Outside of Mountain View signs direct cars down Owen Road, the unofficial name of a passage so narrow it feels as though the forest is closing in on you. Just when you are certain the road couldn’t go any further, the trees open up to a small clearing. This is where craftsman Owen Rein has made his home and work, creating handmade dining and rocking chairs, bowls and baskets from timber he harvests from the property.
Having loved woodworking from an early age, Rein built houses and made furniture for other people for most of his life, but frequently saw small business owners struggle to keep up in tough economies. He realized that if he applied the same ideas he had about living simply off the land in the woods to making his own chairs, he could remain in control of his own economics. Plus, since he lives on land he owns with plenty of trees, the resources were already there.
Rein breaks down his craft into three important steps. “These tools I’m using are really old hand tools, so the first step is to find a tree that’s just the right size, shape, and in the right place, too. That’s how I can work without machines.” Once Rein finds the perfect tree for a project, he takes the main section of the trunk and, rather than sawing it into boards, he splits it into wedges. “That’s fundamentally where you part company from conventional woodworking, because with conventional woodworking, the saw determines the line. But when you split wood, you’re following the grain so the line is actually in the tree. From then on, it’s a completely different thing.”
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