FILLMORE, Sask. – Bobby Narkaus’s hands constantly sweep the unfinished pine table as he talks.
The table is one of several projects underway in his southeastern Saskatchewan workshop, an old but sturdy and well-preserved barn near Fillmore. The accompanying six chairs are in various stages of completion and a bed frame stands nearby.
On the floor and against the wall, long thin trunks of lodgepole pine wait their turn to become furniture, but Narkaus won’t know what until he strips the bark with a drawknife. Knots, twists and turns lend themselves to particular pieces and give them character.
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Some people prefer factory-made perfection, but Narkaus isn’t one of them.
“Nature isn’t perfect,” he said.
Fillmore isn’t exactly where one might expect a pine furniture maker to set up shop, considering Pinestix Furniture is hours away from the forests where Narkaus gets his raw material.
However, it’s where his wife, Niki Treble, grew up, prompting the couple to buy a three- quarter section family farm where they raise their two daughters, Vienna and Fallyn, and son, Chance.
Although they thought they might get into the cattle business, they instead rent out the pasture.
The barn where Narkaus creates furniture is on an adjacent property and he considers himself lucky to work in the great soaring space.
Emotion comes through loud and clear when the former third baseman, feedlot pen checker and oilfield worker talks about the hobby that became his life’s work.
“It’s the quietness, the whittling and the figuring,” he said. “It’s a satisfying quiet.”
Narkaus has always appreciated wood and what people can do with it. As a child growing up on a ranch near Pincher Creek, Alta., he watched his father and grandfather use fir rails to make pens and gates.
When Narkaus attended college in Arizona on a baseball scholarship, he started working with pine for something to do.
“The first thing I made was a bed,” he said. “It turned out perfect in my eyes at the time.”
It made him eager to create more with pine’s colour and grain.
“It’s soft and easy to work with,” he said. “It doesn’t split a lot.”
He spent a year on the trade show circuit and sells through his website at www.pinestix.com, but his best advertising has been word of mouth. Custom orders make up 90 percent of his business.
Beds are the most popular, followed by table and chair sets. He has made outdoor furniture, cribs, swings, bars and entertainment centres and said he can probably build anything a customer wants.
Most customers like the natural look of light pine and use it in a country-style décor.
“I’m really confident that with logs you can be as modern as you want,” Narkaus said.
He is also confident that people who buy his pieces understand what handcrafted means and are willing to pay for it. He uses the drawknife to taper each joint and fit the log pieces together.
It can take hours to find a perfect fit.
“Handcrafted is not about going to Ikea and putting something together yourself out of a box,” Narkaus said.
Still, he sells by the piece because there is no way he could sell based on the hours that go into some work.
Although he prefers creating furniture by hand, he may soon give customers the option for pieces that are machined, which is faster and cheaper.
He makes about three trips a year north to crown forestland near Prince Albert, Sask., where he buys a permit and picks his trees.
“I’m more of a forest management guy,” he said with a laugh. “Everything I get is standing dead.”
He prefers dead wood because he can use it right away. Lodgepole pine is typically straight, without a lot of branches on the lower trunk.
Mistakes become firewood, and he bags the shavings and chips and sells them for stall bedding.
Narkaus is now thinking about building small log cabins, barns and sheds. The first project will likely be a home for his family.
“It’s part of our past,” he said of the desire for a log home. “I find a lot of inspiration there.”
