Good Woodworking Store In London

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Hi Gents

Coming over the pond from the states an will be staying in London for 2 weeks. Can anyone please take the time and recommend some good working stores in and around London? Am very interested in hand tools such as planes and marking devices.

Thanks for you help.

Al Morgan
 
Welcome to the forum, Al.

'Fraid it's not great news though. :( We had a recent discussion on what's about in this thread for new tools. For the old stuff, all I (and apparently anyone else too) know can be found here. Depending on how far outside London you want to go, it might be worth looking at the my main list too, and the rather less up-to-date list on Jeff Gorman's site.

Cheers, Alf
 
A depressing picture indeed! Visits to Buck & Ryan in central London and D-M Tools in Twickenham might be as good as it gets (together with the bookish recommendations in the other thread).

I'd also put in a word for some non-tools related activity including a visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum for funituremaking through the ages; and a few other similar museum collections (anyone remember the museum that Smith & Sweetman were always visiting in their TV series?).
 
Don't know how far out of london you want to go, but 2 places spring to mind on the outside of the M25:

Isaac Lord in High Wycombe (about 20 miles up the M40 from central London?) - good for lots of fixing style things, but also big on Clifton planes & scrapers. Also Veritas stuff (but not the planes, unfortunately). Also the standard modern Stanley and Record stuff. They stock some Japanese saws, chisels and waterstones, a load of Ashely Iles turning chisels (haven't seen any bevel edges). Last time I was there, they had some nice looking sets of Sorby paring chisels. A fairly good stock of squares, guages and marking knives usually stocked too.

Tilgear - out near Potter's Bar somewhere, not far from the M25. Apparantly an Aladdin's cave of hand tools! A google search to tilgear will give their address - they don't have a website. Never been there myself, so can't comment on stock.
 
Good call on Tilgear, Esp, hadn't thought of them. Address:
Bridge house
69 Station Road
Cuffley
Herts
01707 873434

Open 8.30am - 5pm Mon-Fri

You can get the train to Cuffley station from Moorgate or King's Cross apparently, if that helps.

Cheers, Alf
 
It is perhaps worth mentioning that Tilgear has two sides to it. One is woodworking, the other is basically metalworking (model engineering rather than panel beating). It doesn't stock machinery but only smaller machine adjuncts (like the Incra fences, router bits or rotary tables for a lathe/milling machine).

I treated myself to a hand operated Borland precision chuck for the drill press the other day - found in the metal working part of the store - it is a fabulous bit of kit. It can hold a 1mm drill to 100th mm concentricity (with the chuck, not my cheap drill press!) it can also swing a 35 mm Forstner bit without slippage and a two year old could tighten it .

A third side to Tilgear is more general purpose stuff that might suit tradesmen but only as far as handtools and the like - no power tools at all.

It's forté is undoubtedly the availability of most things that woodworkers and model engineers might find useful in their daily work and the fact that they have stuff that is quite difficult to get elsewhere Their prices on some things are outstanding value, on other stuff just ordinary.

They stock the full range of Pfeil carving chisels.
 
Chris,
do you know Tilgear is just around the corner from me,
and i've never been in there :oops:

Is there life outside websites, catalogues and ww ?

TX
 
TX,

A suggestion - leave your credit card at home for your first visit, it's amazing how easy it is to see stuff there you just have to have!
 

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