Build the moulds and dies that stamp and shape every car part. The most precise trade in the shop.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Journeyperson
$65,000
1st-year apprentice
$45,000
Senior toolmaker or shop owner
$90,000
Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and the rest of the southern Ontario auto belt have the most shops. Senior people who can build a complete die alone, and shop owners, sit at the top.
$18 to $24 an hour
First-year apprentice
Rises each year. Large auto parts plants and unionized tool rooms start higher than 10-person mould shops.
$32 to $45 an hour
About $65,000 to $90,000 a year full time
Toolmakers who can also design in CAD (computer-aided design) or program CNC (computer numerical control) machines are the ones shops fight over. Overtime is heavy before a new car model launches.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The apprenticeship is paid work from the first day, so the cost is tools and fees rather than tuition. The low end assumes the employer covers the school blocks and you build your precision measuring set at the cheaper end, plus the roughly 150 certificate exam. The high end is paying for all three school blocks yourself at 800 each and buying a fuller measuring set over four years. The Canada Apprentice Loan is interest free up to 4,000 per block and EI (Employment Insurance) covers you during class, so most apprentices finish with no debt.
The federal Apprenticeship Incentive Grant and Apprenticeship Completion Grant closed on March 31, 2025, so check the Job Bank site for what is current. Most apprentices finish debt free.
Steady indoor work
Tool rooms run year-round. No seasons, no site layoffs.
Health, dental and pension
Standard at auto parts plants and unionized tool rooms, less so at small shops.
Overtime at time and a half
Model launches and die tryouts mean long weeks.
A rare skill
Few people can do it, which is leverage when you negotiate.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
An 8,000-hour apprenticeship, about 4 years in Ontario. The first years are mostly machining.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Grade 12 math and any shop or drafting class. OYAP (Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program) lets Ontario students start apprentice hours in Grade 11 or 12.
Find a sponsor
Weeks to months
Mould shops, die shops and the tool rooms inside auto parts plants, mostly in southern Ontario. A 1-year college tool and die or machining program makes it much easier.
Register the apprenticeship
Days
With Skilled Trades Ontario, or your provincial trades authority elsewhere.
Work and study
About 4 years
8,000 hours in Ontario: 7,280 on the job plus 720 in school, taken as three college blocks of about 8 weeks. Machining first, then grinding, fitting, heat treating and building complete dies and moulds.
Certificate of Qualification and Red Seal
After your hours
Pass the provincial exam and add the Red Seal endorsement. Eight provinces designate this trade for Red Seal, including Ontario, Quebec and BC; Alberta and Saskatchewan do not.
Math
Trigonometry and geometry are the trade. You calculate angles, clearances and shrink rates by hand.
Drafting or technological design
CAD (computer-aided design) drawings arrive daily and you must read them perfectly.
Shop classes
Machining and metalwork courses are a direct head start.
Physics
How metal flows, bends and springs back.
You do not need a licence to work as a tool and die maker in Ontario. Employers care whether you can build a die that runs a million parts without a flaw. The Certificate of Qualification and Red Seal endorsement still matter: they prove that level, help you move between provinces, and are often required for the highest union and plant rates. It is mostly an Ontario and Quebec trade because that is where the car and parts plants are.
Windsor
St. Clair College, in the middle of the mould and die cluster.
Kitchener-Waterloo and London
Conestoga College and Fanshawe College.
Hamilton
Mohawk College.
Quebec
Vocational centres around Montreal and in the Eastern Townships.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Mould making
Plastic injection moulds for car interiors, packaging and medical parts. Often a second ticket, and Windsor is the centre of it.
CAD and CAM (computer-aided design and manufacturing)
Designing the tool as well as building it. The step toward engineering-type pay.
CNC (computer numerical control) and wire EDM (electrical discharge machining)
Cutting hardened steel with a wire and a spark. Toolmakers who run these are hard to find.
Die tryout and troubleshooting
Making a new die actually produce good parts at the press. Senior work, senior pay.
Extreme patience
A die can take months to build and days to fit by hand.
Good eyesight and steady hands
You will feel a difference of a few thousandths of a millimetre.
Basic computer comfort
Every modern tool room runs on software.
A 1-year college program
Shops sponsor graduates first.
Many tool designers, plant managers and shop owners in the auto belt started as toolmakers. Once you understand how a die is built you can design one in CAD (computer-aided design), quote jobs, or open a small shop with two machines and one customer. The aging workforce is opening those seats fast.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
In the tool room by 7am. Study the CAD (computer-aided design) model and drawings, then machine, grind and fit the steel blocks and components of a die or mould. Much of the day is slow, careful work: grinding a surface flat to a few thousandths of a millimetre, fitting parts by hand with a file and marking compound, checking with gauges. Near a launch you spend days at the press running tryout parts and shaving steel until the part comes out right.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
A set of dies to stamp a car door or hood can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes over a million. It then runs for years, so a mistake in the steel is a very expensive mistake.
Windsor and Essex County have one of the densest clusters of mould and tool shops in North America, built around the Detroit auto industry across the river.
Industry surveys have flagged tool and die for years as one of the oldest trades in Canada, with many toolmakers near retirement and too few apprentices behind them.
Toolmakers talk in tenths: ten-thousandths of an inch, about 0.0025 mm. That is thinner than plastic food wrap.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students.