Horologist Michael Cryns makes time for clocks

Any children with time on their hands should take a look inside Michael Cryns' house. It's a place of wonderment, the walls adorned with hundreds of clocks, many ticking, many not.

Children of the digital age may never have seen the like.

There's a German clock from the 1880s, one that shows days of the week rather than the time, and novelties that include a guitar clock and a fruit clock. Clocks in all shapes and sizes, many in pieces awaiting Mr Cryns' attention.

Why would anyone need a clock that shows the days of the week?

"That belongs to someone who is alone at sea a lot and loses track of the days," Mr Cryns explains.

Every room of this character-filled house carries timepieces on the walls. It's a clock library, a home whose walls would fit in well at Motat.

In the lounge there are about 100, but only 15 are ticking when we visit. The hallway is covered with clocks of all shapes and sizes, some quite beautiful, others whose time has passed.

In a little workshop off the tight hallway Mr Cryns sits with his clockmaker's magnifying glass attached to his greying head, tiny tools in hand and bright light at the ready. He's a small man with a big obsession - meticulously fixing clocks sent to him as if they were his own personal treasures.

It's a hobby that's become a job. Until 20 years ago Mr Cryns worked as a full-time mechanical engineer in big power stations, including Wairakei, Roxburgh and Meremere.

He still does some contracting for such projects, and shows us a 60-page document sent to him for assessment. It's full of plans for an oil and gas pipeline. He gave up working full-time in the profession because he'd had enough. "It was just too stressful."

But he still seems proud of those skills and knowledge and says: "People like me are hard to find."

It took time to establish his clock-fixing business but now he does at least two big jobs and many smaller ones a week, largely through word of mouth. His biggest regular job is ensuring the Town Hall clock keeps ticking.

It is the clock's centenary this week. Mr Cryns has made sure it's kept good time since 1988 and supervised its full restoration in 1994.

He's also the horologist in charge of the Auckland Art Gallery's clock, "the prestige clock" in Auckland, made in Wellington and installed in Auckland in 1894.

He has copies of the original paperwork for the Town Hall clock that show it was bought for £300 by Arthur Myers, mayor of Auckland from 1905 to 1909, and had a bell weighing 1180lbs, or 535kg.

The clock was partially converted to electricity in the 1950s, something Mr Cryns says is unfortunate. He very much prefers purely mechanical things. There are plenty of mechanical bits and pieces in in his workshop, all vital cogs in a horologist's wheel.

"Sadly, the Town Hall clock couldn't be returned to fully mechanical. There are too many parts missing. That's why whenever I take a clock apart these days I always put the parts aside in case they are needed again."

Mr Cryns has been interested in clocks since he was a toddler and says that when he was only 3 his mother accused him of taking apart and ruining one of her clocks. When he was about 8 a jeweller friend showed him a pile of discarded clocks down a bank in Oratia. He climbed down and grabbed a few and tried to get them working again. Friends of his parents fixed clocks for a living, so he got a few tips from them and was on his way.

As you might expect, he doesn't fix too many digital clocks because "they're a pain". But he concedes they have their purpose, "mainly in banks".

"With face clocks you can glance at the time and get a sense of it. With digital clocks you have to actually be able to see the numbers."

The phone rings - it's a clock-chime ring. He smiles and tells us if we are around on the hour we'll hear more chimes. Is he so meticulous that he wants all the hourly chimes to go off at exactly the same time?

"Oh no!" he says. "Nothing in life is perfect. I like to hear all their different chimes, so they are set to go at slightly different times."

When they do, he sits there looking very pleased.

He doesn't have ticking or chiming clocks in his bedroom, but admits he likes to hear their calming, regular sound.

He's 57 and as long as his eyesight and hands hold out he can imagine sitting in his workshop, making sure clocks keep good time, until he's 85. At the weekends he goes out walking or cycling, and on bush walks with friend Val. They can tell how the weather will be by a glance at the 1910 barograph by the front door. It measures barometric pressure and marks it on a graph with a stylus nib using old-fashioned ink.

Mr Cryns is not averse to technology despite his love of old-fashioned mechanical things. He's the proud owner of a book called "A Treatise on Clocks", which details the workings of many old clocks he's now fixing.

He also keeps an eye out for any clock bargains on Trade Me, fixing and selling them "although old clocks aren't worth much anymore".

That's the reason he keeps a few of them, too, he says.

Like many Mr Fix-its, he has a number of projects on the go. Each day after breakfast he adjusts his working clocks to ensure they are keeping good time, and checks on those being repaired. He works for four to six hours a day.

"I haven't got time to waste. And it isn't just a case of fixing the clocks and handing them back. It's quite a process," he says.

"You fix them and then you have to monitor them for a week or so, to make sure they are still going and are also keeping perfect time."

Of the hundreds of clocks in his house, he identifies his favourite swiftly: a German Black Forest clock made by Winterhalder and Hoffmeier that he's had since he was 17.

"It's very well made and has a very nice chime," he says.

For Mr Cryns, that's enough to get a very big tick.