Passing Time: A Clock Made from Beer Bottles

Rick Stanley makes very special clocks. He makes clocks out of beer bottles (over 300 Yuengling beer bottles to be exact), clocks with bicycle bells, clocks featuring coins, dominoes, and fluids. He makes novelty clocks of great complexity alongside his son Vince Stanley in Millville, PA at Stanley Clockworks which they founded in 2006.

Rick didn’t start out with clocks. A graduate from the University of California, Rick received a degree in Mechanical Engineering. With that degree, he’s supported his family for the past 20 years as a technician in the power generating industry. Always the inventor, Rick has also designed and built machines that dispense medications, farm equipment which reduces time spent cultivating crops, and an operable electric motorcycle.

As an outlet for his creativity, Rick often resorted to his clocks, manifesting a “what if” attitude. What if the clock was stretched out laterally rather than circular? What if the mechanisms were displayed so that everyone could actually see the inner workings of the clock? What if we built a clock around a particular theme?

The Beer Bottle Clock is an impressive 20-foot-long piece and uses 300 inter-meshing beer bottles to keep time. There are three separate dials for hours, minutes, and seconds making this piece another of Stanley Clockworks unmistakably original creations. The largest gear is five foot in diameter proving it the largest and only clock to incorporate bottles in its movement. Using computer aided drafting and centuries old clockmaking methods it took five months to make this a possibility. The clock sports only Yuengling Lager bottles. The brewery is the oldest in America and has a strong local following making the bottles simple to obtain. The beer bottles came from three sources: the local recycling center, the local bar, and whatever the clockmaker could contribute.
–Jennifer Blakeslee