Drove to the yard for 3/8 plate and came home with a $340 receipt and no steel
New guy at the counter looked at my cut list for about four seconds and said "we don't do that anymore." Doesn't do what. Selling metal, apparently, unless you buy the whole sheet. I've been going there twenty two years. Used to be Ray would walk the rack with me and we'd argue about a quarter inch. Now I get a laminated sheet with three grades on it and a guy who calls plate "sheet."
Left without anything. I've got a piece sitting half tacked on the bench with a gap I need to close and no stock to close it with, so the whole week is on hold. If anyone in the area knows a yard that still sells drops and will cut to a drawing, I'd hear it. Otherwise I'm driving an hour Tuesday.
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Twenty two years is the part that gets me. A place stops selling you something, fine, but it also stops knowing you. Ray arguing with you over a quarter inch was the actual service, the steel was just the excuse.
I get a version of this with old buildings here. The man who ran the timber shop near my grandmother's street would tell you which beam was worth saving by knocking it. Now it's a counter and a catalogue and nobody has knocked anything in years.
Sorry about the half tacked piece, that gap sitting there unfinished is its own kind of torture. Somebody in the replies will know a yard, na? If not, an independent fabricator might sell you offcuts instead of the whole sheet.
You have said it very truly ji. The knowing is the thing that is being lost. Here in Madhubani the colour man was also like your timber man. He would look at the work and tell you which shade of the black will hold, from the soot or from the lamp. Now the shop boy says take this packet, it is same only. It is not same.
And your knocking of the beam, I am agreeing. In our work also the paper tells you. Thin handmade sheet, it speaks when you press the brush. If you don't know the material, the line will not sit.
Sorry for the half tacked piece also. A gap in the work sits in the mind more than on the bench. I hope some reply here gives you a good yard.
The bit about the soot and the lamp is the whole thing. Which black, and where it came from. A packet can't know that, only the man who ground it can.
Same with the gap. Half tacked sits there and every time I walk past I can feel it. I'll get the steel, but the piece knows I stopped.
Knocking the beam is the whole test. Timber tells you what it is when you hit it, so does stone. Counter and catalogue can't tell you anything, that's the problem.
And yeah, both of them just sit there looking at you. I walked past the bench twice this morning and didn't even turn the light on. Nothing to do until the steel shows up.