About that 1144 steel ...

I sure hope Bob's buildup is accurate ... is 4 bucks a pound delivered an OK price ? I just placed an order for 15 pounds of assorted diameter/length drops . Looked like an assortment of sizes likely to come in handy in my little shop . I'm going to have to build some kind of storage to keep the different types separated now that I'm stocking some known steels .

-- Snag I appreciated foreign cultures more when they stayed foreign ...

------------------------------ At machine shop auctions I've bought or hoss traded for shorter pieces from the stock rack. Some were color coded on the end though not identified by text. I paint one end of known metal with white nail polish and write with a fine point Sharpie, removing string tags etc. Then it can all be stored together compactly and spun in a lathe.

For smaller quantities plastic flat bottom guttering can be used to make drawers and it slides into a suitable rectangular recess sort of like a wine rack. My neighbour stores his various materials like this and they slide into the end of one of his workbenches.

Maybe some 4" PVC pipe , the thin wall stuff they use for wastewater . Most of my stuff is shorts and I don't have all that much , I can stack 4 or 5 of those on the shelf under the mill .

Have you ever had one of those moments when its like somebody finally turned on the switch, and stuff just started working? I kinda had that happen with turning recently, and I am hoping I didn't over sell the

Nah, 1144 machines pretty decently. It machines so nicely I kinda have issues trusting its claimed 100KSI in the annealed state.

This is the sort of thing I had in mind

Waste pipe is handy stuff. When I was running wire everyday I had a piece of ABS heavy wall with a female adapter on each end and a screw in cap cap attached with a piece of folded link chain that I used for all my long installer, bits and push pull rods. It was permanently attached to the side of my ladder rack.

The PVC gutter in the NH stores is either beveled in to about half width on the lower corners or S shaped on the front, not much more space efficient than cylinders which pack closely if staggered. I like the idea of an open topped tray but not how easily the available gutter stock could twist and spill on my toes if filled anywhere near capacity. Drain pipe might be safer if less space-efficient and convenient, and glued, clamped rubber and screwed plastic end caps are available for it, so it can be temporarily stood up on end to lean in a corner.

This is the sort of thing I had in mind

---------------------------- I finally got the link to open, Win 7 is becoming nonfunctional. We have similar gutters, perhaps narrower on the bottom, and with little twisting stiffness.

I've ordered a second NVMe SSD to clone the boot drive to as the backup for a flea market Win 11 laptop for the Internet.

Correction, 100ksi in the cold drawn state.