​Hardware stores

[Guest]

The Link Boys axe handle I selected from my hardware purveyor “seemed” to almost fit the eye, at least closer than anything else in the well-stocked farm-country hardware store. They actually had several Boys axe handles to choose from. Gawd love a real country hardware store.

Just back from another trip to my (almost) local country hardware store. I love that place and, although there is a Home Depot and a Tractor Supply, both within sight from their parking lot, I stop there first when ISO some part or piece.

For starters they have the best selection of stainless steel of any hardware store I have ever visited. Bins and bins of stainless, full boxes or honor system write down how many and cost each. Glenn had mentioned looking for an axe at a Lowes and finding that they stocked exactly one. This place has a half dozen, and thrice that if you include hatchets, splitting mauls and the like. A whole wall of choppage.

But mostly it is about service. They have a very knowledgeable staff, and they know me well enough from hundreds of visits to understand my hobbies, workshop inventions and adaptive needs. Hell, I’ve been going there long enough that I know their stories as well, and seek out my favorites on the staff.

I did strike out today. One item on my list was a sharpening stone for the recent axe projects. My favorite saleswoman (yes) knew exactly what I was talking about, didn’t think they had any and still spent 10 minutes with me looking and helping find the other peculiarities on my list. She asked about the axes (a continuing conversation from weeks past) and told tales of her previous job working in saw manufacturing.

That ain’t happening at Home Creepo.

I know of two excellent hardware stores in eastern North Carolina, both within 20 miles of Council Tools. I’ll try them next for the stones. Even if they don’t have one it will be worth it to walk through the door and inhale that real hardware store smell.

Fertilizer, seed, wood, leather, oil and a couple generations of boots on the floor. That smell, oh that smell. Lumbersexual cologne.

Oh, Christ on a crutch, some boutique in NYC probably sells that fragrance for $100 an ounce.

 

[Jsaults]

I have a good hardware store nearby, but undoubtedly not as old as your's. But still my go-to for buying a part and actually getting help!

BTW, I highly recommend the Gransfors-Bruks sharpening stone. If you have a boutique woodworkers shop(Woodcrafters) in the area they ought to have it. While not completely idiot-proof against slicing razor thin skin slices from your thumbs it is darn close. Two grits as well. Hmmmm....Piragis probably sells it too.
Jim

 

[stripperguy]

Long gone now is Wallace Armor in Schenectady...they had everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. Even had a small trolley car that traveled through the store to send your cash (remember that stuff?!) up to the accounting office upstairs. When the store folded, the trolley was sent to the Smithsonian!

Other great local hardware stores are all gone too... but Old Forge Hardware is still going strong!!

 

[snapper]

We're pretty lucky where I live. We have two very good stores with excellent staff just 10 miles in either direction of my house. One is a private, family owned business that's been around for over 50 years. The other is an ACE Hardware but still family owned and operated so it's a lot different than most franchised operations. One is in Cooperstown (thankfully on our side of the village so you don't have to stop going during the summer months) and the other is on the way to work so both are in great locations. They've never looked strangely at me when I come in looking for parts for my "projects" and such. It's nice to have people who don't think you're nuts.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...Be well.

snapper

PS - +1 on stripperguy's plug for the Old Forge Hardware store. I never pass through town without making a stop there. They also have a wonderful book section in the back of the store as well. Almost like an old time department store in some respects.

 

[ppine]

Most of the good town hardware stores have closed around here. We have an Ace Hardware that tries really hard. Great service. They can get most things if they don't have it. It is right next to the chainsaw dealer.

 

[Guest]

PS - +1 on stripperguy's plug for the Old Forge Hardware store. I never pass through town without making a stop there. They also have a wonderful book section in the back of the store as well. Almost like an old time department store in some respects.

Old Forge is on my usual route to (and from) the Adirondacks and I have passed that vintage hardware in one direction or the other several dozen times.

I always feel a gnawing urge to stop, but on the way up I’m too psyched to get on the water, and on the way back Old Forge is just too dang busy given my desire for a slow reintroduction to crowds of people and syphilization.

I did stop at the Adirondack Museum once. I made it as far as the crowd in the lobby before fleeing.

 

[Guest]

I have a good hardware store nearby, but undoubtedly not as old as your's. But still my go-to for buying a part and actually getting help!

I think the big-box hardware stores are somehow missing their opportunities of scale (and cost). My country hardware has the uncommon things, but they are more costly for most needs and I do hit Home Depot when I have a list of general hardware. Although my farm country hardware store has a fair lumberyard if I need a load of dimensional lumber I go the Home Creepo route and pick and chose. Yeah, I have been known to pack a pair of nippers into Home Depot and cut the bands on virgin bundles of 2x4’s or the like to select what I like.

What I think the big box hardware purveyors is missing is some technological way to agument their often useless and always hard to find staff (and staff turnover). I shop big box hardware when I have an extensive list, one that usually includes everything from plumbing to electrical to fasteners to hinges, door screen, brads, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I emerge feeling successful if I find half of that list before I quit wandering those cavernous fluorescent isles. Big Box Land is not a pleasant environment and I want to be gone as fast as possible.

Read: Spend as much money on the list of things I need as fast as possible.. I know that their inventory system already has every product identified by isle number, in-isle location and even height on the display board.

My ideal of Big Box heaven - well, my idea of a less hellish experience anyway - let me enter the items I need on some database that gives me the exact and easily identified isle, rack and position. And produce a printable map that lays out the most efficient enter-and-exit route through the deliberate maze, from one end zone to the other, quick as a bunny, in-out and gone. That’s a win-win.

Apologies for the rant, I detest the ambiance of big box hardware.

BTW, I highly recommend the Gransfors-Bruks sharpening stone. If you have a boutique woodworkers shop(Woodcrafters) in the area they ought to have it. While not completely idiot-proof against slicing razor thin skin slices from your thumbs it is darn close. Two grits as well. Hmmmm....Piragis probably sells it too.
Jim

Thanks Jim, I’ll bear that in mind if I end up ordering one. I want to visit some rural hardware stores in Bladen County NC first. That is still timber country.

Well, timber, turkey houses and hog farms. On the whole I rather drive behind a timber hauler.

 

[stripperguy]

Actually, I forgot about DeLollo's in Watervliet (that's where MDB and I play monopoly, 25 and counting).
Delollo's has been in existence for 60 years, minus a short hiatus. They stock all of the peculiar items you need to take care of an aging city...specialty plumbing fittings, flange adapters for lead toilet drains, Fernco adapters in all sizes, mortise locksets and repair parts for them, REAL glass door knobs...you get the idea. Most homes in the area are about 120 years old, and that hardware store is just about right!

 

[Alan Gage]

Although my farm country hardware store has a fair lumberyard if I need a load of dimensional lumber I go the Home Creepo route and pick and chose.

Will the local yard not let you sort? I'm free to wander around at will and pick whatever I want. They generally have higher quality lumber than the big box store around here and better prices as well which surprised me and is, I believe, unknown to most people in town. Seems anymore that as long as the store looks like a warehouse people assume it's cheaper even though many times it's not the case.

A couple weekends ago I needed some hardwood and the local yard was closed so I made the 45 minute drive to the big box store in hopes they'd have something I wanted. I found a very limited selection of hardwoods with no boards longer than 8-10' and all of them individually wrapped (wrapped for cripes sake!) and priced at, what I thought, were exorbitant prices. At the local yard I'd find large stacks of oak, poplar, and maple with smaller stacks of mahogany, cherry, clear pine, and knotty cedar of varying widths and lengths up to 16' priced by the foot. If I want 4' cut out of a 16' board they'd do it and charge me for the 4'.

Oh yeah, and their yard isn't fenced. I can show up any time after hours and grab whatever I want as long as it's stored outside (pretty much all the dimensional lumber, sheathing, shingles, underlayment, foam sheets, etc) and then just call them the next day to tell them what I got. Sometimes I hate living in a small rural town but other times it's pretty nice.

We're lucky to have two nice hardware stores in town. One is a good locally owned Ace and the other locally owned as well, which caters more to the farmers and is, I believe, the only reason they can compete with Ace Hardware in town. So they have lot of things like feed tanks, drain tile, large jacks, 5 gallon drums of oil, large supply of bolts and fasteners and 50 years of accumulated miscellaneous "stuff" hanging on the shelves that you can use to fix just about anything that should break down on the farm. Also handy when you need to cobble something together at home.

Alan

 

[Canotrouge]

You guys make me laugh, I mean cry, with all your lumber yard fluff hard wood, and the old hardware store full of good stuff... Here we have neither, no big box store, no old hardware store... Actually there is one, small shop that have some good lumber once in a wile, and the old man that runs it is rather great!! But is employee is an old fat grumpy son of a B*@#!. So I don't go there really often. So most of the stuff is ordered on line, other than regular lumbers.

But I wouldn't trade my living place with any others!!

 

[yellowcanoe]

Lucy Hardware in North Conway NH. 10000 square feet of any odd part you need. It's been there for eons.
We buy our lumber from a nearby mill we have several of them and plane to suit.

 

[Philtrum]

Lucy Hardware in North Conway NH. 10000 square feet of any odd part you need. It's been there for eons.
We buy our lumber from a nearby mill we have several of them and plane to suit.

Does it have creaky wooden floors and a faint smell of oil?

 

[yellowcanoe]

No it's actually a new store. I think the old one was razed. For creaky floors and old oil and asst parts in boxes I recommend Page's hardware in Guilford CT

 

[oldschool]

I love Old Forge Hardware; it wasn't until my third visit that I finally stopped getting lost. The first few visits are like being in a maze and not sure of they way out. Its not often that one gets to go in to a store that still has the old, creaky wood floors. I feel like I walked in to a Norman Rockwell painting.

 

[sweeper]

Lucy Hardware in North Conway NH. 10000 square feet of any odd part you need. It's been there for eons.
We buy our lumber from a nearby mill we have several of them and plane to suit.

Edmunds Ace hardware in Antrim, NH. Old creaky hardwood floors, narrow isles, tall shelves and as soon as you enter the door someone there asking to help you. You'd need it with all the tools and hardware packed in there, and if they don't have it, the next words out are, "Lets see if we can order it." Best of all it was on my route to work. The manager, Rick, went to UNH with my youngest son, and I'd test him all the time with hardware requests, now that I've moved, I have the internet, I haven't found a "Go To" hardware store in the area.

 

[Guest]

Will the local yard not let you sort? I'm free to wander around at will and pick whatever I want. They generally have higher quality lumber than the big box store around here and better prices as well

They will let me sort, but someone from the store always accompanies me out to the lumber building and I feel guilty spending an hour sorting, picking and choosing something like a truck load of 2x4’s while they stand and watch.

I built a lot of our furniture from 2x4’s and 2x6’s years ago when money was tight and I had access to a well equipped woodworking shop. I selected the best grained, straightest and most attractive (knot holes and etc) lumber I could find. Probably 100 2x4’s, which took me a couple of months to select. I denuded every lumber yard in a 30 mile radius.

All of that furniture was made to last; every piece is pegged, glued and screwed. I can stand atop any piece of it. And have. Hell, I could probably rest a ’68 Chrysler Newport atop the end table.

There is a story with the double dog-bone “feet” on our dining room table benches. The legs of those two benches are angled out for better stability.

I had set up the saw to cut angle the ends of the legs. And, without thinking about the consequences, ran all four legs through in the same orientation. Crap, four bench legs, all angled / / / /

dang, I need to recut one opposing pair so I would have / and \ legs. And then cut even more length off the other pair so the bench seat was level. Dammit, now the bench is only a foot off the floor and my chin is resting on the table. I had to add stacked dogbone shaped “feet” to the ends of each leg to raise them to a suitable seating height, which does look attractive but really wasn’t my original intention.

Measure twice, cut once. And think about what you are doing first.

 

[Alan Gage]

I had set up the saw to cut angle the ends of the legs. And, without thinking about the consequences, ran all four legs through in the same orientation. Crap, four bench legs, all angled / / / /

I think we've all done that a few times. No quicker way to go from cocky to humble.

Alan

 

[Guest]

I think we've all done that a few times. No quicker way to go from cocky to humble.

I went from cocky to humbled any number of times while building that furniture.

One piece is a large entertainment center. Large being the operative word, 8 feet wide and 6 feet tall, with 16 cubbies to accommodate everything from albums, to turntable, speakers, receiver, etc. I carefully measured all of those electronics, and took care to make every cubbie an inch wider so it would be easy to slide stuff in and out.

I dadoed half inch deep slots the vertical supports to accept the shelving base on the cubbies. You can probably see where this is going.

One inch wider cubbie shelves than needed, minus a half inch of dado on each side equals a dang tight fit. The speakers were 1/64” inch too wide to fit.

Live and learn.

 

[Philtrum]

I don't trust the end of a ruler to be at exactly the 0 inch point.
I've made many a woodworking error of exactly one inch.

 

[Guest]

I don't trust the end of a ruler to be at exactly the 0 inch point.
I've made many a woodworking error of exactly one inch.

I had a couple of multi-trade guys doing some work for me a few years ago. One of them picked up a standard US tape measure, ran it out a foot and a half while holding it upside down and called out “Cut it at 81”.

His partner looked at me, I looked at him and we both stood there waiting for at least a full minute.