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I will be up in Portland soon and plan to spend some time at the Rockler store there. I was there a few weeks ago for a short visit. this time I will spend more time there and get a better "feel" of the place. I want to compare and see if there is a difference in customer service before I call WC.
On a side note, on my first visit to Rockler they had a pallet of what they called Rustic BW for 5.99$ a BF. A few days later WC had a pallet of BW. they didn't call it rustic but it sure looked the same. It was 8$ a BF.
I'll post again after my visit to Rockler.
thanks
Jim
-- jbmaine
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Jim,
Long time. Hope all is well.
MIke
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
- Winnie the Pooh, as relayed through Author A. A. Milne
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(03-23-2017, 05:04 PM)Patsfan Wrote: Jim,
Long time. Hope all is well.
MIke
Hi Mike,
Life gave us a few bumps in the road and I hadn't done much woodworking the last few years. However, things seem to have finally settled down and this winter I have been getting back into it.
We still remember your kindness.
Jim
-- jbmaine
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++++1 about the Norfolk WC. I make the drive about 3 times a year, about 40 minute drive when the HRBT tunnel is not backed up. Excellent staff and if one employee doesn't have the best answer they direct you to the expert. I have spent way too much there over the past 10 years. They have a sale coming which I plan on going to.
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(03-18-2017, 11:14 AM)jbmaine Wrote: I like Freud router bits, but for plywood and such less $ bits work fine.
Jim
I thought it was the other way around. I thought plywood was harder on bits than real wood?
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I have a Rockler and a Woodcraft about 25 minutes away. I am the kind of customer who likes to be left alone while looking at stuff, then asks questions.
The Minneapolis Woodcraft is one of my favorite stores. They don't always carry everything in the Woodcraft catalog, but the employees are very nice and helpful. I just dropped 1100 for a new jointer there, because I know that if there are any concerns after the purchases, I will be listened to and treated well.
To do is to be (Camus)
To be is to do (Sartre)
Doo Bee Doo Bee Doo (Sinatra)
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(03-24-2017, 03:41 PM)Robin Dobbie Wrote: I thought it was the other way around. I thought plywood was harder on bits than real wood?
It usually is. That's why I will use cheap bits for plywood. Especially when I'm making jigs etc. I can't afford many real good bits (Whiteside, Freud) . So I save them for my real projects.
Most of the time should I get a little tearout, splintering, burning in plywood I don't mind. But to go to all the trouble of finding a nice piece of wood, mill it all up, cut it, shape it, and to find one of the last things you do to it is to splinter a piece off from using a cheap router bit stinks.
Jim
-- jbmaine
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I guess I'm a super peasant since I use plywood for what I consider real projects. My experience so far with veneered plywood is that stuff is the least forgiving. You can't just sand or scrape away tiny errors or tear out, like you could with real wood. I don't know what the cheaper bits are like, since other than a ryobi bit set, that's all my local HD had when I was bit shopping. I wonder if the cheaper bits just need a good sharpening or if there are serious issues like carbide flying off.
I did make the treacherous 45-mile journey through ft worth freeway construction to the woodcraft closest to me. They seemed pretty cool. I did notice a lot of expensive nice things. Lots of expensive crap and a few things it wouldn't take any time to make for one's self out of scraps. The things I did buy that were their store brand did seem like chinese ebay or harbor freight quality. Some of the items were on "sale" and the "original" price flaunted had to be utter bullshart. Like so many other stores "sales," none of that crap sells when it's regularly priced.
I was in harbor freight picking out some calipers and I was approached by a nice woodworker who let me know he was happy with the calipers I had in my hand. Over the next half hour conversation about woodworking, he mentioned a particularly abrasive woodcraft manager. I guess that manager was off that day, since I didn't run into anybody like that. then again, I've worked retail and you don't have to be bi-polar to have good days and bad days. You get 10 complete a-holes in a row, and the 11th guy doesn't have to try very hard to make you walk away. Not saying walking away from what you described was acceptable, but you never know what he had to deal with that day.
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Just found out yesterday that our local small over priced woodworking store was bought out by Woodcraft but the owner is going to be managing it so I do not feel it will change to much.
As of this time I am not teaching vets to turn. Also please do not send any items to me without prior notification. Thank You Everyone.
It is always the right time, to do the right thing.
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03-25-2017, 07:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-25-2017, 07:02 PM by goofsinwood.)
Our Woodcraft store seems to have a really good inventory of products and is expanding with more and more floor space, but the help is not real knowledgeable in the finer points of woodworking. The owners did have a really good sales person who seemed to have used nearly every product in the store and was very helpful but he left to work in a custom made furniture shop.
Most of the younger guys haven't passed the test for using a crosscut saw let alone use a trim router to cut in hinge mortises. It would be nice if all the sales people were intermediate level woodworkers.
