What if you could control the hands of time? Gaius Hennin can, and sometimes does, but only when it’s necessary.

Hennin shares the responsibility of making sure the folks of Woolwich can set their watches accurately by the town clock that sits on top of the town office. This past spring that wasn’t possible because the clock was either running too fast, too slow or had stopped altogether.

The town office contacted Tyler Warnke, the town’s “keeper of the clock.” He soon discovered the problem wasn’t anything to do with the clock gears but with its hands slowly revolving on its three sides. Over the years the weather and exposure to the sun had left them warped, brittle and in need of replacing. Warnke sought the advice of the nearby Shelter Institute operated by the Hennin family.

Gauis Hennin, who serves as the Shelter Institute president, was glad to help and eagerly took on the project.

“Before Tyler was deployed he suggested we begin the process of making a new set of hands,” Hennin expained. Warnke serves in the U.S. Navy Seabees and is doing a tour of duty in the Republic of Djibouti (formerly French Somalia) in the horn of Africa.

The project began in the summer. Hennin, along with Ken Hatridge, a skilled woodworker and Shelter employee, made a trip to the fire station to have a look at the clock. The only way to reach it is to climb a steel ladder to the tower housing it. The ladder runs up a narrow concrete shaft where fire hoses are hung to dry.

Once inside the tower they found the historic timepiece faithfully ticking away– even if it was showing the wrong time. Reaching through a trap door behind the clock face, Hennin carefully loosened and removed a set of hands on the eastern side.

“That first day we brought them back here to the Shelter Institute and had a closer look at them,” Hennin told the Wiscasset Newspaper.

“Ken very carefully made tracings of the hour and minute hands to make a paper pattern. After he was finished, I returned the hands to the town office and put them back on the clock.” Hennin said. He did this so folks wouldn’t think the historic timepiece was broken. “People in town keep a close eye on it,” he added.

The patterns were used by Hatridge to fashion a set of polycarbonate templates. Hennin said the next step was deciding what kind of wood to use to make the new hands.

“We decided on western red cedar that we were able to get from Viking Lumber in Warren,” Hennin said. “We went with that type of wood because it’s naturally weather-resistant and not prone to warping or rotting.”

Now came the tricky part when Hatridge used a scrawl saw to carefully cut out three sets of new clock hands. Hartridge is one of the Shelter’s full-time timber framers but has a skilled and steady hand at woodworking and wood-turning. When he’s not working or teaching at the Shelter, he operates his own wood-turning business, Tree Trunk Designs in Brunswick.

“Ken did an amazing job in what amounted to some very intricate work,” added Hennin.

The hands were each carefully sanded and given several coats of black enamel. The Shelter Institute donated all the time and materials needed for the project.

After many hours of work a new set of hands were installed for a trial run. Hennin again chose the southeast side of the tower that faces away from Route 1. The hands weren’t on very long before Hennin and Hatridge saw something was wrong.

“The balancing rods used on the old hands weren’t quite right for the new ones,” he explained. These thin white rods, hardly noticeable from the ground, are attached to the clock hands to keep the three faces in sync with one another.

Hennin got in touch with Todd McPhee, a former Woolwich selectman familiar with the clock’s workings. McPhee soon set to work machining six one-ounce stainless steel weights, one for each of the balance rods.

“The weights slip over the rod and because each has a set screw they allow us to balance the hands perfectly,” said Hennin.

This past week Hennin and Hatridge again made the long climb to the clock tower, this time accompanied by a news reporter. They installed the two other sets of newly finished hands. In hardly any time, the clock was again showing the correct hour, right to the minute!

How long will the new hands last? Only time will tell. When the day comes that they need replacing, the template for making a new set is safely stored in the clock tower. For the record, the old set of hands lasted for 17 years.

Woolwich’s town clock was originally located in the tower of the former Nash School in Augusta. In the 1970s the late Carroll E. Morse of Woolwich found the clock in pieces in the school’s basement. Morse spent years restoring the historic timepiece manufactured in 1896 by the George M. Stevens Co. of Boston. Thanks to Morse’s persistence, and the efforts of many others who volunteered their time and skills to the project, the clock was added to the municipal building in the spring of 1998.