My favorite... timepiece
A craftsman in California creates hand-made clocks that take up to six months to build.
Carlye Adler, FSB contributor

NEW YORK (FORTUNE Small Business Magazine) - David Walter, a clockmaker who measures time in half-seconds, works in a way that has been out of date for decades. While most clocks are mass-produced overseas, Walter, 56, assembles his by hand in Santa Barbara.

A native of Australia, he began restoring antique watches 40 years ago and later fixed timepieces for the royal family in England.

Today he crafts each screw, spring, and gear in his creations. He designs the casings and dials with pen and paper (not computer) and mails the plans to be fabricated by artisans in Europe and Australia.

"When I first saw the clocks, I was stunned," says Bill Taylor, 58, a magician and co-founder of Illusion Arts, a Van Nuys, Calif., visual-effects company that has worked on 150 feature films, from Bruce Almighty to The Fast and the Furious. Taylor owns three David Walter clocks and has a fourth being built.

The clocks take up to six months to complete and range from $25,000 to $140,000. It's a hefty pricetag, but Walter has already sold more than 140 of them--proving that when it comes to manufacturing, craftsmanship will always be timeless.

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.