having troublle finding stock

Mike Davis

Mike Davis

Joined
Feb 7, 2006
Messages
1,327
i cant seem to find any good steel distributors here in my area. do you guys know where i can find 1095,1080,15n20? i can find lots of o-1 and d2 but thats about it. any info is helpful.
thanks
p.s. is there any advantages or disadvantages to using mild steel? can it be heat treated?
 
Kelly Cupples has a good selection of blade steels and sells them in small quantities. Mild steel does not have enough carbon it in to harden. But it is cheap enough that you can practice grinding on it and it will give you the same "feel" as annealed blade steel has. If a practice grind turns out nice then you can finish it out to become a letter opener.
 
thanks b finnigan. the members list is disabled, do you by chance know how to contact him?
 
I just went to tremblaytoolsteel.com and it is the same old story with metal suppliers. No prices listed, no sizes listed and nothing mentioned about welcoming small orders. This is the information age and it should be no problem for someone each day to FTP up the most recent prices onto their website. If a gas station owner can go out with a pole and change the plastic numbers on the prices 1-3 times a day then what's the BFD with having current prices listed.

That has been one of my major pet peeves with alot of industrial supply websites. That and they are so reluctant to deal with a small order. Any business owner knows that a long time happy customer with lots of small orders is better then one big customer that makes one purchase and then you never hear from them again.

I rarely have time during the day to get a phone call off before the typical east coast businesses close for the day. Alot of orders I place are at 10:00 or 11:00 PM pacific time. With the internet you can do that but not if you have to call and wade through a menu option maze to get to a human. Every time I have tried to place a phone order with Admiral Steel I get the same lady that is completely clueless about any carbon steels and rarely can even tell if a cetain size is even in stock without putting me on hold for five minutes. Every order I got from them has been wrong or incomplete with no explaination for missing items.

I learned very quickly to buy blade steels from a knifemaker (like Kelly Cupples) some of them (not Kelly)may charge a bit more but in the long run you will be far better off.
 
I ordered small quantities from toolanddie.com. They have A2, D2, O1 and a few others. They list all the prices etc.
 
B Finnigan said:
That has been one of my major pet peeves with alot of industrial supply websites. That and they are so reluctant to deal with a small order. Any business owner knows that a long time happy customer with lots of small orders is better then one big customer that makes one purchase and then you never hear from them again.
Click to expand...

Brent, I agree fully! ...small orders are the backbone of our existence for our small business (Ellis Custom Knifeworks)! You can sometimes find things cheaper at a large business that has huge industrial contracts, but I'd rather support the small businessman. :) ...of course, saying that is pretty self serving on my part, but in all honesty, my views have changed significantly over the years, especially after owning a small business for several years...

:)

-Darren
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top