At 16, he was already working for a forwarding company and has since held numerous jobs, including administrator of an 80-room hotel in Baguio. He tells me that after a few years, he got fed up with that line of work as it didn’t allow him to have his own time. He decided to leave it all behind. It wasn’t too long before he finally displayed his artistic capabilities and it came as a big surprise to his family. All of them are artists but for the longest time they really thought that art didn’t course through his veins. Reuben prefers not to be called an artist though, but his creations are remarkable to behold.
The Viking figures he is currently working on stand two feet tall, their bodies carved out of acacia or narra, and clad in intricate armor  virtual replicas that he makes from scratch using leather, wood and brass. The bodies are prepared by a woodcarver who lives up the road from him, and once the bare figures (with nary a hair on their heads) are ready, Reuben dresses them up.
"I’m their barber, shoemaker, tailor, and armorer," he says. A closer look reveals how painstakingly detailed their armor, weapons and accessories are. Each article donned by the Vikings is historically accurate, right down to the design of the helmet, shape of the sword and axe, and pattern in the chain mail.
For the first suit of armor he made, it took four days to figure out the sequencing of the chains, and one month to put it all together. It may seem a long time, but then he handcrafted each of the hundreds of rings required for a single suit. Today, it only takes a month to make a totally finished product with complete garb, and each figure is one-of-a-kind.
Why Vikings? Reuben loves history and is fascinated by Anglo-Saxon and Nordic antiquity, so it was only logical that he began his craft with those time periods in mind. When he says, "I’m a history buff!" his enthusiasm for what he does really shines through. He uses old history books he inherited from his grandfather among other books that he has collected as references for his figures  proof that he is also meticulous when it comes to research. Reuben has already made several Vikings since he started last year, all of which were commissioned by private collectors.
While growing up, he and his sisters lived in isolation and were tutored at home. They only had each other to play with so during their free time they would be in their dad’s workshop, making toys out of scrap wood and metal bits. His siblings have a number of charming childhood stories about their older brother. They remember that Reuben’s first breakthrough toy was the "Titanic" that actually floated. Shortly after, he made a small plane that had a wingspan of six feet. It was big enough, Reuben believed, that it could fly with him in it.
With his sisters’ help, he hauled the plane to the edge of their roof (overlooking a valley) which was to be his take-off point. The plan was for him to glide over the valley and land on the other side of the mountain. But since his siblings weren’t sure the plane would actually glide, they placed mattresses and pillows underneath their brother. Sure enough, when Reuben pushed himself off the roof, he crashed from a height of 10 feet and landed on the cushions and not in the clearing on the side of the mountain. The plane was in pieces and needless to say, he had no thoughts of ever attempting to fly it again.
When he isn’t busy working on the Vikings, he plays the piano, reads history books, and makes scaled-down weapons for his warriors. He also makes intricate jewelry for his sisters and true-to-history-lover form, he collects paraphernalia from WWI and II. His stash includes helmets, shell casing and a working 1922 Japanese machine gun. Reuben also speaks a spot of German and Mandarin. His sisters are quick to tell me that he is the smartest one in the family.
For his next project, he plans to make Filipino figures that are of pre-Spanish origin. These he will base on sketches made by a German explorer who arrived in the archipelago before the Spanish inquisition which he saw in a rare book owned by a friend. The book depicts our warrior ancestors in Chinese-influenced armor of their own, made of carabao horn interlinked by rings, and bolos fashioned in the Indonesian style. With the proper materials, there is no doubt he can easily duplicate these sketches in three-dimensional miniatures. Many have shown interest in what he does and hopefully when he has a large enough collection, he intends to offer his work to museums.
His fascination has turned into fabrication. He says that as long as the orders keep coming, he will keep on making these two-foot-tall historical figurines. Who knows, in the future he may even fulfill his dream of building a full-size castle of the Dark Ages in his mountainous backyard. "A reproduction ruin," he tells me.
Not at all unlikely, I think.