Why Is Steel So Expensive?

If you ship via extreme snail-mail (aka ocean-going freight) it might take 40 days to get your steel, but the shipping costs will not be outrageous. The other nice thing about purchasing from McMaster-Carr is they're a reputable company. I.E. if you order 1144 bar, you'll get a quality 1144 bar - not some mystery metal.

Entropy455 said:

If you ship via extreme snail-mail (aka ocean-going freight) it might take 40 days to get your steel, but the shipping costs will not be outrageous. The other nice thing about purchasing from McMaster-Carr is they're a reputable company. I.E. if you order 1144 bar, you'll get a quality 1144 bar - not some mystery metal.

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But McMaster-Carr will not ship to Australia (in fact I think they restrict shipping even to Canada only to customers that had an account with them before they made the switch some years ago). Most businesses in the USA will not trade internationally, or if they do, they jack the shipping up so they don't have to.

An example - I got many quotes for 1 foot of 1" 1144 stressproof, prices were in the $15-30 range generally, shipping ranged from $80 - $250! Eventually I got it off Amazon for about $55 delivered from memory. Or a small oil seal that McMaster-Carr have that almost no-one else has - $1.12 ea but they won't sell to me, got them somewhere else for $4.50 ea plus $25 shipping for 4 and they're 1/4" x 1/2" x 1/8" and fitted in a standard envelope. When the USA is the only place to buy something it can be a real pain for us down here.

Edit to add: Amazon has also now restricted Australian purchases to items available on the Australian Amazon site, which is a small fraction of the items available on Amazon.com, so even there our options are disappearing - considering the rhetoric of "increasing trade fairness" it seems strange the USA makes it so hard to buy from them.

Please. This is a HOBBY!

So the price of materials has increased. Some people (not really myself) like to work with brass and brass has been quite expensive for decades.

Just deal with it: Change materials. Change processes. Change designs. Change hobbies.

There's an old saying: Do you want it high quality, cheap or fast. Pick two.

...Ved.

Entropy455 said:

Hopper, McMaster-Carr sells a wide variety of metals, including stress-proof, free-machining, tool-steel, etc. Their prices are higher than average (in my opinion), but not outrageous. Will McMaster-Carr not ship to Australia?

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Not last time I tried. Some time back, I admit. But these days a small flat-rate international shipping box suitable for a small bit of round bar costs about $60. US-outbound shipping prices went crazy a few years back. I get most of my tooling and parts and stuff sent from the UK (or China) these days for that reason.

It is not only the materials and tools we use in our model building --- it is everything we buy. The problem is caused by the never ending wailing fron the greedy share holders ,C.E.O's and the like for more and more returns from their investments. More than enough money is never enough, you only have to see the rich and powerful are prepared to cheat, manipulate, be involved in corruption and steal, even if it risks a prison sentence, anything to get more money. Little do they care that if affects the less well off.

It's not just the USA that has seen prices rocket , 2" bright mild steel is about £150 per 3 metres plus delivery plus tax at 20% , for small orders the delivery can exceed the metal cost !
I used to frequent the scrap yards where I could buy more for less but now very few scrap dealers will sell to the public.

When was the last time a CEO went to prison? That hardly happens.

Entropy455 said:

If you ship via extreme snail-mail (aka ocean-going freight) it might take 40 days to get your steel, but the shipping costs will not be outrageous. The other nice thing about purchasing from McMaster-Carr is they're a reputable company. I.E. if you order 1144 bar, you'll get a quality 1144 bar - not some mystery metal.

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Something to keep in mind, 1144 Stressproof is a specially processed type of 1144.
Not all 1144 is Stressproof from Niagara Lasalle. The stuff McMaster-Carr sells is the real deal.

I got some no-name 1144 from eBay and it machined like crap in comparison.

Bill

steel prices are way over inflated but the miners are getting huge pays. It all flows on . Its not global warming causing the weather were going back in to an ice age. The planet dosent have a thermostat. There are two cycles heating and cooling, we are in a cooling cycle. Thus all the bad weather.

So does that mean the price of steel will follow the cycle and come down?

For everyone in the USA crying about cost just wait and see what Canada's 45% does to it.
You will go back to wood.
Nelson

stuartblack said:

Its not global warming causing the weather were going back in to an ice age. The planet dosent have a thermostat. There are two cycles heating and cooling, we are in a cooling cycle. Thus all the bad weather.

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This is why we now prefer the term "Climate change" over the old "global warming", so people don't get confused when there's a cold snap or stormy weather. Since the industrial revolution, human activity has raised the average temperature of the planet at rates never seen before. Normal variation rates take thousands of years to achieve what we have in only a couple of hundred. This increase in average temperature means extra energy in the environment and increased weather activity/intensity can result. Some parts of the world may get much colder (at least initially) due to local effects of climate change (for example much of Western Europe is warmer than it should be due to prevailing ocean currents that may reverse if the climate drivers of the currents are disrupted), but overall the planet is getting warmer and very quickly. It is true that the planet should be in a cooling cycle right no, which just makes our disastrous effect on the climate stand out even more.

Cogsy said:

This is why we now prefer the term "Climate change" over the old "global warming", so people don't get confused when there's a cold snap or stormy weather. ....This increase in average temperature means extra energy in the environment and increased weather activity/intensity can result.

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Thankyou Cogsy for getting back to the 'big picture' issues. Yesterday I heard a depressing report from the NYTimes climate global climate change correspondent - an Indian woman. She related tales of increased flooding in Calcutta and flocks and herds dropping dead in Africa (from drought). Here in California we are in the 4th hottest year on record, and 1, 2, and 3 have been in the last 10 years. Northern Europe has also had a record hot summer. Records show these as extreme but science tell us they are more likely to be the new average! Yet CO2 emissions are still rising, partly because we (including the Chinese) continue to build coal burning power plants.

We all live for such a relatively short period in the length of the World.
OK, I lived in the coal burning era when the mention of carrying coal to Newcastle was a sort of joke. We had tonnes of it and now the mines have almost gone and those who have survived are simply left with horrible lung diseases.
So going back , my physical geography teachers were talking about the 4Th Quaternary ice age but where we were or are no one knows. Do we know know after -say 1946? You guess is as good as mine-- and theirs.

If we move a few more years back, the River Thames in London froze so solid that there sere paintings of skaters on it. but despite the present heat( I've just flown in from the Dordogne in France), I also recall being avalanched in the Tirol when the Fohn wind blew. But I can recall 'snow on the dyke backs' in June in Northern England and skiing in October and shepherds being killed in sudden October storms and me( with others) forming the first civilian mountain rescue team. in Britain.

As for this Indian lady and floods, well, I flew in from Southampton in the South to Newcastle almost on the Scottish Border and enjoyed the building of houses on the bends in what should form oxbow lakes.

In the English Lake District and on the Scottish Spey, there is the Roche moutonne for when the glaciers carved U shaped valleys through the Cairngorms. I had a house at the end of the Larig Ghru ( the Foreboding Way in English)which is or was glaciated.

Well, that's a bit from me. I reckon that my geography and whatever coupled with a fair amount of economic and social history is as good as most.

At least my qualifications are not Batchelor of Arts( Bombay- now Mumbai ) failed, is not one of my attributes

It will be interesting to know whether the dogs will be frozen to the lamp posts this winter!

Cheerily

Norm

One thing I have wondered is that for years We have big farms and Industry pumping water out of the ground at a fantastic rate where it is put into the atmosphere. Millions of gallons a year might not be much to the size of Our Planet but it has been going on for a long time. It might all add up.

mcostello said:

One thing I have wondered is that for years We have big farms and Industry pumping water out of the ground at a fantastic rate where it is put into the atmosphere. Millions of gallons a year might not be much to the size of Our Planet but it has been going on for a long time. It might all add up.

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It's rather interesting but eventually the ground water would end up in rivers, partially evaporate and reach the sea or ocean- and evaporate and all land on Manchester , England which all means that the cotton which is imported does not break when it is being spun into yarn for weaving. You must agree it is a good yarn! What misses poor old Manchester fills the fairly recently dug canals by the navigators - itinerant Irish 'navvies' who a rather long time ago suffered abominably from the failure of the potato crops - which were- well, brought over from America in the days of Queen Elizabeth the First by Sir Walter Raleigh-- in Tudor times which started-- rather a long time ago. Lizzie's grand dad was 1485 and she popped her clogs in 1601. Her successor- James the 6th of Scotland and 1st of England wrote- a Counter Blast against Smoking. and the three boats that the Pilgrim Fathers used were so leaky that they carried loads of water back to New England or wherever.
Or something like that.

You can tell who was paying attention at school and who wasn't



N

nel2lar, Trump placed a 25% tariff on Canadian steel entering the US. To be clear, this 25% tax is paid by Americans, which goes into the US treasury. The purpose of the tariff is to encourage Americans to procure steel from other sources (a nice way of saying it). The blunt truth is that Americans are being discouraged from purchasing Canadian steel. Why? There are many possible reasons for the tariffs - perhaps Trump is simply trying to kickstart US steel production - or maybe Canada is being punished for unfair trade practices - or maybe a combination of factors? I honestly don't know. . .

One thing is for sure - Americans are not going to be hurt by a 45% price increase in Canadian steel, because the 25% tariffs already took care of that.

FWIW, in 2017 the US produced 81.6 million metric tons of steel, and Canada produced 13.7 million metric tons. Note that China, South Korea, and Japan produced a combined 1007.5 million metric tons.

As this is is a forum/fora which caters for very small quantities of metal, I really fail to see the difference in pricing for your hobby. True, getting new model making machinery etc WILL be really priced astronomically upwards as it comes - one way or another out of the East.

Of course if you can't finance your hobby--- need I say more?

If this is about your job- it really has no place here. Apologies for my bit of real history- warped though it might be.

Norm

Entropy455 said:

nel2lar, ... There are many possible reasons for the tariffs ...

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FYI: The officially stated rational for the steel and aluminum tariffs is not about economics, but national security. In order to build the weapons of war these raw materials are required. Therefore for national security interests, each power (country) must have the ability to make these raw materials.

The US steel manufacturers have been in a fifty year decline due to many varying factors such as environmental regulations, labor (union) costs, bad management, foreign competition, etc.

Of these listed factors, the federal government can only really control one, foreign competition, with either tariffs or corporate welfare. (Forget about management, i.e. nationalizing the steel and aluminum mills would be disastrous) Only one of these, tariffs, doesn't impact the spending deficit. The result is the same, higher prices for steel and aluminum. So the Trump administration went with the tariffs.
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Now it doesn't matter if you agree with this assessment or not. It doesn't matter if you think the reason for the tariffs is hogwash or not. I'm just stating the US government's position for the tariffs so we have a baseline in this discussion.

...Ved.

goldstar31, how much does your lathe weigh? Question - how much cheaper would a new lathe be, if cast iron cost 15 cents a pound, in lieu of 80 cents a pound?

How much does the truck weigh - that delivers your small piece of hobby steel to your door? Do you think shipping costs might go down if the truck frame-steel were 4 times cheaper? How about that rail-car? How about that ocean-going ship?

Just because you're purchasing small quantities does not justify astronomical prices.

And there's the difference in pricing for your hobby. . . .