In 2014 we bought forty "premium German-forged" bench chisels for the shop. They arrived in a box stamped with a city that does not have a forge in it. The steel was soft. That was expensive, annoying, and the reason this store exists.
Grainforge Toolworks is a tool counter with a warehouse attached, on Roundtree Rd in Blythewood. We buy from the people who make the thing — Narex in Czechia, Robert Sorby and Thomas Flinn in Sheffield, CMT in Italy, plus a short list of American makers for jigs and hardware. Then we put it on a shelf and use it.
Nothing gets listed until someone here has run it. That's a slow way to build a catalog and it's why we have a few hundred items rather than forty thousand.
If a tool comes back twice for the same reason, we stop selling it — no matter how good the margin is or how long we've carried it.
Six of us. Two on the phones who both turn bowls on weekends, two in the warehouse, one buyer who spends too long at trade shows in Cologne, and one bookkeeper who keeps the rest of us solvent. There is no marketing department, which is why the newsletter goes out roughly whenever we remember.
The counter at 102 Roundtree Rd is open to walk-ins Monday through Friday. Bring the thing that isn't cutting right — we'll put it on the stones and tell you whether it's the tool or the technique. Usually it's the technique. It was for us too.