The Afterwood Way
We handcraft with honor, integrity, and care by reclaiming what’s discarded and rejected in a disposable world consumed by planned obsolescence. We defy a world where mass production and throwaway culture dictate value. Here, art is made by human hands not machines; craftsmanship you can feel. We restore the beauty and purpose of found treasure and value quality over rapid consumption.
The Man Behind the Wood
Michael Owens is an artist who can see the value and beauty in what gets tossed to the side because it’s old, broken, or replaced by something shiny and new. He wields his tools like an extension of himself and treasures the special ones; the ones his grandfather used and the jointer he restored that lived through a world war. He believes in craftmanship, honor, integrity, and knowing where things came from; and wants to help bring back a time when things were made by hand and with quality and built to last. “You can feel it when something is carved by hand.”
Michael grew up in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of California in Tuolumne County surrounded by forests where wood is plentiful, is and there’s no such thing as scrap. Mistakes kept you warm with the fire, and success made you proud.
His journey to woodworking didn’t begin in a shop class. It began with a rusty K-Bar and a gifted set of Dremel burrs. Using an abrasive die grinder was like using Microsoft paint to erase the rust. From abrasives, he explored cut-off wheels, chop saws, and cutting blades which eventually led him to wood. He figured out how to make things the wrong way which led to the right way and a deeper appreciation and understanding of tools. To him, every tool in the shop is, at its core, a chisel, one of the most basic and oldest tools known to man. It is the simplest, most intricate, easy to use and impossible to master. A saw with 40 tiny teeth is just 40 tiny chisels. He prefers simple tools and doing as much as possible by hand vs paying for the convenience of fancier unnecessary tools.
After years in demolition, witnessing the massive amounts of waste and rising costs due to disposable instead of taking the time to fix or restore things –Afterwood Refabrications was born. It was born from a desire to move away from mass production, away from machines “doing art” for you, and industries that exist just to take your money without delivering a quality product that will eventually wind up in a landfill and go back to quality, skilled, craftsmanship built to last.
