[WNYMike]

Had my HF 4x5 mini lathe for almost a week now and its really great! Brings back the days of when I was younger (much younger) and watched my grandfather in his basement machine shop. It was quite a set up, 3 lathes, 2 drill presses, milling machine, arbor presses, to name a few things. On his death my brother acquired it all as he was the "machinist" in the family. He had no interest in it, so sold it all for like a 12-pack.

Learned a lot from him (my grandfather that is), wish he was still around... oh well back to my question.

I am looking for a good online source for round stock to work with. I have checked out www.speedymetals.com, any other suggestions for good prices where I will not get floored with shipping prices? Mainly looking for aluminum.
Mike

[TroyO]

Ebay can be good... do a search for the type of metal and then assortment IE: Aluminum Assortment

There's lots of vendors using the USPS flat rate boxes so you can get a lot shipped for about $15.

Kind of on the same topic... I've had decent luck getting stuff online but sometimes you just want to not have to wait for it.... how do you find local vendors that have off the shelf stock in retail quantities?

I tried searching the yellow pages and stuff for Metal, metal working supply, and most of the other obvious terms. I get mostly recycling centers, construction supply places and a couple of sheet metal suppliers.

Any suggestions what I can look for? I get the feeling there's some term that those in the biz use that I'm not using.

Or, perhaps some of those places I am finding actually have what I am looking for? Do the recycling centers usually have a place with piles of drops and odds and ends you can pick through?

[knudsen]

http://www.littlemachineshop.com/Info/OnlineMetals.php

Hobby/craft and home improvement stores often have small diameter brass, aluminum and steel. Steel and brass turns fine, never tried the Al.

[hojpoj]

The Aluminum you get at the big box stores is pretty gummy, I wouldn't recommend it (from my own experience, anyways).

You may also want to check with the scrapyards around where you're at. One of them in my area sells to the public, and there's some nice offcuts (or even full bars) of metal stock sitting on their racks

[bodysnatcher]

try these

http://www.industrialmetalsales.com/index.html

http://www.onlinemetals.com/

bill z

[knudsen]

The latter link Bill posted is the same place as I posted, but my link goes through LMS. I don't know this to be true, but just a guess, that if you go through the LMS site to get to online metals, LMS gets a kickback. I would like to keep LMS in business. It must be tough running a hobby based biz in CA these days. I would cry if it went under. I cried a little just when the web site died for a few days last year Online has good prices, but not always cheapest. Compared to speedy, it just depends on what you need.

[sansbury]

Admiral Metals has an "outlet store" where they sell offcuts by the pound. I am lucky enough to have one within driving distance, but I am pretty sure they will ship items for you.

http://www.admiralmetals.com/Metalwe...tlet_store.jsp

Another thing you will sometimes see advertised are "screw machine ends." These are leftovers, usually less than 6" long and 1" diameter, from machines that get fed by 6' bars.

[knudsen]

Admiral Metals has an "outlet store" where they sell offcuts by the pound. I am lucky enough to have one within driving distance, but I am pretty sure they will ship items for you.

Yes they will:

Admiral even has a retail outlet, the Metal Source, in northeastern Massachusetts, to accommodate walk-in business for small orders. Since its inception, this service has been ideal to fill the needs of engineers, hobbyists, artists, and machine shop owners. After serving as a one-stop, cash-and-carry operation for many years, Metal Source will now ship any size order via UPS. There's no minimum order; our menu of raw metals and shapes is available in small lots - even single units - in full lengths and random pieces.

Thanks for the link, bookmarked!