Maybe you've stood in a big-box aisle staring at warped, sticker-graded lumber and thought: this isn't good enough for what I'm building. That's exactly why Old Mill exists.
Where it started
Craig didn't grow up with tools around him. He grew up in a single-parent home, always creative but with no idea how to build things. As he got older, his YouTube algorithm quietly filled up with woodworking. He told his wife: if he ever got the chance to start, he would.
Then in April 2017, it happened. Woodworking YouTuber DIY Pete was celebrating a subscriber milestone and offered a tool scholarship — submit a video to enter. Craig and his four kids went to work: a rough sawhorse built from cobbled-together scraps, a spindle top spun by hand on a kid's thumb, a two-person push/pull saw from a long board, a couple of hammers held together with hot glue. The sawhorse collapsed at the end of the video, the kids laughed, and somehow — they won.
A $250 check bought Craig his first power tools, at age 41. The family started with cornhole boards, made them for over a year, and made enough to fund a Disney trip the following October. On the drive home, the kids asked if they could please stop making cornhole boards. Fair enough.
Next came pens — the family still turns them today. It kept growing from there. Years later, the family bought the local hardwood dealership, and that business is now becoming Old Mill Hardwood Co.: still family-run, still community-rooted, now built to serve makers everywhere with the same standard the shop has always held.
We know the problem, because we've had it too
If you've ever ordered wood online and had it arrive nothing like the photo, you already know why we do things the way we do. It's why every board gets measured, photographed, and checked before it leaves Evansville — not because a policy says so, but because we'd want the same thing if we were the ones waiting on it.
A family shop, built to last past us
Craig runs the shop day to day, working alongside his sons and daughter — Elijah at the lathe and saw full-time, Jacob putting in his hours after school, Ian behind the camera and the keyboard, and Hannah making sure every order actually gets where it's going. His wife Tammy keeps things moving in a dozen directions at once. And then there's Jim — well into his eighties, still showing up most weeks, still the first person anyone asks when a machine acts up or a species question stumps the room.
Craig wants to find kids like he was — creative, but without a clear place to put it — and show them there's more to build than screen time. That's still what this shop is about. Every board we mill and grade by hand, we treat like it's going into somebody's heirloom, because for a lot of you, it is.
What that means for you
When you order from Old Mill, you're not buying from a fulfillment center. You're getting a board someone in this family actually put hands on, measured honestly, and would be glad to see end up on your bench.
Come see what's in stock, ask us anything, and let's build something worth passing down.