COEUR DALENEMike Norris makes music with a DeWalt scroll saw.


In his tiny workshop in the forest east of here, Norris carefully guides pieces of 5/8-inch hardwood into the saws dancing blade, creating delicate patterns that belie the materials sturdiness.


Eventually, Norris designs emerge from that workshop as shiny, handcrafted stands destined to hold sheet music, library books, or even restaurant menus at locations around the globe.


Norris has operated Mister Standman Music Stands for 12 years, and he has as much business as he can handle by himself, he says.


He works on about a dozen stands at a time, frequently laboring 10 hours a day, seven days a week. Still, someone who ordered a stand now would have wait until late August or September for deliveryhes booked that far in advance.


Im still doing Christmas orders, Norris says cheerfully.


Hes considered setting up a small manufacturing plant to produce more of the stands, which sell for an average of $350 each, but believes his quality would suffer if he went to higher-volume production.


It all has to be done by hand, Norris says.


To build the stands, he first cuts and fits together the stands four feetfour, as opposed to three, for added stability, he says.


Next comes the center support pole, which actually is two poles, one slid inside the other so the stand is adjustable in height. Finally, he crafts the frame, or the flat surface on which the music or book sits. Thats the piece with the intricate designs.


The pieces then are all sanded, stained, rubbed, and polished to a high sheen, then are completed with the addition of brass knobs for height adjustment and frame tilt. Each stand takes about 15 hours to complete.


Norris declines to say how much the business makes or how many stands he makes each year, but says hes swamped with orders.


The economy has never affected me, ever, he says.


Why? Well, the cost of a $350 music stand is cheap compared with the cost of many musical instruments, he says. Someone who pays $35,000 for a harp, for example, wouldnt blanch at spending 1/100th of that on a stand, especially if the stand were decorated with an image of a harp or some other personalized touch, he adds.


Most of Norris customers are located on the East Coast or in Europe, he says. He hasnt sold a stand in the Coeur dAlene area in about five years.


One hundred percent of his sales are made over the Internet, and Norris jokes that Mister Standman is probably the only dot-com thats had a profit in the last 10 years.


Although an early convert to the Internet, Mister Standman is a decidedly low-tech endeavor. No computer-aided design or computerized manufacturing goes on in this shop, just exacting work with the kind of hand tools and small power tools commonly found in a hardware store.


Norris doesnt even take credit cards, because the card companies charge a percentage fee on every sale. He simply asks customers to send him a $75 deposit with their order, then bills them for the balance when he ships their stand. European customersabout 35 percent of his businessare a complete leap of faith for Norris. He doesnt even ask for a deposit from that group because of the hassles of converting currency.


I ship it to em and trust theyre going to pay me, and I have never been burned in 12 years, he says. Im not dealing with kids buying CDs.


Mister Standmans stands are available in 30 designs, including music-oriented, religious, and classical themes, with names such as Diamond Jim and Tulip Lyre. Norris also will make custom designs, such as for a client who had a donkey farm and wanted a stand that featured an image of a donkey.


The stands are available in a multitude of woods and stains, with walnut being the most popular, Norris says.


He crafts the stands in his 250-square-foot workshop, a little log cabin behind his house thats stuffed with wood scraps and partially-finished products. Next to the shop is an even smaller structure that Norris grandlywith tongue in cheekcalls his shipping office, where he stores finished stands until mailing them to their waiting buyers.


While music clearly is a force in his lifehis wife commutes to Ohio to play the harp in the Dayton Philharmonic OrchestraNorris says Mister Standman is mostly just a hobby that took flight. He worked in a family auto-parts business in the Midwest before moving to Idaho, when his wife got a job with the Spokane Symphony. He made his first music stand as a present for his wife, which led to orders from her friends. The couple decided to stay in North Idaho after Norris wife started playing with the Dayton orchestra because they love their spot in the woods.


Says Norris of his success, especially of his early entry onto the Internet, It wasnt because I was smart. It was just a chance of luck.