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And he’s doing work most folks can’t find elsewhere.
Gaines is one of a fading breed.
He calls his business custom woodworking. But the rarity of it is that he cuts his own wood from standing trees. He admits it would be a lot easier to buy the wood, but, he says, “There’s just something about it. I don’t know, it’s just not the same” to buy.
Gaines works in a shed near the house he shares with his wife of some 47 years, Kathryn, “but everybody knows her as Kitty,” the name she signs to her paintings, says her husband.
As acorns plop onto the tin roof above the shed, Gaines and his younger son, David, work beneath it, under the light cast by bare bulbs, the air cooled in the summer by a fan near an open window, warmed in the winter by a barrel wood stove.
He used to sell his work at shows, but that presented an extensive transportation problem and never offered guaranteed sales, although Gaines says he usually returned with fewer pieces than he took to the shows.
Now, his biggest advertising tool is his reputation spread by former customers or by word of mouth locally. His work includes building furniture, doing odd custom jobs and repairing furniture, although he admits “the less I see of that the better.”
Creating, executing an idea, is where the challenge to his abilities lies. It is the source of great pride. His photo scrapbook contains snapshots of his work.
But while today he can work under his own schedule in the wood shed near Amissville, life
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