“For me, it comes down to something really simple: I love wood grain.”
How did you get started as a maker?
I grew up on a very small farm in Rockport, Indiana on the Ohio River, across from Owensboro, Kentucky. We didn’t have cattle, but we had chickens, dogs, and cats on three acres. I was always industrious and both my parents worked all the time. So I started creating stuff and made my own toys. I worked on my bike. When I was seven, I took all the parts apart, stripped it, painted it, and put it back together. Through high school and college, I became much more structural with building stuff. I was in art school. I studied sculpture at Vincennes University. My art was very linear and very square. While other people were putting nails through dolls, I was building beautiful pieces of furniture that interact with the viewer – a foreshadowing of functional art. After college, I kept building as a hobby.
Since building furniture was a hobby, what did you pursue as a career initially?
For 20 years I worked in the bicycle industry in every aspect: mechanic, sales, managing, and design. I have also done everything you can do with bikes. I’ve been a messenger. I’ve raced mountain bikes, both downhill and cross-country. I was in an IMAX movie several years ago called “Top Speed,” which was a lot of fun. I went a decade and a half without a car. Partially one of the benefits of being a woodworker is that it frees me up to do cycling as my hobby now. It’s such a technical hobby, as opposed to woodworking. Every bicycle is a mechanical solution to a problem. It does for me what woodworking cannot do.
My [then] wife and I moved [to Louisville] due to economic opportunity. I left the bicycle industry right when the economy crashed. So getting a job in a bike shop or anywhere was really difficult. We were living in Bloomington, Indiana, which is great town. But after living there for 10 years or so, I felt this unspoken need to move on. We have a lot of friends here in Louisville and came down here every weekend. There’s great nightlife, great restaurants – it seems like a new one opens every month. And the woodworking industry in our market seems stable. It’s something I definitely would not have in Bloomington. It’s so comfortable living in Louisville.
How did you end up working with Daniel Chaffin Furniture Makers?
I still enjoy bikes very much, but it was time to move on. I had been making furniture freelance for about two years before I ran into [Daniel Chaffin and Matt Frederick] at an art show. They didn’t want somebody who had 20 years of experience building cabinets who was set in his ways. Instead, they wanted someone with the desire, vision, and ambition. I think that’s partially why we work so well together; we’re all at the same spot. We all have our strengths: Dan with the hand tools, Matt with the geometry and design, Carl with the hand tools and finishing. I love the technical aspect and problem solving, as well as adding other materials such as metal and glass. I’ve been here a little over three years, almost four if you count my internship. One of the best things about working here is that there are very few boundaries to our work, our skill. And everyone has the same idea: that we’re creating a work of art, so let’s do that in a setting we enjoy.
What does Daniel Chaffin Furniture Makers specialize in?
The company’s been here for seven years total and it’s only been in the last couple of years that we experienced the growth that we have. We now have a total of five employees that work here. And our business ranges from exotic one-off hardwood pieces of furniture to any number of wood solutions, such as handrails. It’s really a unique range of work that we do here. We primarily work with hardwoods: cherry, walnut, ash, and oak. That gives you every range of wood grain style and finish style.
Is there any particular species of wood that is your favorite?
Each wood has a purpose. Maple’s used in countertops, for butcher blocks. It’s light, has a nice color to it, good grain, and it’s easy to mill. Sometimes just milling the wood is what makes you like it. Redwood is really hard to mill. Walnut is beautiful, but it has a lot of knots and cracks in it and it has sapwood [the younger, outermost wood], which is yellow and unattractive. Just based on wood grain, cherry is my favorite. It’s got three or four distinct beautiful patterns you can go and find in any given tree. But sometimes it’s difficult to work with. You have to spend some time cutting your desired board out of your rough milled piece of wood. Cherry is primarily what we build with. We have got a huge stockpile of it. We use walnut, oak, and maple on a pretty regular basis and I like all of them. They all have their purposes. Our unspoken mantra is to choose the wood that produces the finish that you like. You don’t have to stain it. You wouldn’t make something out of maple and then paint it black.
Besides bicycling, what else occupies your free time as a maker?
In September 2011, I moved into the apartment above the shop. It was completely unfinished, aside from the bathroom. I put the kitchen in, did some painting, built a bedroom loft out of the 4-foot attic space above the bathroom, and made it my own space. In an apartment like this, space is crucial. This is barely 500 square feet. And the bathroom is probably 100 square feet. I think I’ve utilized the space the best that I can. I don’t know many people who have a complete living room, kitchen, dining area, office, and bike shop in 500 square feet.
I built the kitchen island, coffee table, end table, dining table, and workbench. Before I worked here [at Daniel Chaffin], I built on what scraps I had access to. The kitchen island is built entirely on construction grade materials: two-by-fours, [oriented strand board], and tin. None of this was bought. I have no money in this, aside from my time. Now that I work here, I have access to better woods and tools, so I can produce a much higher level of quality, as well as more complicated design such as cantilevered designs and curved woods.
I do enjoy making stuff in my spare time. I want my life to be completely aesthetic, as if it were from a scene from a Japanese movie. My whole life, in a way, has been aesthetically bound. I don’t want an hour-long commute. I don’t want to live in a place that has smog or bad weather. I want to live somewhere that’s pleasant. I want to ride my bike to work. It’s guided me to a lot of the places I’ve lived: Bloomington, Indiana; Moab, Utah; here in Louisville, Kentucky. And they have all had a very positive effect on me.
-Grace Simrall
Bio:
Trained sculptor. 20-year veteran of the bicycle industry in Utah, Kentucky, and Indiana, including but not limited to racing, wrenching, couriering, bike shop design, and management.
Title:
Shop Manager at Daniel Chaffin Furniture Makers
Age:
38
Location:
Smoketown
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