In 1973 our family fled the “big city industrial rat race” to live in the small town of Solon, Maine, where we started the Different Drummer Workshop. We have always remained a small family wood craft business, aimed at making traditional wooden toys for kids using native Maine resources.

Our wooden toys are best known for the quality of their craftsmanship. The primary material is white pine, and every board of wood is carefully selected to show off its natural beauty and grain. The completed wooden toy is finely sanded to a satin smooth natural finish.

In designing and building our toys, safety, simplicity, and durability are the main considerations. In manufacturing we make sure that all joints are solidly glued, that corners and edges are well rounded, and all surfaces are sanded smooth and feel soft and pleasant to touch. No artificial finishes are applied to our wooden toys, except to the sailboat and the “executive desk toys” and games, thus reducing concern about toxic substances going into a child’s mouth.

We believe that toys intended for children should be non-violent and simple in design, leaving the child to use his or her own imagination (instead of a battery) to fill in whatever details are needed at the time of play. Only those wooden toys aimed at older kids (adults) are designed with extra details.

Another thing for which our wooden toys are known is their durability. Now that we have been making wooden toys for more than a generation we constantly have grandparents tell us about buying a rocking horse or a choo-choo train for one of their own kids, now grown, who has just passed it down to a new grandchild. Often they’ll exclaim about how much play the toy received, perhaps thru several kids, and how well it stood the test!