Try Craigslist? Or online, Lehman's caters to the Amish/Mennonite community and carries a lot of home canning supplies:

http://www.lehmans.com/index.jsp

Home canning isn't too popular these days, so finding it secondhand might take a while. Did you try the home canning forum here?

Velvet ~:>

What region are you -- Have you tried places like St. Vincent de Paul (Brantford) Value Village (a lot of towns) Sally Ann second hand (lots of places)
Household auction sales at farms might be a good spot to look - check your local newspaper website -- most auctions go in the paper one certain day a week, i.e. Thursdays. Also check OFA website-- they have auctions listed in their classifieds, might find a farm one there.
Might be cheaper to buy new than to run around looking for the stuff -- do you have a Home Hardware close to you? Or Crappy TIre? check their websites for what they have.

I didn't know there was a home canning forum. That's great! Thanks! I did try Crraigslist, Kajiji and others but will keep trying.

Perhaps buying new is a better option. I'll look into it. There is a Cdn Tire and Home Hardware nearby.

Thanks

My advice is to buy new canning equipment, plus read all the instructions for using this equipment.
You are dealing with a "pressure cooker" which is hot and heavy when full of jars full of vegs., the vegs are cooked at a certain pressure for about 20 minutes depending on what you are "putting up", so please read and follow all directions and safety instructions.
I don't know about the new cookers, but when I was canning I used a timer and never walked off and left the canner on the stove. When the cooking time was up, I would turn off the heat, allow the pressure to decrease to almost zero, remove from the stove and start the next one. I had two cookers, some of my friends had three or four.
When I can vegs or make chili, soup or even saugage I go to a cannery in the next county. "Once upon a Time" all county schools had a cannery, but not anymore. You are lucky if your county supports a cannery now. Maybe with all the interest in going "Green" each county will support at least one cannery, for the equipment is still in place at some of the schools. Sorry about getting off the subject.

What kind of canning are you planning on doing? we do just veggies, salsa and tomato sauce w/no meat. We just got our huge canning pots at Walmart along w/the jars that we recycle each year. If you want to can meats then it gets a bit more $ and tricky but certainly doable.

I've only been canning for the past 2 years but each year we do more, there's nothing like cracking open a jar of homemade salsa in January :)

Sheila

I have a wb pot and rack but I would like to can soup and spaghetti sauce with meat, so I'm looking for a pressure canner.