Sources for free steel

[Stuart Fedak]

Text removed as information is no longer current

[Phil Waterman]

Hi Stuart

You are right on track, old bed frame stock is something that should never go to the dump if you do any welding at all. If you cut the rivets you can reduce the storage space for a couple of old bed frames to almost nothing.

Stuff welds great, now as to want projects have I used it for, fuel can rack on one of the trucks, auxiliary steps.

Now of course there is the question of using the correct period steel for the age of your truck. The old bed frames 1930's to 1960's are true angle iron cold rolled with a sharp corner. Some time in the 1970's the started to go over to stuff that is bent and cut from flat sheet stock so that it has a radius edge.

Cheers Phil

[rob love]

Some of my favorite "free steel" over the years has been the military 6 foot pickets. For some reason, sections seem to send them to the dump when they get dusty. I have even seen brand new ones, still strapped together on their pallets, tossed out.

Although they have those annoying notches every foot or so, I have always found them to be a good source of angle iron, and somewhat authentic for military purposes at that.

[chris vickery]

In my business it is crazy what you see go to scrap.
Often on large industrial projects, machinery and the like has all kinds of shipping braces, blocking etc that when installed, becomes a one time use item and goes into the bin.
The same goes for things like shipping crates, boxes, pallets, new 55gal plastic drums etc.
More than one Redneck on our jobsites has ended up with a free dock/shed/ outhouse etc made out of cast offs....
On the last major job I was on, I could have had all the 55gal drums I wanted for nothing, black plastic and only contained clean mineral oil once.

[maple_leaf_eh]

Chris - I see your wooden pallets and raise you a Harley Davidson steel pallet. The local HD dealer used to receive the new bikes from Milwaukee on a 3' x 8' galvanized steel pallet. One time use indeed. I have 4 edge to edge as the floor for my shed, and another one became the floor for my garbage can shed.

[chris vickery]

Terry, I see your H-D pallet floor and raise you an entire Honduran mountain village made from our Company shipping crates and steel sheathing from containers... No B.S. true story.
One of my friends was sent to work there a few years ago for a span of a couple months in the dense mountain jungles assembling a substation on the mountainside.
Most of the labour was local villagers who continually asked for the scrap stuff. Each night the peasants would lash all kinds of crap onto carts, burros what have you and haul it all away.
On his last evening there, he was invited to the village which resembled a large shipping yard, full of re-assembled crates with steel roofs, Company logos still stencilled on the sides and doors and windows simply cut out of the plywood. Add in some misc scrounged wire and some electrical components and there was even rudimentary lighting.