Hay River (Aug 11/03) - Like many retirees, Frank Nogarin has a workshop in his home. However, Nogarin's workshop is different. It's filled with the sound of ticking. That's because the 66-year-old specializes in making miniature clocks.

Frank Nogarin holds the beginnings of a miniature grandfather clock. Finished clocks hang on the wall of his Hay River workshop. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Nogarin has been creating the unique clocks for 25 years. It all began when he was working at Pine Point mine.

"It started as a joke," he says. He made a retirement gift for a boss out of a toilet flange. Despite being a joke, the clock looked pretty good.

Nogarin's clockmaking hobby grew when he later worked at a carpentry shop in Hay River.

In the last 15 years, he has made about 200 clocks, all of them in solid wood like walnut, teak, rosewood and mountain ash.

Right now, he says he probably has about 80 clocks in his house.

Nogarin has never sold a clock.

They are given away as gifts to friends or relatives in far-flung places such as Greece, Argentina, Spain and his native Italy.

Every clock is different and is complicated to make in its own way, he says. "That's the challenge. That's what I like."

Nogarin says he has to work out the proportions to make each one unique. "Otherwise, it becomes a production line."

Since retiring two years ago, Nogarin says his hobby gives him something to do in the winter.

"Otherwise, I would go bananas."

The hobby offers him a challenge and the satisfaction of creating something from scratch.

Nogarin has also made some full-size grandfather clocks. The biggest was over eight feet high.

The working parts of the clock are purchased from a company in Toronto, but "all the woodwork is my own."

Nogarin, who is originally from Venice, says woodworking or clockmaking is not a family tradition, noting carving is the traditional art of his home city in Italy.