In a digital, computerized age, where clockmaking and repair is fast becoming a lost art, Asbury Wolfe, a retired minister and military man from Orangeburg, is doing his best to keep the time-honored craft alive and ticking.

The clock collector extraordinaire not only restores and repairs rare vintage time pieces, but, working from his expanded backyard hobby shop, has made five large grandfather clocks himself.

"They're all grandfather clocks," he said. "I wanted to build something a little different as a hobby."

The first grandfather clock he built for his daughter in Cummings, Ga., was featured in Country Magazine. Another clock -- the biggest yet -- is 109 inches tall and custom designed for his son's Lake Murray high-ceilinged home. A Eutawville man bought one large clock.

Then, Wolfe created a grandfather clock for his wife of seven years, Dene Sanford Wolfe, that's on display in the family den.

Her clock, Mrs. Wolfe said, "cuts off the chimes at 10 p.m. and comes back on at 7 a.m."

The fifth masterpiece, an unusual nine-tube clock he just finished, will probably be sold in the near future.

"Nine-tube is very rare. I've only seen three before this one -- I had one, the president of the bank (in Alabama) had one and one was in North Carolina," he said. "Most have five tubes, and some seven, but never nine."

The clock, with copper instead of the more common bronze tubing, also features a triple chime, where by the flip of a switch, there's a choice of Westminster, Whittington or St. Michael's sounds.

The entire effort took "400 hours!" Wolfe said. "I designed and built it from scratch."

The Neeses native's interest in clock collecting began when he was stationed in post-war Germany during the late-1940s Berlin airlift.

"I bought some antique clocks and cuckoo clocks, and I bought some here and there around the United States," said Wolfe, who spent most of his military career abroad. Along the way, he graduated from Troy State University in Alabama and received a divinity degree from Emory University in Atlanta.

With a rare clock collection that had grown to more than 150 pieces, Wolfe says that in 1984 he decided he needed to learn more about the ins and outs of the craftsmanship he so appreciated. And one of only two clock-school courses in the United States was being offered at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College.

For that one OCtech clock course, taught by the late Leon Martin, Wolfe says he traveled 738 miles round-trip every week for an entire quarter. An advanced course was scheduled, but Martin died and, apparently, so did local interest in clock repair, Wolfe says.

"That was the only clock class they ever had," Wolfe said. "It's just about a lost art. No one works on clocks anymore. ... There was a Mr. Richardson who died, and Earl Chavis ... who had a clock shop here."

"And we really need one in Orangeburg," Dene Wolfe said. "(My husband is) the only person we know of in the community who does this work. ... There is a great need. I can tell by the calls we get."

While he repairs a few clocks as a hobby, Asbury Wolfe says he refers most of those callers to Wolfgang Jaehne, a semi-retired German clock craftsman in Columbia who "works three hours a day, Tuesday through Saturday."

"I'm the medical doctor, and he's the cardiologist," Wolfe said. "I don't do detail work."

Wolfe's original and more valuable clock collection, the 150 or so pieces he exhibited in the large historical family home in Union Springs, Ala., was sold when he and his late first wife returned to South Carolina in 1991 and moved to a much smaller house in Lexington.

Remarried to a Neeses classmate, Wolfe and his wife share their Dunes Street home with a new, increasing number of collected clocks -- 43 at last count -- all purchased, Mrs. Wolfe says, "since we got married."

"Everywhere we go, he looks for clocks," said Dene Wolfe, admitting that she was "not at all" interested in her husband's avocation before their marriage. "I had one antique clock of my great-grandmother's. Mr. Richardson kept it running until he died. Asbury overhauled it, and I gave it to my son."

Dene Wolfe says she enjoys the more whimsical clocks her husband surprises her with by hanging them without notice on their den walls, such as the plate-style made from their wedding photograph and a bug-eyed black-and-white cat with a swinging tail.

According to Mr. Wolfe, the most valuable clock in his possession is a Nicholas Muller No. 57 -- a "cupid grape" clock that's the only one known to exist. Otherwise, he says, the clocks he has at home are mostly mediocre models, nothing that really compares with his old Alabama collection.

Not content with collecting and repairing clocks, Wolfe started building his own after his return to South Carolina.

But, citing the growing scarcity of the mahogany he prefers -- wood that he has regularly brought home from his 19-year church mission to Honduras, Wolfe says that the recently completed fifth clock will probably be his last one.

"I don't think I'll build any more grandfather clocks. It's hard to find the mahogany," he said. "I'll make some shelf clocks."

That's good news for Mrs. Wolfe.

"If he didn't have that hobby, I don't know what he'd do," she said.

"He sets clocks on Saturday morning. He winds the grandfather clocks," she said, describing her husband's 30-minute routine. "And, when the time changes -- that's when the trouble comes."

T&D Government Writer Tucker Lyon can be reached by e-mail at tlyon@timesanddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5545. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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