TUSCALOOSA | Timing is everything to Kenneth Moore. It's how he makes his living in a job in which he works with baffles and bushings to get the pings and bongs just right. Moore is a clock repairman.

Nigel Barnes, a fifth-generation horologist, acknowledges that it is a “tall order” to learn to fix a clock in two days. But some manage it, he said. Nigel Barnes working with Seán Martin, who had ...