Made In Barnstable: Daniel Santos Fine Furniture

What started as a hobby for Daniel Santos has turned into a way for him to express his creative side and fulfill his passion of working with his hands by starting a custom furniture making business.

Santos moved to Cape Cod in 1990 to head the initial efforts to clean up the contamination at Otis Air Force Base. A trained civil engineer, he went on to help found environmental consulting firm Horsley Witten Group located in Sandwich.

But in 1995, he built his 20 foot by 30 foot shop and he decided to take on furniture making full-time. He worked hard in the beginning to develop a customer base, and since then he hasn’t had a day without work.

Santos remembers always “tinkering around as a teenager”--the first thing he built was a picnic table. Since then, he has been collecting tools, antiques, studying woodcarving with European masters, learning how to make Windsor chairs at The Windsor Institute and gaining hands on experience at the North Benett Street School in Boston.

His creations, all of which are commissioned, include a combination of period design and original pieces, as well as antiques conservation and restoration, and figurehead recarving. To create these designs he uses sustainably-forested woods, including cherry, maple, ash, walnut, oak, pine and mahogany.

Santos' typical customers are local antiques dealers, museums, historical societies and private individuals who appreciate furniture. “There are quite a few people who are passionate about [furniture] so I get some really neat projects,” he said.

Even when Santos faces something he has never seen before, or when he challenged he is confident he will figure it out, either by consulting one of his over 1200 books on antiques and furniture, or by trial and error.

Recent projects have included rebuilding wooden doors for a 1906 Cadillac, and replicating antique chairs for the Peabody Essex Museum. He has also just completed a recreation of a Windsor chair for the Winterthur Museum, a premier museum of American decorative arts, where Santos will give a lecture on the history of the chair and how to construct it. Locally, he has completed work for the Kennedy family, the Nantucket Whaling Museum, the Sturgis Library and the Barnstable Historical Society.

Although Santos says “there is not a typical work day,” he always starts his day at the Underground Bakery in Dennis to get his creative juices flowing. He can then be found running errands, finding the right wood for his current projects, or buying finishes and metal parts.

When he gets back to his shop, he typically has several projects going on. If he is beginning a piece, he draws the plans to scale, and crafts each piece based on the exact drawing. And sometimes, Santos will sneak away to the loft in his workshop, where he is working on “something he has always wanted to do”--a replica 1914 Daysailer sailboat.

Santos does most of his work without the use of power tools, hand carving the details on the furniture, and using molding planes from the 19th century to create the molding for the edges. Then he steams and shapes the wood himself, and applies finishes by hand. “To me, the fun is in using your hands, not a bunch of machines," he said. "There is a tactile quality that handmade furniture has that is very satisfying.”