We all seemed to have ignored Darren's initial question, so I will try to give a little info on how to go about buying metal in the correct places. Of course, this is in bulk, normally 13ft lengths. But a little more about that later.
Darren is a little isolated in where he lives, so finding a wholesale supplier locally could be a problem.
The first way is to consult your yellow pages, and search for, yes you guessed it, local wholesale metal suppliers. Get on the phone, and see if they do cash sales on a pick up basis. If they do, time to get on your bike, and see what they have to offer. They will normally chop it up for you into lengths you can handle. So pay the man, tie the metal to your bike, and away you go. While you are there, ask him if he has any offcuts. A lot of workshops may ask for lengths to be delivered in the correct size, so say they have asked for 9ft 6", that will mean, 3ft 6" left over from a 13ft length. The customer might have been charged the cost of the full length, and these offcuts can usually be picked up very cheaply, sometimes for the price of a pint. Don't ask in the office, ask the man on the shop floor if possible, the one who cuts your metal up. He is the one who will take the back hander, the office will try to charge you full price.
If no metal wholesalers are nearby, find a small machining shop within striking distance from your area. They must use a metal supplier. Take a few samples of your work along if possible, and grovel and plead that you are having trouble getting materials locally, and could they help you out, by getting what you want added to their next order. It will not cost them any more as they are having a delivery anyway, and if you can get in with a small shop owner, they might even let you have their bar ends at very reasonable prices. I used this method for most of my time in model engineering, unfortunately the small shop I dealt with finally closed down, after the owner retired. I also used to help him out. If say cutters that were too large for me to use came into my possession, I would give them to him for use in his shop. That went a very long way to keeping him sweet, and we ended up as good mates. I had full access to his whole wholesale empire, from bearing to o-rings, and it saved me a fortune over the years. Imagine up to 75% discount on bearings over normal engineering outlets.
When in work, I used to use Aalco for non ferrous supplies.
http://www.aalco.co.uk/index.htmlThey have a nationwide delivery service and can usually get a small order dropped off on their way to a big customer.
This was a few years ago, and don't know if they still do deliveries to private addresses, you would need to make a phone call to your nearest depot to find out if they will deal with you.
All of the above methods work, I know I have used them. You should be able to get your bulk materials at least 50% cheaper than buying from a retail outlet, most times, even cheaper.
So now back to how I do it nowadays. You will need storage areas for the scrap and junk that comes in, and to store the recycled materials.
This is how it normally comes in from good friends and contacts. This is now a depleted area, after having a couple of good sessions with my power hacksaw. All junk and scrap is gratefully accepted
This is what it turns into. Very good usable material in all shapes and sizes. Even a 1" length is not wasted, it will come in for a job one day. Whatever cannot be processed is discarded down the local tip into their metal bins.
This is what I told you about in my previous post. 120 feet of stainless rod for just over 20 squid. That works out to less than 20p per foot. From a retailer, most probably 5 times that much.
This is how I do my inside storage bins. All this lot has come from my favourite scrapyard. Maybe the wrong size or shape for doing a job, but because it is so cheap, I can machine it down to whatever size I require. Get what you can, when you can.
This is my heavy metal box. Alsorts go into here, just looking at this pic I can see a lump of titanium, an old pulley from a Myford ML2 lathe, rods off an old cot, a defunct vice that can provide some good cast iron, nothing is safe in my hands, if it can have a future use, it goes into my rollout storage boxes.
For stuff that is too large or heavy to be stored inside, goes into my outside stash. This is just a 5 foot long plastic box, and has come to the rescue of a lot of modellers over the years, supplying that elusive bit of material that is either too expensive or difficult to obtain elsewhere. You can see that there are even long lengths of copper tube, ideal for making boilers. I gave up making boilers a few years ago, but I still keep it in there, just in case someone else needs a piece.
Remember the barter system, you help me, I help you. Value doesn't come into it, give me something I need, even if it costs only a few pennies or even nothing, you can have a piece of copper pipe worth maybe a 50 squid. No skin off my back, as long as it isn't earmarked for something I want to do.
So really, if you have a little storage space, a little cheek to ask for things, and a load of good friends around you, there is no need to get involved with those expensive retail outlets.
Bogs
