You ever find metal stock in weird places?

hawkeye i found a cresent wrench on the road that said metric down the handle
I used to have fun sending guys to my box to get me my metric cresent wrench
they would not believe me until i'd go get it and show them
i just picked up a 15lb new looking (bent now ) anchor off the road today
steve
 
bcall2043 said:
I learned the hard way about used bed rails which often end up in the "free pile" on the last afternood of yard sales. I gathered and put probably about 8 or 10 sets in the materials pile before I found a project for them. Then I discovered that welding bed rails is riskey and drilling holes in them will cost you about one sharp drill per hole. They are often very hard unknownium alloy. I now mostly walk past bed rails even if they are free.

Benny
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I wish there were some free ones I could walk past! :huh:

The only times I've ever seen yard sales where I live there's always been just clothes and furniture.

I love bed rails for projects but I have to buy them new from the bedding store; still a lot cheaper than buying regular angle iron from Home Depot.

I certainly agree about the cutting and drilling, although I don't have any trouble MIG welding it. I use an abrasive chop saw for cutting and I don't even bother trying to drill it.

I design whatever project I'm doing so that I can weld on a tab of regular steel where I need a hole then drill a hole in that.


M
 
a friend owns a auto repair and saves me shocks and struts. i cut them open at first but after breaking a bandsaw blade a couple times i just cut the shafts off now. it's nice metal sometimes a foot long up to an 1" and machines well i'm not sure if it would heat treat it seems soft when it cuts
steve
 
Saw a tape measure in the middle of a 4 lane highway this afternoon, and the light was red. I told my wife that if it had been a name brand tape measure I'd take the risk and jump out and pick it up. It wasn't.
I used to walk at lunch with a buddy of mine and he picked up a piece of steel once that was about an inch and a half thick by 3 by 18 inches.
 
Watched warehouse personnel toss a piece of 1-1/2 x 8 x 60" long 1018 CRS flat bar into the dumpster. Me and the test well techinican went dumpster diving and retrieved that flat bar. That was about 15 years ago. I still have most of that flat bar left. I wittle a piece off of it every now and then to make stuff out of.:biggrin:
 
I've picked up lots of material and tools on the roadside over the years. Mostly adjustable wrenches, pipe wrenches and screwdrivers. I've even returned some to the owners if they were marked. Found a 24" aluminum pipe wrench last year that was marked with a local company name and tool number. When I returned it they said it had been stolen several years before.
 
I find these at curbside all the time:

Discarded barbells - 5-6' of 1" diameter easy to machine round stock

Brass fireplace tool sets - sometimes 2-3' of 1/2" brass per tool!


Printers/scanners - - really nice precision ground rods up to 3/8"
 
I walk to work (just a mile) so I often find junk on the side of the road. My wife and I go every Saturday to yard sales. Its our time together then we do lunch and sometimes a movie after. Mostly see clothes and house junk but often a good find. This weekend I found a nice railroad light for $1.00 and 2 wide brim pith helmets for $2.00. Best find this year has to be a pencil box with about 20+ little metal rods in it. Each rod was about 5" and little orange or green band around one end. The lady wanted $00.25 for the box. :) You guessed it TIG electrodes. I'll never need to buy any.

Jeff
 
Charley Davidson said:
Found one of these on the road todayTurned around & picked it up & tossed it in my bed, A guy hollers at me from across the street, "That's my cord, it fell off my truck when a toolbox door opened :angry:
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Ever hear the saying, "Finders Keepers, Loosers Weepers"? I might of had to tell him that as I drove off!
 
I've been picking up "materials" off the side (or middle) of the road since... well, as long as I can remember. Some of my first memories are of riding around with my grandfather in his pickup truck (late '60s early '70s). He always had a "hay hook" in the passenger side so when we came across a bale that had fallen off the rack he would hook it and throw it in the back of the truck. Heck, I still have a tool box we found and a number of other tools/items I've picked up over the years.

Guess I was born in to it :biggrin:

-Ron
 
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