Tin

I'll bite. I may be totally incorrect, not all that unusual a position. If you are talking about punching pattern holes in "tin plate" like in an antique pie cupboard or similar, I think you will find it is galvanized steel plate. For a full sheet or more, contact a local steel supplier and ask for his lightest gauge galvanized sheet. This material will be quite shiny. You may prefer "paint grip" where the galvanize has been cleaned and treated - it is a bit more dull. If you want some smaller pieces, contact a local sheet metal shop or heat and air company. They would probably give you enough small pieces to keep you more than busy. They might even have copper sheet, aluminum sheet, stainless.

I don't think you can buy sheets of just tin. Again, I'm prepared to be wrong. I was set on being wrong, I went and tried Google. I found this:

As in "Pierced Tin Lantern"?

I think you want "tin plated mild steel", in about 28 gauge. Try googling that.

I bought my last shipment from: Retco Alloy Co.

Don't remember how much it cost. This was at least 10 years ago. It came in sheets about 20" X 30". I had to buy 25 sheets.

Pete Stanaitis

Isn't the zinc stuff that's punched simply sheet zinc, rather than zinc plated steel ? It's soft and quite easy to work.

Here in Europe it's reasonably common to use sheet zinc for bar countertops. In France and Belgium it's traditional.

"Rare"? Common as here in Australia.

What are American soup cans made of?

-- Jeff R.

This was one of the standard stock materials for sheet metal shop in high school fifty years ago. I don't recall the sheet size but 30" width rings a bell. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

funny, the previous responses. my first thought was... those (not sure if they're two gallons, or three gallons, or what, they're certainly larger than one gallon) rectangular metal vegetable oil containers out in the back by the garbage by every chinese restaurant i know of. free. cut 'em up and flatten 'em out. either get paint stripper to remove the printed on labels or leave them on for "character".

b.w.

While I worked in quality control on civil engineering projects, I had an excellent source - compressive strength samples of concrete are cast in 6" dia x 12" long molds often made of tin plate (one manufacturer was Vulcan Containers although I don't see them on their web site

Local HVAC sheet metal shop. Bugs

Trouble with those is that they're nearly all plastic coated on the inside (olive oil though usually seems free of this). Taking the plastic off involves a powered wire brush (either before or after heating) and that also damages the thin tin plating.

"Terne plate" is hard to find, but it has a thickness of clean tin on it that's expecting to be worked on further.