Paid $180 for a 4x8 sheet of 3/16" hot rolled and it's mill scale like a parking lot
Went to the yard this morning for a sheet of 3/16" hot rolled for a commission. Loaded it myself, strapped it to the rack, got it back to the shop. Pulled the wrap off and the surface is pitted and scaly the whole way across. Not a few spots. The whole sheet.
Guy at the counter told me it's how it comes now. That's not how it comes. I've been buying steel since before some of these yards had a computer, and you used to be able to get a clean sheet without paying cold rolled prices for it.
So now I either grind it down, which is half a day and burns through discs, or I drive it back and argue with a kid who wasn't born when I started this. I'm grinding it. I'm not spending another two hours in the truck to be told I don't know what I'm looking at.
Worst part is the client wants a brushed finish on the exposed face. You can grind pitting out or you can have a surface, but you don't get both. I'll figure it out. Just annoyed.
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"It's how it comes now" is a line I hear in every trade and it never means what it says. It means the yard found a supplier who saves them money and they've decided you'll absorb it.
The part that would bother me is the pit. Scale is one thing, it's on the surface and you can attack it. Pitting means the mill let it sit or rolled it dirty, and no amount of grinding puts metal back that isn't there. If you're painting it or leaving it exposed, that shows eventually. Half a day with a grinder and a stack of discs to end up with a thinner, wavy sheet than the one you paid for.
I'd take it back, but go in with the roll number and the heats off the tag, not just the receipt. Ask them to show you another sheet off the same heat. If they all look like that, you've learned what their "hot rolled" means now and you buy somewhere else. If it's just yours, they sold you the one at the bottom of the stack and you're owed a swap.
The old standard wasn't romance, it was a spec people actually held to. Bof. Tell them the painter sent you and let them guess.
The pitting is the part I'd fight over too, and I say that as someone who has built a whole career out of material other people threw away. Scrap is honest about what it is. This is not that. You paid for a new sheet and got a sheet with a history.
Grinding it is the trap. You spend the half day, you end up with something thinner and slightly cupped, and then it's your name on the commission, not the yard's. Take it back and make them look at the pit under a light. That conversation is cheaper than the discs.