The raw materials are stacked high in Montana Stone Carving’s woodshop in Kalispell.

Piles of salvaged wood from a 110-year-old barn in the Smith Valley area are stacked on one side. Burl logs and even some burned timber are propped against another wall. Mounds of rock take up yet another portion of the building.

Between these natural resources and the finished products is a bastion of imagination that is becoming the talk of the town, especially in the world of woodworking.

“We come up with too many ideas sometimes,” Carroll Demars said with a laugh as he demonstrated a wine-bottle holder shaped from a sizable burl. A hand-sawed plank will be incorporated into the design to hold wine glasses.

Demars, his business partner Don Laven, and Laven’s son, Jordan, started Montana Stone Carving in Demars’ garage a few months ago. They recently relocated to a bigger work space on U.S. 93 South, where a showroom in front of the workshop shares space with Spherion Staffing, a business owned by Carroll and his wife, Nikki.

“All of our stuff is so different,” Demars said. “We’re trying to do one-of-a-kind things. We try to be unique.”

One of the unusual techniques the business features is plywood carving, in which layers of three-quarter-inch plywood are laminated together and then carved into the desired design using an angle grinder with a tungsten carbide blade.

Jordan Laven heads up the plywood carving, and said he knows of only one other woodworker in the country who specializes in such hand carving. A self-taught artist, Jordan also does stone carving and pounds three-dimensional designs into metal.

Carved stone and carved wood are combined for a number of products ranging from tables to shelves and coat racks. Demars pointed out one end table in which a slab of rock was split to create identical surfaces on the top and bottom, with a split log holding the pieces of stone together.

Demars and the Lavens are always on the hunt for interesting pieces of wood.

“Once you find a burl, the next step is figuring out what to turn it into,” Demars said.

Much of their rock and wood comes from the Demars family’s 200 acres of wooded land west of Kalispell. The wood is cut at a sawmill owned by Demars’ brother.

Barn wood comes from a barn built in the early 1900s on the Marquardt farm in the Smith Valley area. A card attached to each piece made with the aged wood notes the barn was used as a dance hall for many years.

“We have enough barn wood to last a long time,” Demars said. “One of the cool things is that everything gets used, even the smallest pieces.”

While some projects are big custom jobs — they’re making an entire bar for a Lewistown tavern — Montana Stone Carving also has moderately priced pieces. Demars said he wants to keep the furniture and decor affordable.

“We have something for every price range. We want people who appreciate Montana,” he said. “Everything is repurposed and reused.”

He grew up logging and was running a full logging crew by the time he was 17. He and Don Laven were relocation specialists for Mergenthaler Transfer and Storage for 15 years.

As with any new startup,  Montana Stone Carving is working to establish a presence in the Flathead Valley and elsewhere. The business recently was accepted to sell its furniture and decor online through Amazon Handmade.

For more information about Montana Stone Carving, go online to montanastonecarving.mysimplestore.com, or find the business on Facebook.

The showroom is located at 2460 U.S. 93 S. in Kalispell.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.