Driftless Hardwoods

09/07/2026

The closer you look, the more impressive it gets.

Ronnie Main of Main Carvings is back at work on the massive cherry mantle—and this is where the carving moves from shaping wood to creating the tiny details that make it look alive.

Using an air-powered rotary tool and bits that look like they came directly from a dentist’s office, Ronnie adds the bark texture, depth, shadows and subtle imperfections your eye may never consciously notice—but would absolutely miss if they weren’t there.

It’s slow, precise work. One tiny cut at a time, repeated thousands of times across a piece that has already taken months to create.

Apparently the difference between carving a tree and performing a root canal is mostly the size of the patient. 🌳

09/06/2026

09/05/2026

At Driftless Hardwoods, we don’t just sell wood.

Sometimes we burn wood… to dry more wood… so we can sell the wood. It’s a beautifully efficient circle of poor summertime decisions. 😂

On a 93° day in the Driftless, Brother Tim was feeding the Garn wood boiler—the heat source for our kiln—while a fresh load of walnut and soft maple dried inside.

The boiler water was hovering around 170°, Brother Tom asked Tim if he was hot, and Tim officially upgraded his condition from sweaty to extremely moist.

In the winter, the Garn also heats the entire pole barn. In the summer, it mostly heats Brother Tim.

🔥 Wood drying wood.
🥵 Tim slowly becoming kiln-dried.
🪵 Just another day at Driftless Hardwoods.

09/04/2026

BROTHER TOM: THEN AND NOW.

Long before Driftless Hardwoods and WiMke, there was ink.

Tom’s roots in printing go all the way back to high school. He spent his summers running printing presses, and his first teaching job was teaching printing. That old 1800s press represented a part of his life he once thought he might return to someday.

Then wood took over.

As Driftless Hardwoods and WiMke grew, the dream of returning to the smell of ink was replaced by the reality of sawdust—lots and lots of sawdust.

The old press is now headed to a local printer who plans to restore it and put it back where it belongs. And Tom’s 13-inch Ridgid planer and 6-inch Delta jointer are making way for the next chapter in his shop.

The owner of Woodcraft personally delivered a roughly 1,100-pound RIKON 16-inch jointer/planer combo.

Then: running printing presses.
Now: building with Wisconsin hardwoods.

Different machines. Different material. Same desire to make something.

Next up, we’ll find out whether the new RIKON can joint and plane a large live-edge shelf in under five minutes.

09/03/2026

The work continues on these cherry mantles—and this is definitely not a quick process.

While carving one of the scene’s main trees, Ronnie discovered a natural crack running through the wood. Instead of letting it ruin the feature, he adapted: adding bark texture to help disguise the defect, cleaning out the crack, and carefully tapping in small wedges of matching cherry.

That’s the difference between simply removing wood and truly understanding it. Cracks, knots, and imperfections are part of working with real hardwood. In the hands of Ronnie Mayne of Mayne Carvings, even a defect can become part of the finished scene.

These mantles have already been months in the making—and Ronnie still has plenty of detail left to uncover.

What can the Juran Brothers cut—and Ronnie carve—for your next one-of-a-kind project?

09/02/2026

Why are the Juran Boys spending two hot days cutting nearly 2,000 board feet of cherry? 🍒

Because Wisconsin school shops have been keeping us busy—and our recent school orders put a serious dent in the cherry inventory.

Brother Tom is sticker-stacking this freshly sawn 4/4 cherry before it heads into the kiln. Cherry, red oak and aspen continue to be three of our most popular species with school customers. They machine well, give students a great introduction to working with hardwoods and offer teachers useful options at different price points.

Brother Tom would personally like every school to switch to walnut…but apparently teachers have budgets to follow. 😂

And after two long days at the mill, he would also like all future sawing to take place in October, preferably at exactly 55 degrees.

Shop teachers: What species do your students use most often?

If your program needs hardwood lumber this school year, send us your list. We’d be happy to put together a quote and see whether the Juran Boys can save your program some money.

Real Wood. Real Stories. Real Life.

education WoodworkingTeacher CherryLumber HardwoodLumber Sawmill KilnDriedLumber

09/01/2026

FATTIES vs. SKINNIES—and no, we’re not talking about Brother Tom and Brother Tim. 😂

At the bottom of this stack are some gorgeous 8/4 cherry and walnut boards. These aren’t live-edge slabs, but they could make beautiful countertops, bar tops, tabletops or other substantial projects.

Then we have what we call the “skinnies.”

These boards range from roughly ¼″ to ¾″ thick. They’re what remained after we finished cutting the cant and didn’t have enough thickness left for another 4/4 board. They’re still good hardwood, so we stacked them and put them through the kiln rather than letting them go to waste.

Now we need your help figuring out their best use—and how to market them.

Should we machine them all to ¼″ or ⅜″ for laser-cut projects? Could schools, scroll-sawyers, model builders, sign makers or other craftspeople use them? Because we don’t have large quantities of any single species, would mixed-species bundles make sense—or would you rather select individual boards?

Sawyers: What do you do with material like this?

Teachers, laser folks and makers: Could you put these skinnies to work?

Tell us in the comments. We’d much rather find them a project than turn good Wisconsin hardwood into firewood.

Real Wood. Real Stories. Real Life.
—Driftless Hardwoods

08/31/2026

WOODSHOP TEACHERS: How many freshmen have you sent wandering around the building looking for the shop’s nonexistent board stretcher? 😂

Unfortunately, Driftless Hardwoods still hasn’t perfected ours. So when a student cuts an expensive piece of walnut 1/16″ too short, there’s still no magical machine that can put the wood back.

That’s the idea behind this week’s completely FREE measurement activity:

📏 Real-world measurement to 1/16″
🤝 A partner activity and friendly class competition
✅ Student-directed and self-checked
🧑‍🏫 Almost no grading for the teacher
💰 A reminder that measurement mistakes in the real world cost more than points

Although we created it for woodworking, it can easily be adapted for construction, welding, machining, engineering, automotive—or almost any Tech Ed or CTE class where accurate measurement matters.

This is Brother Tom’s first pass at the lesson, and I’d genuinely welcome some collaboration. If you use it—or simply see something that could make it better—send me your suggestions. I’ll gladly update it based on feedback from teachers putting it to work in real classrooms.

This is part of the 18 free AI-supported classroom lessons Driftless Hardwoods is developing for teachers. No purchase. No signup. No catch. Brother Tom simply can’t stay out of the damn classroom.

The student activity and teacher guide are linked in the comments.

If your program needs Wisconsin hardwood lumber, a current price list, or help planning an order, call or text Brother Tom at 414-861-9175. We’d love to help your students build something real.

Real Wood. Real Lessons. Real Life.

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08/30/2026

Some people might think Wisconsin’s Tension Zone is whatever area Brother Tim and Brother Tom happen to be working in together.

After looking through these pictures, that’s a perfectly reasonable theory.

But Wisconsin really does have an ecological boundary known as the Tension Zone—and it helps answer a question we get all the time:

“Why don’t you guys cut much pine?”

North of the Tension Zone, Wisconsin transitions toward the northern forest, where pine, spruce, fir and tamarack become much more common.

Our mill is in Soldiers Grove, well south of that line and inside the Driftless Area.

This is southern hardwood country. The surrounding landscape is dominated by oak-hickory and maple-basswood forests, along with walnut, cherry, ash, elm and other hardwoods.

More importantly, every log we mill is locally sourced.

We don’t bring in truckloads of pine—or any other species—from another region merely to keep it in inventory. We mill trees from the surrounding communities, farms and woodlands.

We mill what grows here.

Does a locally grown pine log occasionally arrive at the mill? Sure.

But oak, walnut, cherry, maple and hickory are what this region naturally gives us—and those are the species you’re most likely to find at Driftless Hardwoods.

The land decided what would grow here long before Driftless Hardwoods existed. We just get to uncover what’s inside.

And somehow, Brother Tim and Brother Tom continue to survive working together.

Real Wood. Real Stories. Real Life.

FromLogToLumber WisconsinWood