I have a great Amish surplus store about 30 minutes from my house. Bolts by the pound but they also have some raw material on racks in the back.

Over the last few weeks I've spent some good money on raw materials for the shop. The pricing has been quite reasonable.

I bought two 1/2 x 2 3/8 x 24 3/8 ground flat bar. I checked it by grinding next to a known piece of 1018 and the sparks were identical.  $4.50 each

I bought 1" and 1.125" 2024 aluminum bar for $7 each. Both at 5 ft.

I bought bunches of cut off pieces of aluminum in various useful sizes and shapes.

Today I went back and spent another $150. This is what it got me....




The bars on the left are all they had of the 1018 flat stock. I have 10 pcs now.

Next is a mildly magnetic piece of stainless. I'm guessing 15-5. I won't be able to get confirmation so I'll use it where I don't need to heat treat.

Next is a 300 series stainless. Again,  I won't use it where I need a specific alloy beyond simple stainless. It has some patina so maybe 316. No detectable magnetism.


Next is two bars marked SS by the store, but I suspected they were something else. I Google T-9047 and realized they were titanium. Both bars cost me $54. The thin one is 6 ft x 1.125" diameter. The bigger one is around 1.5" diameter. Online metals list 1.25" x 72" at $855.

Next is two mystery steel bars. Both are ground finish and not cold rolled. Both are odd sizes. I'm guessing they are higher carbon steel. A spark test next to 1018 will tell me if they are higher carbon or not. I'd be happy if they were 1018. They are very magnetic. They could even be 400 series stainless but I'm guessing medium to high carbon. If I can't heat treat it limits their application. Better than not having any material to work with.


I also got 3 unused old bottles of Anchorlube, two of rapid tap, and Starret M1 oil.

What a huge day for my shop.

If that is titanium you can cut into billets and get all your money back on the bay

Yup!

My dad got some mystery metal that came in a lot of govt auction stuff (he was after something else in the lot). The pre cut billets were all marked with tracer numbers but that was it. In the bottom of the crate we found material certs with matching tracer numbers for Ti. Sold those billets as certified materiel (and shipped in flat rate boxes) for mucho dinero!

You really got the shaft. In titanium to boot.

I'm a machinist....lol. I'll make something out of it.

Form 1 time

Nice score!

Me too, but I rarely have cause for Ti so we sold all but a couple billets of it. A little Ti will fund a whole lot of Al, steel, & SS that will work equally well for my projects.

I have bough several hundred dollars worth of metal from Pine Valley.  Usually just a quick run during the day for a project I'm in the middle of and need something.  Often don't know what I'm looking for until I find it.  

There are no less than a dozen other shops in the area, but I prefer DJM, Pine Valley and of course Hemly.

Where is DJM?

Hemlys has sold me hundreds of pounds of tooling and bolts over the years. I wish they would start stocking the metric surplus bolts again. They really slowed down on surplus tooling too.

DJM is on Burton Windsor just east of 608.  Typical small sign, white building, amish place.  They sell a TON of belts, pulleys and drive line stuff to amish through the mail.  They sell steel by the pound and have cutoffs too.  I think they sell their scrap to pine valley like the other shops.  I've seen their name in marker on stuff at pine valley.

Cool. I'll have to check them out.

I bought some mildly magnetic stainless today. 1.25" x 33" for $13.50 each. I tried to find a color code with a mildly magnetic ss with a gold color code. I found 416L at PA Steel. It could very well be what it is. Let me know if you know of a ss that has the same properties.



I also bought a 77" long 1.5" diameter bar of Titanium too.....

I would really like to know exactly what the steel is but I can still use it for projects that don't require specific properties.

Most 400 series SS is slightly magnetic due to the iron content, those are ferritic. Martensitic and Duplex SS like 2205 and precipitation hardening grades like 17-4, 13-8, & 15-5 are as well. Basically all but the austenitic alloys (300 series) can be slightly magnetic to varying degrees, even some of the austenitics can become magnetic when cold worked or exposed to magnetism from an outside source.

The color code is practically useless unless you know what mill it came from. It gripes my ass that there is no industry standard for marking alloys, sometimes the vendor puts their own mark on it just to make it more confusing. Having said that I have Nitronic 50 and 17-4 with gold marking, the 17-4 in gold denotes the condition, H1150 in my case.

I've found that 420 and 440 are highly magnetic but that is after heat treat. I don't know about before heat treat.