I'm fortunate enough to have a fab shop near my house. He'll sell me steel at his cost just so he can get high order weight up and get the steel cheaper. Good for him good for me.

i wish i could live in a country like US. It is truly blessed by god and by hardworking people

Great tips, they are valid here in Norway as well. BTW I love your homested, it looks like a great place to live. And thank you for all of your informative videos, they are a great inspiration for me to learn and try to do different blacksmith projects. Stay safe and wear your safety glasses😊

It's great when it can be delivered. It always costs half a day when I make a trip to the steel shop.

Wow. SO. Much. Cheaper. That's about 1/2 as much as I pay for that type of material here in the Bay Area, California.

what a beautiful place you live sir

This is some good advice on the comparison of steel prices. Thanks fer the video

As usual some very good information in this video, I like the way you think ahead to decide how to buy and handle the steel you buy. Those cordless tools sure are great, no stringing out air hoses or electric cords, just make sure you have a charged battery or two.

I use old square axels for farming discs for my hardy shanks, they are perfect for my anvil and they are hardenable

It was cool to see the candelabra still as a work-in-progress in the final shot! Felt like an easter egg.

I got very lucky. My steel yard is about 3 blocks from my house!

My able dad I love you. Thanks for sharing with us your great ideas..

Thanks! never would have said I was blessed to be living in a big city. I actually think bulk fuels (propane/coal/coke/charcoal...) can be harder to near impossible to find.

Thanks. If you find old steel porch railings that are being replaced, you can get some 1/2 inch square stock in a very handy length. Even the ones with the cheap twisted flats can be untwisted to make 1/2 x 1/8 bar w/ radius edge. Splitting them makes heart hooks easily with a jig.

That’s where I always buy my high carbon steel, McMaster Car. The shipping is expensive but seems to be good besides that. Here the next day.

Thanks for sharing with us John, great information on buying steel when you live in the boonies. Thanks for sharing with us, stay safe and keep up the fun you have around there. Fred.

Ha! That cat sticker on the window behind you startled me. I was scanning your wall looking at your tools as I always do 😂

Around here, the steel supply house that used to deliver had to stop delivering to residences because HOAs complained about their truck in neighborhoods. So, even though I live in the country, I can't get them to deliver. But compared to buying short, over-priced lengths at the home supple stores, it's no big deal to drive an hour or so to pick it up. I usually pay to have them cut it.

I like to visit our local metal supply store and pick up much cheeper drops. Great for beginning smiths to save some money.

"You deliver to me?! Now that is some old-fashioned service!" *Arrives on site, backs it up to the shop, immediately flings it from a waist-high convenient level to the ground. "Yep, that's more like it."

I like the video. Great job.

Been getting ripped off by Home Depot for years but I already knew that.

very good info

This video is pretty well-timed for me. Currently, I'm struging to find a good material supplier. I've been trying to avoid shipping since i do have local (and fairly accessable) options, but they seem to have limited types and not the typesi want, at least so far. I tend to try to support local companies, but maybe thanks to this i'll give shipping a look.

Just one other thought about sourcing steel (which I am certain that you already know): Many welding and fab shops will sell "drops" (off-cuts from their production) at reasonable prices. One other source: Guys like me who are retired hobbyist blacksmiths who have acquired a lot of stock and don't really have a good way to get rid of it. So, I suggest that your viewers consider talking to the folks in the various blacksmith clubs around the US at least, to find guys like me.

I always buy my steel from a local fabrication shop , they know what I use the most of and generally keep it in stock. Since I've done business with them for several years they give me a little bit of a break.

I would love to see a steel price comparison from a few years ago

When people see the scrap pile in my yard they think it's something I should give away for free , but I tell them what you may think is junk and clutter I see as unorganized merchandise , I tell them if I give you that short piece of steel then when I need it and don't have it , I have to take the time and fuel to travel to the metal yard to buy more than I need just to have that piece of steel back again , not to mention at a higher price than what I bought the other piece for. I'm not an old scrooge and will help people out in a pinch , but those drops , those pieces make up for those jobs I may have under bid , and also I use them sometimes in a future job to keep the price down a bit for my customer. I kinda pay it forward in that way.

nice info to know

In Denmark it's almost impossible to find steel from a supplier or hardware store as a private individual. There are almost no physical stores that carry steel and very few online stores that will ship 1 meter lengths at a steep mark-up. Once you're a registered business, large steel suppliers make it really easy. I order online, they deliver next day with a crane and invoice me. They charge by the kg (Anywhere from 2-5 USD pr kg mild steel) and will usually do free delivery over a certain amount (Orders over 3500 DKK where I order). Hardenable steels are very limited. We get C45 (1045), spring steel and Silversteel at larger supliers (70-130 dkk pr kg). Anything else you typically have to go to a specialized knifemaker material supplier.

Interesting, greetings from Toledo , Spain...

For small cross sections of steel i find the big box stores work out cheaper for me, as they sell it in 2m lengths. I dont have the ability to transport the 6m lengths the steel yards will sell me, and the steel yards charge $4 a cut, they will not let you cut it yourself on site, so an extra $8 on top of the list price for the steel for that 6m length. As it is already in lengths i can transport, that makes the big box stores steel cheaper for small cross sections.

I live about an hour out of Pittsburgh PA a.k.a. Steel city and I haven't really looked. Is for a steel distributor .I've just been using junkyard steels. But I have no idea what kind of steel it is. I did but a piece of 1/4 round from tractor supply and it was like $6 for a 3' piece.

Another entertaining video. I live in rural CO. We don’t have much in the way of shopping. The closet Home Depot is 50 miles away. But we have a steel yard. I can get scrap for .50 a pound or new for about a dollar a foot.

Plan to see Jason this saturday at the fire on the mountain blacksmithing festival

I live in Northern Colorado. I get my steel from Small Town Metal. His stick are 12 feet. It's not as inexpensive as your but it is a whole lot cheaper than the big Store price. I get my tool steel from Oleo Acres. They are also here in Colorado.

Here in the UK I pay the equivalent of $8.50 for a 6m length of 10mm round black steel - about the same as 20ft of 3/8". Delivery is free if I spend over £150, though, and the driver lifts one end of the metal and helps me carry it into the yard.

I wish I could have it delivered. In too rural apparently.

I'm a long way past this video nowadays, but when I was a newbie, man oh man I would have loved this info... I drive 200 miles to buy 12L14 for machinist steel too.

Great advice. Looking forward to seeing you in May.

I appreciate you breaking down the specifics. Also, when the guy was unloading, I felt sure there would be timbers to keep off the ground and make it much easier to pick up with a forklift to carry to your rack. Didn't see any. Thanks for the video.

Man I really am fortunate having an affordable place 20 minutes up the road. I made a pretty blacksmithing hammer for each of the boys in the back at Apel Steel. They will give me most any “drop” as they call them for free after that. (The random left over off cuts that are in the way and gets stacked behind their stock routes. So lots of different alloy pieces that are like 6” or less in length. But all different sizes good for making dies and striking anvils and whatever out of)

That hand held metal saw sure made short work of that bar - fast than an angle grinder or a portaband, and I assume it leaves a nice edge.

Great job. Thank you 😊

seems we are in a similar position for steel supplies, my local one is far enough away to make it a day trip and to buy more exotic stuff I need to be buying mail order too... I use scrap steel sometimes and wrought iron a lot, and I collect that from various sources but again its usually a day trip and in those cases well worth spending the time .....even better if I combine that with buying stock.

I seen a new way to make tongs from peter Collins called the Collins tongs seems like a great way to make 5 or 6 sets of tongs you only have to make 1 1/2 of the tongs I'm 53 yrs old and been welding for 16 yrs just getting into blacksmithing as a hobby and makes little cash

First to comment want to thank you for all that you share

Recently got a job at a steel warehouse. I can buy and cut my own material at a 20% discount. Hopefully gonna use this as an effective method to get started in blacksmithing.

with doing alot of this its really hard to factor in all costs! at the end of the day you still gotta cover your fuels and materials and maybe get a little labor in there! special order pieces is where you can make back atleast 3/4 your labor! that i think is fair!

Is Midwest better run now that Darrell is in charge?

I haven't done the figuring lately to see if it is still the same, but before steel prices went crazy the price per pound was nearly the same no matter the size.

It sounded like a lot of money until you broke it down into individual projects. Thank you for sharing. Have a great day and stay safe.🙂🙂

That delivery fee actually seems pretty reasonable for the amount you bought. Factoring in your time, cost of gasoline, and wear and tear on your vehicle (l just recently bought $1,000.00 dollars worth of steel for a railing project and it came in at a whopping 800 lbs) you were likely spending that anyway. This way your producing sooner.

Yes of course those home centres prices are higher . They buy it for what your getting it and they need to make money so they have a mark up on that steel. its interesting to see that the US steel prices are similar to what we pay out here, down here, Australia. I'd love to know what your S7 tool steel costs say for 2" and 3" dia's. Out here S7 tool steel with a dia of 3" is $700 odd dollars for a 1 mt length ( just over a yard in imperial).

What model cordless chop saw is that??? I can see i am going to need one of those:)

I might have missed it, was the $1070+/- including shipping, or was the shipping on top of that?

I feel lucky. Ironworker by trade so I get my hands on steel all the time for free. All mild and in structural forms, but hey free is free

How much did it weigh? I recently got hold of 600lbs of all sorts of new old stock from a machine shop which was tidying up. Got it for $1 per lb, pretty chuffed about that. PS. The ordinary price here in Norway is quadruple that. I did the math on your 3/8" 20ft piece, and it came in under a dollar per pound?

If a delivery guy unloaded my order like that, several people would get their asses handed to them. It may not matter for blacksmithing, but having all my new metal start out bent from that drop is not acceptable. You guys in more rural areas have advantages having steel yards that will actually deal with you. I'm in a more industrial area (which you would think would be good), which means they only deal with industrial customers and quantities. One company bought out all the suppliers in the area, and you can't get a deal there without a commercial account. They operate a few "outlet" shops that sell "prime" stock and drops. The prime stock is priced almost to the penny the same as McMaster delivered (they know the competition). So the only real thing to shop there are drops. It's hit or miss what you may find at any time. Here, there is very little steel (essentially no bar stock ever), a lot of aluminum and plastic. It's useful for some things. But for mild steel bar stock, you are pretty much screwed without a registered business. For tool steels, yeah, that's a McMaster thing for sure.

Why do you have your steel exposed to the elements? I don't do a lot of metal work mostly fabrication stuff but I really don't like cleaning surface rust. I guess you probably don't have to worry about that, rust probably falls right off.

Просто оболдеть какое интерестное видео как вам привезли сталь и вы ее порезали и сложили на подставку' ну надо же как интерестно' я смотрю вас уже 3 года ничего полезного крючки да подсвечники 'кто у вас там такую ерунду покупает' кому это вообще надо?

John. u are Hurting my back bending over to cut that material up get some horses old tables skid steer what ever and set up a makeshift cutting station ???

What about scrapyards in america? Did they sell scrap? Here we have simply a guy who buy scrap from around to sell for recycle in quantity. So, he with pleasure will sell you everything you find in his pile. Usual price is some double of scrap price. And all industrial leftovers are wery well situed for hobbist's smithy

I have a Metal Supermarkets near me , I stop by time to time to look though the drop /dump bin . some times I only need small flat bar or something , they charge $1.00 per pound . Also smaller Machine shops could be a good place to check into, they order steel and most of the time they may just add what you need and you pay them and could have it cut by them into what ever you need/can handle.