I seem to be living in a steel desert. Although there are several steel stockists around Blackpool and Preston, they seem to only sell in 6m (or 7.5m) lengths. So when I am looking to buy a piece of 25x100mm flat stock or a length of 130mm round, there is a problem.
I thought I'd cracked it when I looked at the B&M Steel website. They almost sound public friendly...
...but you'd be wrong. The guy said they would cut my 6m length for free and you don't have to take more than you need. But you'd still have to pay for the full length. What a joker.
The next best hope is to find a fabricator or machine shop that would sell cutoffs or short lengths. I found a couple of these locally but generally fabricators don't deal with the sizes I'm after. I rang a few steel fabricators and stockists but so far I have yet to find somewhere suitable. The search will have to continue.
So I swallowed my pride and bought some steel from Jenkins Steel Online. Basically you pay £18 per item for carriage, plus the cost of the steel itself (about £1.10 - 1.20 per kg). The order was processed yesterday and arrived today by Parcelfarce 24.
This is what £98 of steel looks like:
One issue I hadn't anticipated was the challenge of how to cut 130mm dia bar in a 110mm capacity bandsaw. It bottoms out before the bar is parted.
The whole cut took 36 minutes.
As well as the round bar, I got 500m of 25x100mm for the tool setting fixture. This should allow me to make some chips again:
The startled man, he say yeh!!
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