships until about ten years ago. They become surplus when the switch was made to quartz digital timepieces. The chronometer box Sellick bought had seen better days, so he decided to fix it.
"After I started, I decided I could make a better one myself," he recalls. Then he made three more in his garage workshop and took them to a collectors' show in Arizona he and his wife Lu Juan attend every year. "That show is really a high class flea market," he explains. "You can find almost anything you went."
Sellick's boxes sold the first day, and he came home with orders for eight more. Since then he's made and sold more than 50 at $750 each and has orders for another dozen. Most of them have come from a small ad in a bimonthly magazine published by the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.
Sellick estimates that about 80 percent of the orders are from former Navy and Marine officers who went the chronometers as sentimental reminders of their days in the service. Until digital quartz timepieces replaced them about 10 years ago the chronometers were standard equipment on every Navy ship. Some, such as battleships, cruisers and aircraft carriers, kept at least three in their chart rooms.
What makes the boxes worth $750? Well, they're made of Honduran mahogany with hand-rubbed lacquer finish and custom-made brass hardware that costs about $100 per box. The most important part of those fittings is a ring to hold the chronometer level and steady when a ship is pitching and rolling in a storm or battle. These fittings are made in a local machine shop that specializes in custom precision work.
Until digital quartz clocks came along, the chronometers in their fitted boxes weren't much different than the ones used by naval vessels around the world over 200 years ago. They had to be accurate within a half second in 24 hours. Most of them were made by artisans in Switzerland, England and Germany. With the approach of World War II, the United States set up its own supply source and had Hamilton Watch company turn out 10,000 on a fast-track schedule.
Besides the chronometer boxes Sellick has made and sold about 50 watch boxes made to hold the kind of watches carried by railroad conductors. They were carried around ships outside the chart room. Made of the same wood, also with custom hardware, these smaller boxes are lined with pool-table felt that costs $27 a yard. Sellick says a cheaper felt costs only eight dollars, but collectors expect the best when they pay $200 for these boxes.
Sellick knows a dealer who bought 300 chronometers and decided to save money by having boxes made in Korea. But the workmanship was inferior and the wood dried out in the different climate, so now he's stuck with 300 boxes.
"But he'll make out all right," says Sellick, "because he bought the chronometers for $300 each and now they're going for $500. The law of supply and demand will boost them to $1,000 in a couple of years."
As far as he knows, Sellick is the only person making the watch and chronometer boxes. He also does some custom jobs such as one he's got in his workshop now. A collector in Florida sent him a large box made of Macasser ebony from Africa to be refinished. Then he wanted a duplicate made of Gabon ebony, also from Africa. The brass fittings and inlaid decorative hardware also had to be duplicated. The whole job is going to cost $4,000.
Sellick gives credit of his woodworking skills to his first boss, who learned the carpentry trade during a long apprenticeship in his native Sweden.
"It was frustrating sometimes to have him reject a piece of work that I thought was all right," he recalls. "But it was a great learning experience for me."
Keeping up with the orders that keep coming make for challenging and enjoyable work but it's taking more and more of his time from the contracting business he's built up over the past 20 years. "I'm lucky to have some good people working with me," Sellick says, "and most of our construction jobs are for old customers. I guess I could do this full time, but I'm not ready to put all my eggs in one basket."