Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Pub Talk). This thread is read-only.
As I told some of you guys, my wife drug me to Amish country earlier this week. There were several hardware stores of varying size and stock, but one in particular blew me away. We stayed in Walnut Creek but we ventured out to a little town called Charm, OH. In the midst of old farm houses with no electric and a few little B&B lies Keim Lumber Co. To put it simply, it makes every hardware/home improvement store I’ve been in previously look like a shack. I don’t even want to guess how many hundreds of thousands of square feet this place is, but they had by far the most extensive power tool lone in stock I’ve ever seen at a B&M store. While not full lines, they had a huge selection of Milwaukee, Dewalt, Makita, Bosch, and Porter Cable. The had chargers on display and every single tool with a battery had a charge so you could actually try it out. They had bins of bare power tools stacked up in a fashion much like produce at a grocery store.
Here is the Milwaukee display:
And the Makita display:
Bosch and PC:
Couldn’t get a good angle on it, but at the far end you can see the Dewalt section (didn’t want to get too close to that yellow crap):
They also had a massive selection of stationary tools complete with just about every miter and table saw you can think of:
And they had the largest selection I’ve ever seen of custom woods and slabs:
These pics really do this place no justice. They had mock ups of various rooms in a house displaying their products and a crazy amount of staff on hand. Their hand tool selection wasn’t nearly as astounding as the power tool selection, but they did stock at least 30 types of Channellock pliers and even gave away free metalic Channellock decals about 10″ long.
I could have spent a week in this place. For a tool junkie like me it’s damn near a vacation destination in and of itself. Google images has a lot of pics as does their website:
If you are ever near Ohio Amish Country (Sugar Creek, Walnut Creek, Berlin) it is truly a must see. Pricing was reasonable. You can find better prices online, but you can’t go to this place and walk out empty handed.
Wow that’s pretty crazy I don’t think we have anything close to that in Michigan the big box stores really killed the independent hardware stores.
I was blown away man. It was pretty damn impressive.
Wow thats crazy!! Its to bad, we have Nothing like that here. That is a lot of tools! What did you buy? and they actually sell the Milwaukee router haha!
That’s awesome. I would have been there for hours. Well probably about ten minutes before my wife dragged me out. I wish they had stuff like that here.
WOW!! Did you goto heaven. That is beautiful. I guess they won, they have the most toys.
Harold Wray wrote:
WOW!! Did you goto heaven. That is beautiful. I guess they won, they have the most toys.
Haha Conductor, do you have to be a admin to have the quote underneath your post?
Eric J wrote:
That’s awesome. I would have been there for hours. Well probably about ten minutes before my wife dragged me out. I wish they had stuff like that here.
And yet its fine that they would make us spend 3 hours at the mall to look at things they like
ChaseRogers wrote:
Haha Conductor, do you have to be a admin to have the quote underneath your post?
No, you just set it up on your profile. If you can’t figure it out just PM me what you want and I’ll set it up for you.
Harold: I’ve obviously never been to Heaven, but I can’t imagine it being much different.
Eric J wrote:
That’s awesome. I would have been there for hours. Well probably about ten minutes before my wife dragged me out. I wish they had stuff like that here.
I got about an hour of floor time in before the boss cut me off 😆
It’s about 30 miles south of Canton, OH for a reference point.
Conductor562 wrote:
It’s about 30 miles south of Canton, OH for a reference point.
I will make sure to remember this next time im up that way!
I have been looking at your pictures more. Drooling more 🙂 . Is that a Milwaukee router for $119? There is a sign on one of the cases in the bottom right.
Harold Wray wrote:
I have been looking at your pictures more. Drooling more 🙂 . Is that a Milwaukee router for $119? There is a sign on one of the cases in the bottom right.
I think It may be for the grinder behind the sign, If it is for the router, thats a steal! I think thats the most underrated router on the market…
Oh. thanks Chase. I guess that was wishful thinking about the router being $119. I completely agree with you about Milwaukee’s router being the most underrated. I have always wanted one but it never happened.
Harold Wray wrote:
Oh. thanks Chase. I guess that was wishful thinking about the router being $119. I completely agree with you about Milwaukee’s router being the most underrated. I have always wanted one but it never happened.
I have heard that the body grip feature makes the router feel like its part of your hand.
Yea, that was a grinder for $119. If it had been a router it would be in my tool cabinet as we speak 🙂