So true.

I too need to kick the habit too, except for unfeasibly expensive large lumps for large jobs.

I've got the equivalent of 3 or 4 filing cabinet drawers full of potentially useful bits. Which, truth to tell, only realistically come in handy a few times a year.

Objectively I do the worst of both worlds. Buy for anything of respectably predictable size and keep all the crap I shall, most likely, never use.

Old farts like me still remember when getting materials in small quantities at affordable, or even un-affordable prices was all but impossible. Access to works scrap bins being a prized privilege.

I suppose the real answer is a modest collection of known offcuts in useful sizes. Once full the box is periodically refreshed when a "more useful than whats already in the box" size arrives with the least useful being binned. Instead of starting another box. So far I've tried twice resulting in dismal failures. I guess I'm a born pack-rat.

Clive

I quite often use scrap material, but only if it is about correct dimension and it machines OK. I can't really see a problem if you keep to those rules.

Andrew.

I do as Andrew. Most of the scrap I get for free from a milling, turing and welding shop and they tend to use S355 steel which machines OK. If I find the steel unsuitable I just return it to the skip. Some of the Cast Iron I use come from old disc brakes, it is fine grained and machines well. Certainely not as expensive as ordering online.

Thor

My steel / iron stock of known flavours would probably weigh in at a ton or more but my first port of call for a new job is invariably the four large hoppers of scrap under one of the benches. I get a kick out of turning a rusty lump of tat into a useful tool or model part. For me it is all part of the pleasure !

Rik (eying up a sash weight for the pair of pistons I need) .

I needed some material for a small solid flywheel, it was either going to be brass or stainless; my brother in law worked at a local engineering company before he retired and they used the full spectrum of stainless alloys from 316 to hastelloy and inconel. He said he would get me a bar end of 316 from one of the autos, he duly arrived with a 3 inch diameter blank about 3 inches in length, just what I needed. When I came to machine it I couldn’t touch it with a HSS tool I had to use carbide tooling and wind the speed up to remove any material, the finish I got was good. I think the reason that it was so hard to machine was because it was a bar end from an auto which obviously cuts at high speed generating a lot of heat subsequently work hardening the material adjacent to the cut area. The provenance of the bar end was not clear, it had no material ident, it could have been some other stainless alloy which might have been a difficult proposition for machining anyway. I think the moral is try to obtain materials with a known provenance, it can make life easier.
Dave W

Nothing wrong with scrap and off cuts, but if you know what they are it helps, some are best left in the bin.

Mike

You learn a lot about different materials, but it can waste a lot of time concerning the learning curve

The time lost has been largely made up with new skills using an angle grinder and welder which allow me to fabricate some pretty ridiculous projects

It's about what floats your boat really

Some guys just cut out the middle bit and buy a fully built model steam loco while other guys spend 6 years of their lives putting one together

Picking stuff out of the skips at work can cause problems.

That 1 metre length of 3" diameter CZ121 brass* very nearly crippled me.

*Marked on the bar, complete with purchase order number…

As a clock builder making clocks from scratch I need to work out the design of various parts and assemblies. This means that I more or less have to use materials from my collection of scrap. it's one thing buying new materials for the worked out design but while I'm getting to that point it can get very expensive, especially when bits get made a couple of times to get things right. If I was making published designs unchanged tghings might be different but there is not point (to me anyway) to make yet another example of John Wildings sleleton clock unchanged from all the others at any model engineering show…….

But then, I have always made stuff from choice scrap and clock making is a rather expensive hobby. It's quite usual for the new materials for a nordinary clock project to cost about two hundred pounds. A couple of years back I met a chap at the Ally Pally show who told me that he had spent so much on the materials for clock build that he had never had the courage to start on it. I recently met another clock maker who complained that the brass and gold plating for his new clock build had cost over two thousand pounds…….Admittedly it will be a very nice and very expensively valued clock but, personally, I can't afford to do this.

My first clock had suspension spring made from old feeler gauge, screws made from supermarket trolly dumped in Epping Forest, pendulum rod made from stainless coat hanger and other bits turned from an old ball valve rod…..even so it turned out to be an expensive clock!

What no-one seems to mention is the added machining time, i.e. electricity, that might be incurred, especially if you have to anneal that nice shiny come-on-handy near-ingot you found.

Or wasted solder and gas if what you thought was some sort of brass or gunmetal, was – but not the sort it appeared.

(Been there, done that… I learnt later it was almost certainly an aluminium-bronze, as tough as old boots to drill and impossible to silver solder properly.)