Working With Wood

Thoughts on a really neat new store

Dec 26, 2022

Earlier this year, a really neat store opened up in a big Fairfax shopping center: Rockler Woodworking and Hardware.

It’s a chain that goes back to the 1950s, but there aren’t that many of them, and I had never heard of it before. I saw it when I was shopping at Target there, and I walked in just to see what it was. And I was immediately approached by an extremely friendly staff member, who explained the store and gave me a form to enter a raffle for a free router table. Along with a list of local woodworking groups. And a list of “make your own” classes where you could carve or assemble various wooden implements.

Here’s the inside of the store:

I guess I find a store interesting when I have no idea what most of the stuff they’re selling is.

There’s so much here: every tool, wooden part, or lumber piece you can think of. There are even huge slices of trees you can buy and finish into bar tops!

My wife and I took a look at the list of classes, and we thought it might be fun to take one together. You pay one price for the class time, materials, and finished product that you get to take home. How finished or well finished would it be? Well, I guess that would be part of the fun.

We settled on the idea of making a Christmas gift for my parents, and coming back for our own if we enjoyed it. But my wife couldn’t make it to the class we chose—a bottle caddy, i.e. wooden six-pack—so I booked it just for myself.

Now I’d assumed these were relatively simple classes with a handful of people per class. And maybe some of them do have more than one slot. But when I showed up with my printed class reservation, a woman at the register said, “Oh, are you here for the bottle caddy class? He’ll meet you back there by the shop.”

So I walked over, and there was nobody else back there. Not even the instructor! I waited for a couple of minutes, and he appeared from the stock room. “Am I the only person?” I asked him. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. (It certainly beats being the only guest in a motel, which happened to me one night on a road trip.)

Here’s the shop:

“Make your own” is not exaggerating. I kind of assumed we’d be assembling a caddy out of some pieces, but we started with a board of wood, cut it into the necessary pieces, put them all through a machine to shave them down to get out any warping, trimmed them with a table saw, shaped them with a ribbon saw, finished them with a sander, cut a handle, drilled holes for dowels with both a hand drill and a drill press, and then glued in the dowels and held the whole thing with clamps.

The class was billed as two to three hours. I got there at 12. I left at 5pm. And everyone was almost preternaturally friendly. The instructor explained what everything was and how it worked.

At one point, another staff member who looked like Mike Pence came into the shop room and asked for some help locating an item. “Is it taking so long because you’re drinking the beer while you’re making the six pack?” he joked.

I kind of felt like I was in Chick-fil-A. It’s one of those businesses where everything is so well done, and the people are so nice, that you almost think you’re in some Twilight Zone episode. Coming from New Jersey, maybe I’m just not used to people being genuinely friendly, especially when working in a store.

It must help that the staff here is older, and they all seemed to be woodworking experts or hobbyists themselves. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve been in a store where the employees really knew the merchandise and cared about what they were selling. Lots of stores have cut this kind of expertise. It looks like Rockler understands that’s the key to success.

I’d like to go back and try making something else. I could even see trying out one class every month or two, as a regular thing. Where else do you get to play with this kind of equipment in the presence of an expert?

It’s so neat to see the process behind what looks like a very cheap, simple product. Who knew it took a whole shop full of fancy tools to slap a few wood boards together? And if you look closely, there are a lot of imperfections. It’s like pulling back the curtain. Really neat.

Here’s the final product:

If you have one of these stores near you, check it out!

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