David Stine – A St. Louis Hidden Gem

St. Louis has a number of hidden gems ranging from restaurants to parks to theaters to bands and bars. One of my favorite hidden gems is a person – woodworker David Stine.

Stine grew up on a 1,000-acre family dairy farm in Dow, Ill (near Grafton). He milked cows, went to school, butchered pigs, played sports, bailed hay, handcrafted small wooden boxes, and periodically tried to sleep.

His family moved to Pennsylvania after his freshman year at Jerseyville Community High School and he then attended Penn State while working overnight shifts as a diesel mechanic. After college he ran for, and won, a county council seat in Snyder County, Penn.

He then moved to Washington, D.C., to attend law school at George Washington where at nights he not only made hand crafted wood humidors and furniture, but also baked and then delivered cheesecakes on his pink Harley Davidson roadster.

He also fell in love with his wife, Stephanie Abbajay, at first site.

“My roommate came home the first night we were in D.C. and told me she’d my my future wife at a bar,” Stine recalled. “So I went down there and she was right. I spent the next six months stalking her until she agreed to go out with me.”

After finishing law school, during a two-month stretch Stine bought a home, took the bar exam, opened a restaurant, married Stephanie, and started a job at a law – all while building and selling tables, humidors, beds and other fine furniture.

Finally, in 2002, Stine and his then-family of three returned to the St. Louis-area, purchasing a 40-acre farm adjacent to his family’s land on a handshake deal.

“I’m fortunate in that I’ve pretty been able to do whatever I want most of my life,” said Stine, who begins and ends every day by chopping wood. “This (crafting furniture) is what I want to do right now. When I was going to law school, that’s what I wanted to do then. And this is what I really enjoy doing now.”

Stine is without question a fascinating character study and the more you speak with him about his life, family and work, you recognize he’s not just a hulking, rye bourbon- and Stag beer-drinking Neanderthal who chops wood and periodically removes his fake tooth.

“Dave Stine” – as his wife always refers to him both first name and last – is an artisan and craftsman who is committed to the quality of whatever he is doing at the time.

“What I’m doing right now is really born from a love of the wood and the raw, natural materials with which I work,” he said while sitting in his workshop on his 40-acre farm in Dow.  “I take my inspiration from the natural forms of the trees and try to let each slab of wood be what it wants to be rather than me imposing my will upon it. I could take a piece of wood and torture it into any shape I want, but I think it’s more challenging and rewarding to let the wood be what it wants to be.”

Yes, Stine owns in excess of 20 chainsaws and takes fallen trees that are 110-feet-high and more than four-feet-wide and turns them into some of the finest hand-crafted furniture made in the U.S.  But what makes him a St. Louis hidden gem is his character.

 “I try to do things that are of value and honest,” he said. “I build things that have integrity, that I can be proud of, and I know that I can come home every night and not have to bury myself in a bottle of whiskey because I can’t live with myself.”