Where do you buy your tools?

Well up here in Canada after it thaws out and the fur trader comes up from Seattle we trade them fresh Loonies for ironage tools, heck one of my friends just north of me dug up some coal, heated some metal red hot and hammered out a plow shear, I expect that next year he'll trade grain or possibly even beef for those shinny trinkets.

All kidding aside we have the same big box suppliers as you and a number of very specialized suppliers as well. For machine tools in the LowerMainland we have to name a few: Fraser Machinery, CAE, Sharpe Machine Tools, Buffalo Machinery, Freisen Machinery, OPT,ACT , BusyBee, Princess Auto and KMS Tools plus all of the dealers for manufacturer specific tooling. We are fortunate that we are a gateway port for Canada and USA so we generally see offshore products that enter North America from the Pacific Rim. Since our economic culture has attracted foreign businessmen to establish viable businesses we have had direct access to everything from computers to machine tools without a lot of multi layered distribution networks.

Not withstanding my previous remarks there are times when it is advantageous to shop south of the 49th because sometimes one off items that I am looking for are not readily available because our market volume is much smaller than yours.

Hope this answers your question and provokes some of my fellow Canadians to divulge some of their secret shopping places.

Pete

Here in Oz, there aren't the large number of suppliers that you have in the top half of the world. Cheap and nasty Chinese of the hand tool type is largely catered to by a couple of large Australian hardware chains ( Bunnings & Home Hardware ) but for machine tools , I usually use Hare & Forbes. They have taken over most of the smaller machine tool suppliers. They buy Chinese machine tools and re-badge them, as well as supplying the better quality stuff for the professionals. J Blackwood & Son used to be a great supplier of everything in the metal working line, but they are now owned by the same mob as Bunnings and are just plain slack. They were, at one time, the TOP supplier in Oz and though a little higher in price, they had everything. Now you just about have to wrestle someone to the floor to get a price on anything.

I'm in Chicago. When I need a real tool I order it over the internet. Sometimes a local smaller supply place will carry quality tools. You won't find a decent selection of non-imported (aka junk) tools at a home depot.

I was in Poland lasy year, and they have this chain store called Castorama, which is sort of like a home depot. The majority of tools were junk, but there were a few decent tools from Knipex and so forth. There were some American made power tools as well.

The hardware stores that had the best selection of nearly anything were the small shops which are pretty much all gone now, or charge so much money it's hard to justify using them in the first place. The home depot near me has a poor selection of sandpaper and doesn't even sell TSP anymore. The dowel rods are from China. The rebar wire is from China. I'm suprised they even take US dollars at the checkout line anymore.

Pete forgot two good sources for home tools in the Vancouver area are KMS tools (especially woodwork) and Princess Auto ( western Ca) I live five miles from the 49th but haven't gone near it since 911. It just isn't worth the hassle. I sure miss the cheap watered beer and natchos though. Randy

I shuttle between the US and Germany. Germany does not have the McMasters or MSCs we got over here, there market is smaller and more fragmented, so I love the '400,000 items at your fingertips' American stores (since I am in the Woods of Maine it is nearly all mailorder for me).

In Germany I go to local stores, some of them small chains of a couple of stores, which cater to the trades and there I do find sometimes amazing deals on high quality items and of course there are a variety of very high end tools and pieces of machinery, lesser known here maybe, which make me drool, but they are priced out of my range, like a large timber circular saw for $5,000.

regards Uwe

Have you found Hulls Cove Tool Barn, Liberty Tool Co., etc.?

Ned Simmons wrote in article ...

Next time you stop by "Liberty Tool" (I'm going there this afternoon) take note of the sales tax certificate on display in the glass case to the left of the counter.

The business was originally named "Tacky Harry's"....which I feel is much more appropriate...

Oh, the Chinese are more interested in getting US dollars than their own currency, I'm sure.

Garage sales, liquidation sales, HF, "home improvement stores".

I live within walking of Liberty Tools.

Uwe

I missed the staff meeting but the minutes show Greg Postma wrote back on Thu, 17 Mar 2005 21:04:04 -0600 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

Ben's Loans (pawnshop), Hardwicks (local store), Enco (mail order).

tschus pyotr

I know this is blasphemy for most of you, but at the level I am working: "If I didn't have Harbor Freight tools, I wouldn't have no tools at all!"

Interesting thing about these folks is that they have a daily limit on purchases! You can't back up your van and buy them out. They want steady customers, not big ones.

Charles Morrill

I missed the staff meeting but the minutes show "Emmo" wrote back on Fri, 18 Mar 2005 23:36:11 GMT in rec.crafts.metalworking :

Know the feeling.

And it isn't blasphemy, so much as it is ... well, we all started out with junk cause couldn't afford no better. (My car tools are still pretty much that way.)

It may be crap but it's MY crap so don't knock it when you are trying to borrow it! Gerry :-)} London, Canada

I missed the staff meeting but the minutes show Gerald Miller wrote back on Sat, 19 Mar 2005 00:18:33 -0500 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

"If my tools are such cheap junk, why do you want to borrow them?"

toodles