Barnaby the Owl: A Life Shaped by Grain

Long before his name echoed through woodworking guilds from Vermont to Vienna, Barnaby was just a curious, wide-eyed owl living above an old countryside workshop. With feathers the colour of aged purpleheart and wood-rimmed glasses forever slipping down his beak, he spent his nights studying blueprints and his dawns watching the old cabinetmaker below shape wood with a grace that made sawdust look like snow.

One winter, the cabinetmaker didn’t return. The shop sat quiet, tools resting like ghosts. Barnaby, now an inquisitive adolescent, couldn’t help himself. He swooped in one evening, lit the kerosene lantern, and picked up the smallest tool that caught his eye: a bronze apron plane. What followed was chaos—chatter, tear-out, gouged oak—but also a spark. The smell of shavings. The rhythm of trying, failing, trying again.

Barnaby spent years apprenticing himself to forgotten manuals, vintage catalogues, and any wise woodworker willing to chat—often over tea, sometimes over debates about frog angles and cambered irons. He built his first cabinet at age 10 (owl years), with hand-cut dovetails that didn’t quite meet but refused to fall apart. By the time he was 16, he was building heirloom pieces that collectors mistook for human-made.

He refused to chase brands, once famously saying, “A name on the iron doesn’t make it sharp. Show me how it cuts.” His obsession with edge geometry, grain direction, and hand-feel drew attention—not just for his craftsmanship, but his joyful, matter-of-fact teaching style. He could be blunt: “That’s not sharp, that’s just shiny.” But always with a wink.

Barnaby’s workshops filled up fast, his illustrated manuals became collector’s items, and his hand-tuned planes sold at auctions for more than new motorcycles. Yet he never left the quiet forest where it all began. He still teaches under the cedar canopy every full moon, and to this day, insists on flattening soles by candlelight.

Ask him what keeps him going, and he’ll chuckle through his glasses and say:

Because every board has a story. And every good owl learns to listen

Barnaby the owl