American Handmade: Franklin Country

A beautiful handmade clock by David Lindow. This clock features an hourly bell strike.

David Lindow is a clockmaker who was born in 1970 in the farmlands of Illinois. He moved to Pennsylvania in the fall of 1988 to study theology at a small college in Clarks Summit. It was while he was in school that he met master clockmaker Gerhard Hartwigs, who in 1990 asked him to work in the shop during summer vacation.

Mr. Hartwigs restored clocks and manufactured 18th and early 19th century tall clock reproductions on a modest scale. David apprenticed with Gerhard for 5 years before moving to Salt Lake City, UT for about 1-1/2 years, where he worked in a low-volume manual machine shop, making and repairing parts for the salt and copper industries, as well as for others.

After this, he came back under the employ of Mr. Hartwigs in the winter of 1996. Gerhard died in December 1997, after which David took over the shop completely.

In the summer of 1998, the shop was moved from Paupack, PA, to its present location in Lake Ariel, PA (about 20 miles east of Scranton) where David lives with his wife, Becky and their four children. The shop consists of a wide range of machine tools that the computer age seems to have passed by.

There are three employees working full-time at this point. The shop produces tall clocks, banjo clocks, regulators, and now skeleton clocks on a small scale.