The shop behind the site
Metals 'R' Us is a working metal shop in Burnside Industrial Park, Dartmouth. Since 1997 we've supplied steel, stainless, aluminum, brass, copper, bronze and tool steel to Nova Scotia's welders, machinists, and makers. In 2025 we put the whole counter online: pick your alloy, type a length in inches, and we cut it and ship it anywhere in Canada.
Who buys from us
Mostly the trades. Welders grabbing 44W angle for a frame, machinists feeding 1018 and C360 brass into their lathes, fabricators who need DOM tube this week, not a mill run next quarter. The counter sees contractors, boat builders, food plants, and farm fixes, and more and more it's someone building at home: a railing, a trailer deck, a knife, a smoker.
Two things we're not. We're not a scrap yard: everything on the racks is new, traceable stock, with mill test reports available on marked products. And we're not a broker shipping from a warehouse we've never seen: the metal you order online sits in our building, gets cut on our saws, and leaves on our dock.
How we got here
Rod's Machine Shop opens
Rodney Burns opens Rod's Machine Shop in Dartmouth and spends the next eight years machining parts for Nova Scotia industry.
The W.A. Moir buyout
When W.A. Moir, one of his biggest metal suppliers, closes its doors, Rod buys their inventory and hires their sales team. The machine shop is suddenly in the metal supply business.
Metals 'R' Us opens its doors
Rod makes it official and unveils Metals 'R' Us to Nova Scotia: raw stock, cut to what the job needs, sold over a counter that talks shop.
The move to Burnside
Nova Scotia's construction boom keeps the saws busy and the racks emptying. The team moves to our current warehouse and shop at 85 Gloria McCluskey Ave in Burnside Industrial Park.
Cut-to-size becomes the business
We invest in computerized HYDMECH bandsaws and hydraulic shears, and cut-to-size goes from a favour we did for regulars to the core of the shop.
New owners, same counter
The Burns family retires and sells the business to two of their local customers. The names on the paperwork change; the family-run counter doesn't.
metalsrus.ca goes Canada-wide
We launch the online shop with per-inch pricing and live stock, and start cutting for the whole country. Same saws, same people, much longer reach.
The shop in numbers
Why we sell by the inch
Most suppliers sell stock lengths and let you deal with the rest. We grew up cutting for machine shops, where the question was never whether you wanted a 20 foot stick. It was always closer to: can you get me 14-3/8″ by Thursday. Selling by the inch online is that counter habit, written into the website.
It means you buy what the job needs, the offcut stays on our rack instead of in your scrap bin, and a one-piece order gets treated like a real order. There's a $40 minimum and that's it.
Come see the shop
We're at 85 Gloria McCluskey Ave in Burnside Industrial Park, Dartmouth, open Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 5:00pm Atlantic. Order online for free pickup, call 902-468-1112, or walk in with a sketch and we'll figure it out at the counter. Counter cuts happen while you wait.