Buying Pre-cut Coupons from the Local Steel Yard

I use cleaning vinegar, it's a little stronger than regular but as strong as muriatic acid. I have just washed it off with water, but boy does it rust in a hurry. Then I use a wheel on my angle grinder that is made with some stuff like Scotch Brite. I guess I should try making a solution of baking soda and see if that makes it better.
 
Another safer option is washing soda electrolysis. All you need is water, arm & hammer washing soda powder and a vehicle battery charger/power supply, along with some sacrificial steel. It produces a lot of gunk in the bucket/tank, but it's mostly just rust and other harmless carbonates. Look it up if you haven't already seen this.
 
I don't know what they are charging you to cut your coupons, but hot rolled flat bar stock is pretty cheap. At my local metal place I think a saw cut is around $8/cut so 2 cuts to make a 20 foot bar fit in my truck will almost double the price.

I'm just down the street from them so they will deliver for free even on my small orders so unless I can't wait a day or two I can buy full 20 foot pieces and cut it myself which has saved me a lot of money in cutting fees. The little HF bandsaw has paid for itself many times over in saved cutting fees.


On the vinegar, normal household vinegar is 4-8% but you can buy much stronger concentrations of 30-45% at most hardware stores.
 
Aaron_W said:
I don't know what they are charging you to cut your coupons, but hot rolled flat bar stock is pretty cheap. At my local metal place I think a saw cut is around $8/cut so 2 cuts to make a 20 foot bar fit in my truck will almost double the price.

I'm just down the street from them so they will deliver for free even on my small orders so unless I can't wait a day or two I can buy full 20 foot pieces and cut it myself which has saved me a lot of money in cutting fees. The little HF bandsaw has paid for itself many times over in saved cutting fees.


On the vinegar, normal household vinegar is 4-8% but you can buy much stronger concentrations of 30-45% at most hardware stores.
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In the case of Reliable Hardware in Santa Rosa using their humongous shearing machine to shear remnants, they charge an hourly rate. I get an experienced operator working on a machine that I could *never begin* to afford. Reliable Hardware is reasonable; they have never hit me hard in 25 years.

I really don’t have room for a bandsaw. I am saving room in the shop for 2 wire feed machines & a spool gun. If I were to buy anything beyond that, I wouldn’t have room to stand in my shop!

I get my hourly rate at my job because my customers don’t have the transportation network in place that UPS does. At some point, I will pay other professionals to do what they are tooled up to do. Believe me, the *time I save* from shearing my own metal is spent working OT.
 
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