Rod wrote:I've never been inside their shops but imagine they are pretty much like Lee Valley (Veritas) ones - Aladdin Caves of tooly delights.
Rod
Yes and no. Lee Valley has a much larger inventory, but that's because they do gardening stuff too. LV is mostly a catalog company. For the most part, their stores are attached to warehouses. They have one of everything out where you can see it, then you write down the item number, take it to a desk, and the counterman pulls the stuff you want off the warehouse shelf.
Although Rockler is also a mail order operation, their retail stores are just that--lots of stocked shelves and you pick what you want and take it to the checkout counter to pay. As a consequence, they won't have the variety that LV does since they simply don't have the space.
Rockler seems to winning their war on the WW gadget front with their arch rival Woodcraft. They've come up with a lot of new stuff in the last few years. Woodcraft has less variety in many areas but perhaps an advantage in quality, and devotes more floor space to machines. At least, since there is one of each in town, that's my impression from seeing both. The local Rockler is definitely better than the local Woodcraft on dust collector or shop vac fittings, while the local Woodcraft leads in varieties of finishes.
Kirk