ALEDO — His name was Steve, and he was dying of a rare form of cancer, Joe Hornor, owner of Boot Hill Coffins, said, but the Dallas executive wanted to set the specs for his own eternal home.

“He said he was a control freak,” Hornor said, “We worked with him for several months, and he had the best attitude of anyone I’ve ever met. His coffin was different from the ones we usually do, red oak with a finish and a carving on the top.

“When he and his brother picked it up, a few months before he died, he said he had experienced the best year of his life, traveling to see family and friends. He did everything he wanted to do.”

Crafting coffins — typically plain, inexpensive pine boxes — is actually a sideline for the affable Hornor, who owns a furniture restoration business called Little Jack Horner’s in Aledo with his wife, Vivian.

Unlike the steel caskets now commonly imported from China and Mexico, he said, the classic hexagons he has designed are completely biodegradable. They are sold directly to the consumer, who learns of the business by word of mouth or the Internet.

“It’s Dracula-style, it narrows at the feet and head,” Hornor pointed out. “We donated a coffin to a permanent Dracula exhibit at the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston.”

No animal hide glues are used, satisfying a requirement for Orthodox Jews, Hornor said, and no metal fasteners. Instead, wooden dowels pin the sturdy unlined box together and are tapped down to seal the lid as well.

Handles are optional, but are made of hemp if used.

From the raw lumber — harvested in an environmentally responsible manner — Hornor said, a coffin can be constructed in about 10 to 12 hours.

But it wasn’t that easy when the business first got under way, about seven years ago.   

“It was a pretty good challenge to design it,” he admitted, “with the different angles and dimensions that would allow it to fit in a conventional burial vault.”  

The no-frill coffins have appealed to ranchers, Hornor said, who want to be buried on their own land.

They have been shipped mainly to western areas, like Wyoming, Oklahoma and West Texas, he said, with most of the sales to those whose loved ones requested a plain box.  

“The interior dimension is six-feet, six inches,” Hornor said, “big enough for boots and a hat.”

All-natural coffins are also marketed to those committed to the “green” movement, he said, who prefer letting nature take its course to being chemically stabilized in an airtight container surrounded by a concrete liner.

“I think the biggest demand will be for green burial,” Hornor said, “but it hasn’t hit this part of the country. There is one in Huntsville.”

Corpses cannot be dressed in anything that won’t decompose in a green burial, Hornor said, no polyester pants or nylon socks, for example.

Corpses are not embalmed and must be buried quickly, according to state law, Hornor said. The process is much less expensive if disintegration — not preservation — is the aim.

“There is a division between proponents of green burial and the conventional funeral industry,” Horner said. “One wants things to take a natural course, the other sells fancy caskets, cemetery plots and burial vaults.”

Plots are not sold in green cemeteries, Hornor explained. Customers pay a fee to bury in a certain spot, sometimes identified by GPS coordinates.

“They don’t own the land,” Horner said, “There is no headstone, just a small, portable engraved rock. There is no burial vault — those are just there [in standard cemeteries] to keep the graves from caving in.”

“Everything goes back to nature. That spot may be used again in the future.”

Horner’s coffins sell for $700, he said. A Costco website features coffins ranging from $950 to $3,000. A representative from Greenwood-Mount Olivet Funeral Homes, in Fort Worth, said their coffins were priced from $900 to $10,000.

“There’s a lot of competition,” Hornor said, “and a wide range of quality.”

Hornor acknowledged the irony of handcrafting something that is designed to disappear.

“We’re giving you a high quality product that is simple, natural and well-built,” he said, “but we want it to disintegrate.”