There’s a woman from the country near Pickardville who handles a chainsaw the way a master whittler wields a pocket knife.

Patty Kramps, a rural artisan/entrepreneur, uses her saw to make caskets – splendidly polished, cowboy-esque log coffins crafted with love, sometimes to the occupant’s own specs.

You might think Kramps, who has sold her coffins to discerning buyers from West Virginia to Denver, works under optimal market conditions.

Jack Dagley, for Business Edge
Coffin builder Patty Kramps of Pickardville provides a personal Western touch for those who'd like to be carried off into the sunset in style.

After all, every soul in town and country needs a place to repose when the Big Sleep descends.

But this is one market that’s sewn up more tightly than a cadaver’s lips.

The so-called funeral industry runs a closed shop. According to industry critics, North American funeral homes make enormous profits from the retail sale of caskets, marking up the wholesale price by several hundred per cent.

Funeral directors find plenty of competition within the industry. So they don’t relish additional competition from outside, such as Patty’s company: Country Log Caskets.

As one critic put it: “The industry doesn’t like it when manufacturers sell straight to the public.”

American organizations such as the National Casket Retailers’ Association (www.casketstores.com), which includes Canadian members, exist solely to oppose what they call “anti-competitive” activity on the part of the industry.

The NCRA even offers $5,000 US for information leading “to the conviction of a member of the funeral industry . . . for violations of anti-trust law.”

Patty Kramps doesn’t belong to the NCRA and, in her words, “doesn’t want to create antagonism” with her friendly neighbourhood funeral directors.

But she believes some do subtly dissuade bereaved families from bringing in their own caskets from “outside.”

Whether they do or not, a few rugged individualists insist on going out in their own inimitable style.

Patty fondly recalls Earl Cuppy, a West Virginian gentleman who learned he had terminal cancer, then set about putting his affairs in order.

Cuppy spotted an ad for Patty’s classic Trail’s End model in Cowboy and Country magazine and placed an order. Earl was a man of high repute in his community. When he died, his Pickardville-made casket rolled to the cemetery aboard a hayrack, towed by one of Cuppy’s own antique tractors.

Another Kramps-crafted model, the majestic Pioneer, sits in a Denver funeral home with a price tag of $6,800 US (she sold it to the director for $3,000).

But most customers are just plain folks, with an affinity for hand-hewn logwork.

While her husband, Kelly Miller, drives his Peterbilt semi, Patty Kramps works in wood on the family acreage a half-hour north of St. Albert.

Her materials are “90 per cent spruce,” slender logs reaped from stands of dead wood on the acreage, and across Northern Alberta.

Her prized tool is the 45-cc STIHL chainsaw she uses to hollow out the V-groove in each log. A jigsaw is used for the special saddle-notch corners, placed on certain models.

She eschews milled dowels and uses only small natural logs.

“Anybody can stack up pencil-straight trees and call themselves a builder,” she says.

She was a little spooked by the chainsaw at first, but says: “You have to own it, know it and get comfortable with it.”

Her caskets and spruce-log funeral urns (retail: $395 Cdn) are often dressed up with pieces of polished diamond willow, one of Patty’s trademarks. Another is the horseshoe-shaped handles she and Kelly affix to the sides.

Models range from the deluxe Pioneer to the humbler Countryside, an economy number made from polished spruce – retail price: $2,295.

Between those extremes, consumers can choose either the Rancher (round or flat top) or the Drifter, one of Kelly’s designs.

For all her success, Patty Kramps is frustrated at the moment. She’s sold 25 caskets in all and wonders how she might move product a bit faster.

“If I had a casket store around the corner from every funeral home, I think I’d get a few more customers,” she sniffs.

One special customer has already picked out his model, though he won’t be needing it for a long time yet.

He’s Patty’s father, August Kramps, hale and hearty at 85.

August routinely visits the acreage to peel Patty’s logs with the draw knife he built for her.

And he has already placed a special order.

A lifelong farmer, Patty’s dad wants her to build him a custom casket of weathered barn wood.

“He doesn’t like logs,” Patty smiles. “Too fancy, he says.”