RURAL MILFORD — Ashley Edinger can engrave just about anything — a locket, a gun cabinet, a set of glass tumblers.

The Milford woman and her mother, Wilma Schweitzer, have established a niche business in a remodeled barn, The Country Loft, which showcases their products on the outskirts of Milford.

An advertisement promoting an engraving machine grabbed Schweitzer’s attention a few years ago. “She thought it would be a really good addition to Dad’s business,” Edinger said of her father’s custom woodworking business.

It was also a good fit for the computer-savvy Edinger, who had completed an online graphic design course a year before.

After the purchase of the machine in 2004, and with a couple of days’ training, the business was up and running.

Today, family members continue to bounce ideas off each other and pitch in wherever needed. Even Les Schweitzer, Wilma’s husband and Ashley’s father, who has his hands full building custom homes, helps out.

The division of labor basically breaks down this way: Aaron Edinger crafts the wood pieces; Wilma Schweitzer does the finish work; and Ashley Edinger runs the computer-operated laser.

Almost any surface can be engraved, including marble, wood, aluminum and acrylic.

Prices range from dollar bookmarks to a $300 toy box.

Customizing items and personalizing them has been a great draw. “A lot of people come to us” to find that unique gift or memento they can’t find anywhere else, said Wilma Schweitzer.

Family members take their custom jobs seriously. Aaron Edinger says that whenever they take on a custom job, they say a prayer before they actually start on it. The family’s faith also is reflected in some of the sayings that grace their products.

The business, which recently joined Grow Nebraska, a nonprofit marketing program, has had its products on display at craft fairs and farmers markets. Country Loft products have been sold to folks from Canada, New York, West Virginia and California, as well as across Nebraska.  The family had a booth at the state fair this year.

Over the years, the family has given permanence to sentiment and embedded meaning into surface. They’ve lasered a picture of a church onto a steeple board retrieved from a razed church; turned a White Mountain ice cream freezer destined for the landfill into a family memento complete with a family photograph, and burnished family values onto fence boards.

One of their toughest challenges was engraving a surname in the clear part of a 70- to 100-year-old stained glass window that had been removed from a house the owner was restoring. 

It was a “nerve-wracking” job, said Wilma Schweitzer. “That’s probably the scariest thing, to have somebody bring us a one-of-a-kind” item to engrave, she said.

For one thing, the machine could engrave only 20 inches and the window was 40 inches long.

“It initially falls on me to get everything lined up and see where it needs to be,” Aaron Edinger said. “We had to split the text and engrave half of it, flip the window (lining it up perfectly) and engrave the other half.”

Working under a deadline, the machine broke and parts had to be ordered.

Reluctant to state what they charged, Les Schweitzer quipped, “We should have charged thousands.”

Joanie Cradick can be reached at dc34702@alltel.net.