Father-and-son team creates furniture and accessories from barrels, found materials

Akron Beacon Journal (MCT) - Chris Deffenbaugh can't bear to see reusable materials go to waste.

So when a friend asked him to help move an old, fallen-apart barrel from his basement to the curb, Deffenbaugh saw not trash, but possibility. He reconstructed the barrel and turned it into a wine rack.

Then he turned that idea into the basis of a business.

Deffenbaugh runs The Oak Barrel Co. near Wooster, Ohio, which turns found items into furniture and accessories. Mostly his materials are used white-oak barrels from the winemaking and distilling industries, but he finds creative uses for all sorts of materials _ rusted saw blades, piano harps, an industrial chain, a gear from a crane turret.

"Really, it's alchemy," he said. "You find crap and turn it into gold."

The business is a two-person operation. Deffenbaugh is the owner and creative force. His father, Richard, a retired architect, provides technical expertise in such areas as production and the structural soundness of the pieces.

For Deffenbaugh, that father-son collaboration is a dream come true. As a child, he wanted to be a carpenter and build houses with his dad, he said. That never happened, but now they're building furniture together.

"I'm really happy to do this. It's joyful," he said.

BENCH SELLS WELL

The heart of the business is rustic furniture crafted from barrel staves, the curved and beveled wood slats that make up the vessel. In a barrel, the staves are held in place by metal rings and by the pressure they exert against one another once they've swelled from moisture.

Deffenbaugh's best seller is a bench with a gently concave seat. ("We call it booty-friendly," he said.) His 65 pieces also include a small table with a barrel head for a top, a clever deck chair that pulls apart into two flat sections, an Asian-inspired coffee table that doubles as seating and a beverage cooler that's essentially a barrel with a hinged opening and a waterproof lining.

He also does custom designs. In his shop; an outdoor bar with a powder-coated steel counter resting atop barrels awaited shipment to a company in Virginia.

The barrels he uses once held wine or spirits as they aged. When he started the business four years ago, he bought the barrels for $5 each. But as demand for barrel furniture has grown, the price has risen to $95, he said _ an increase he doesn't bemoan, because it means there's a market for what he makes.

He keeps the staves in their rough condition, albeit with a finish coat for protection. Many of them show the burned surface on one side that comes from "toasting" the barrel, the process of charring the inside to impart flavor to some spirits and wines.

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Barrel heads used in his furniture often bear the stenciled mark of the wine or whiskey maker.

MATERIAL INSPIRES

Some of the staves he uses are rejects, passed over because the properties of the wood would permit liquid to leach through. He also uses lumber from fallen trees and scrap wood from other industries as well as the intriguing castoffs he finds in junkyards and on curbs.

"At $95 a barrel," he said with a smile, "I had to diversify."

Often his inspiration comes from the material. A round blade from a sawmill, for example, struck him as the ideal canvas for a cut-out rendition of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. An industrial chain he found in a junkyard is in the process of being formed into the edge of a table that will be topped with glass.

Deffenbaugh said he's long been concerned about what humans are putting into the environment, the atmosphere and landfills. So much of what is discarded has another use, he said.

It's his mission to figure that out.

"It's been such a challenge," he said. "And I've been so blessed to do what I love."

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DETAILS

The Oak Barrel Co. sells its pieces via its Web site, www.theoakbarrecompany.com. In addition, some pieces are available at Gallery in the Vault and Montavino Wine Market, both in Wooster, as well as through the Web sites www.wholesale-craft.com, www.calvines.com and www.wallstreetcreations.com. The company's phone number is 330-466-0636.

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© 2008, Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).