Gouges from Canada

[Ronn W]

I have been shopping for a few "Swiss Made" carving gouges.  Wood craft quoted me a total bill of $270 (tax included) but 3 of the gouges were back ordered until May.  So I was plodding around on the interent and found "Wood 'n Wild".  Website is www.woodcarvingbiz.com.  They have Swiss made gouges and the prices were $5 to 8$ less than any others that I found.  Then I looked closer and saw that they were in Saskatchewan and the prices were in Canandian dollars.  Well, 1.00 US = 1.37 Can, so that meant that a chisel that was listed for $38 here was about $24 US.  Plus they did not charge any sales tax. Shipping was reasonable I saved about $80 on my order and they happen to have all the sizes I wanted in stock.   Good deal.

Helen and Rick were great to deal with.  Rick even spent time with me talking about sharpening gouges.

But here is my question........Have any of you ever had similar experiences ordering from Canada?  Maybe I should be looking for sources for tools, clothes, etc in Canada.  Please tell me aobut your experiences with this.

 

[Martin-IT]

I am a cross-border person, living 5 miles from the border, 1 hour south of Montreal.  In economy sometimes, they use the local price of the big mac as a standard products vs what people are willing to pay for it. 

You can find the price of a car online, if you consider the exchange, in many cases you can have good saving buying across the border, especially with the latest drop in price. Some manufacturer ban the dealer from selling a car for export, others dont.  A few years ago, when the canadian $ was at par or vice-versa, people will do the cross-border shopping for cars. I bought a Toyota last summer, it was a few 1000s cheaper in canada, and now with the exchange it will be even more of a saving. Except, Toyota is a manufacturer that do not let dealer sell for export and having any warranty works is not that easy.

Also, Canada may or may not have duty on some product/country of origin or the US.  Since I am so close to both market, I do compare.  

 Plus they did not charge any sales tax. <- export good are not taxed. Canada and all its province as a VAT, like europe.

 

[drzaius]

I shop in Canada all the time   There's a Lee Valley store 5 minutes from where I work, which is nice.

[pkinneb]

4 hours ago, drzaius said:

I shop in Canada all the time   There's a Lee Valley store 5 minutes from where I work, which is nice.

Oh that would not be good Lee Valley as close as Walmart no no no lol

[drzaius]

16 hours ago, pkinneb said:

Oh that would not be good Lee Valley as close as Walmart no no no lol

I say it's nice, but it's not. I took a huge hit there on the leap year sale.

[Chestnut]

I've found it's far easier for me to NOT spend money online. I get to see the cart total and that deters me. Grabbing things in the store you don't get to visually see that grand total climb it's way up. I'd be in a far worse palce finicially if i lived or worked close to lee valley. My shop would look pretty sweet though.

[Mark J]

Yeah, I agree.  It would be much safer to live next door to Lie-Nielsen.  

[Chip Sawdust]

There’s a Buck factory not that far from me - they thankfully don’t sell to the public!

I have some of their chisels and I love them.

[RichardA]

I'm kinda interested to know, how your commercial, fits with the OP's interest in Gouges from Canada?

[G Ragatz]

2 hours ago, RichardA said:

I'm kinda interested to know, how your commercial, fits with the OP's interest in Gouges from Canada?

As I understand it, in the early days, workers at Minnesota-based Hormel used gouges from Canada to chop up the meat to produce Spam.

[Mark J]

That posting was removed.