In rec.woodworking Steve B wrote:

: "Andrew Barss" wrote in message
: ...
: In rec.woodworking Jon Danniken wrote:
: snip
:
: Try Ace Hardware. Much higher quality, and often cheaper.
:
: -- Andy Barss

: Ace has consistently had the highest prices for any item you can mention,
: unless it's on the clearance rack, and then, it's just under what the other
: stores sell it for every day. Surely you jest.

They're independently owned and managed, and may be different where you
are. Here (Southern AZ), I have one a couple miles away which has a
pretty deep stock of decent hardware (grade 5 included), along with a
billion things you'd never find at HD or Lowe's (cotter pins, motor shaft
keys, brushes for electric motors,...). if I need something really
obscure, there's one about 6 miles away which is enormous, and
has pretty much anything I've ever needed that isn't made of a strange
metal.

Both have nice, quite knowledgable staff.

And the prices are, for all the items I have compared anyway, cheaper than
HD for better stuff. No kidding.

-- Andy Barss