A few months back, I met the owner of a large CNC machine shop. He was interested in getting into the model engine building hobby in his home machine shop. And during the ensuing discussion, I mentioned how difficult it is to find materials to build scratch-built engines. I told him that our local machine shops, although they have cut-offs in their scrap pile, that they end out selling them for scrap price, I have never found one willing to sell these pieces to me. I guess they just don't want to be bothered.
Suddenly last week, the friend who had introduced me to this gentleman, and who does business with him, called and said he had something for me. When I went over to his place of business to see what it was, he unloaded this pallet of material. It turns out that the owner of the CNC shop told them they were cleaning out a section of the shop, and he put all of this material on a pallet to give to me!
There was well over 1000 pounds of different materials, including brass, copper, aluminum, steel, and a large quantity of 303 stainless. I really never worked with stainless, but I guess it's time to learn! Anyhow, it took me an evening to clean off some shelf space and put it all away. But, this should give me material for many, many projects in the future. One of the odder materials on the pallet was some solid copper rod, probably 1.5" diameter. I wonder what they used that for, and wonder even more what I'll use it for, but I'm sure that it will come in handy, sooner or later.
It was a very pleasant surprise, and the price was certainly right!
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