Don't buy materials at a metal supplier! Get it at your local Scrap Yard!

If you live in or near and industrial city you will very like have a scrap yard or too where you will find the materials you need.

As long as the place is friendly to weekend "Scroungers", you should be able to find everything and anything there. The costs will plummet as you will be paying about 1/10 retail for Mild Steel, Stainless steel, Brass, and aluminum.
The material will come in the way of cut off from CNC machines and will be in short manageable pieces of stock which should be perfect for any scale model projects!

[davidchang]

This is one of the best tips I've ever seen

[BrendanMcAdams]

Thanks for this. Really helpful channel. Please keep posting!

[arcturusbbqsausagemaking]

Ya the price of steel today is outrageous !! I haven't Fabricated and welded for almost 20 years I went to my local steel supplier who has over 30.000.000 in stock an enormous place . the same length of tubing I bought 20 years ago for $9 is now $76 but they do have a big section of steel you can buy for a dollar a lb . its hard to make money people just dont want to pay for it plus my labor . great video

[lunardust]

Here in Oregon there is a hardware store, Parkrose Hardware, that actually sells aluminum cutoffs. They have sheets, bars, and round stock. It's pretty cool. I think though they charge $4 a lb though. So probably cheaper to find where they get their stock from and go there directly! They have sheets up to 1/2 inch thick!

[blargkliggle]

Skip the scrapyard and make friends with a repair shop, the one near me gave 300lbs of broken leaf springs for free. Repair shops usually have to pay for someone to take the scrap, if your nice about it they're usually happy to see it go.

[beetlebailey]

If you want a more heavy duty column you could build a wood model of that new column. Add material to the wall thickness. Work with someone on YouTube that does castings, see if they will cast it for you. Make sure your draft angles are 3-5 degrees. Cast with nodular cast iron.

[thatguythatdoesstuff]

My local scrap yards aren't that great. In many trips, my only find was a pallet of 1x2 (.125) rectangle tubing @ $0.35 a pound. That allowed me to build a welding cart and I have a bunch of it left over for other stuff as well.

Otherwise, I've mostly found stuff that is really only useful for recycling.

[AverageJoe]

And always poke around dead appliances, lots of usable stuff gets thrown out, recently I dismantled a toner cartridge to find several long very accurately round rods, no use for them now but, nice to find,
Cheers.

[danswrkshop]

Yeah I used to scrounge scrapyards but they are all afraid of liability so they've stopped allowing "shopping"

[wyoblacksmithtools]

New subscriber here.  I have found some great deals at salvage yards, but you can never really be sure which grade of steel, or any other metal, that you're getting.  Much of the time, it does not matter.  Some stainless is magnetic.  As for metal suppliers, my biggest complaint is shipping costs on short stock can be just as much as long stock.  Thanks for the video.

[eddietowers]

Yeah, I've never bought metal from any type of Metal supplier, I've always went to my scrap yard, here in CT. Where they don't charge you for what the item is, but what it weighs. No matter what! I bought 5 gallon bucket worth of cool looking scrap metal, which the smallest diameter was 2 inches, the biggest was 6 inches in diameter. While the shortest length was 6 inches, also, the longest was 2 feet and ranged from aluminum, steel, bronze, and stainless. I purchased a four hundred pound, 3 foot, 20 gauge Pexto sheet metal brake with 6, 5lb blocks, of 7075 aluminum for $100, last weekend! So, yeah, take Jose's advice and my word for it, better pricing at scrapyards, specially since the Asians aren't buying much metal from us, (just keep your kids in check, if not at home).

[pierresgarage]

Got the similar story about not being able to scrounge around in the yard, a couple of assholes just set fire in a big bin by flame cutting no more outsiders allowed in the premises, from that :(((

[philcook]

I am enjoying all your videos, but using a magnet to identify stainless steel will not work with a 400 series alloy stainless because it is magnetic.

[BedsitBob]

That slug of "brass or bronze" looks more like copper.