Scrap stainless steel items

Taiwan Where Can I Find...?
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I need some cheap scrap stainless steel, preferably at least 3mm thick so I can practice welding on it, making little steel coupons out of it. The problem is stainless steel is expensive in Taiwan, and Taiyuan rd. near Taipei main is a terrible source for this as they sell it more expensive than Titanium.

I tried some scrap yards but many scrap yard will only let you sell them scrap, they will not let you dig around their yard to buy scrap materials from them. Some do but it’s hard to know which is which.

Does anyone have any stainless pots/pans they no longer want, or is there anywhere else where I can find it cheap by the pound?

Does anyone know if there’s a scrap yard in Danshui that will sell you scrap materials?

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Probably out of the city where the yards are more spacious they would be more willing to sell. I think unlike paper, plastic etc, they are worried about injury on sharp metal and liability.

I will be cleaning out my garage storage this month, if I find any scraps I don’t need you can have it. Probably not though.

You could try going to the government recycle yards. I kind of doubt they let people dig around either. BUT if you take a load of recycle there and just quickly ask if you can have “that” and don’t bother them for more than 5 seconds, they will probably say yes.

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I didn’t think government recycler would let anyone in.

But just steel of any kind is fine, preferably thicker than 1mm. Thin pieces are fine I guess as my welder has spot function, and I want to be able to weld that too

Aluminum is fine as well. I can weld that.

But no cast iron. Sell them to the scrap yard if you got any. You can’t weld cast iron, well you can but it’s highly likely to fail. And just because you welded one cast iron doesn’t mean you can weld another because there’s no consistency in their composition. Cast iron can be anywhere from cast low carbon steel (which welds great) all the way to actual grey cast iron which cannot be welded at all. This is because cast iron is literally made from any scrap metal they get their hands on. They’re also heavy so expensive to ship.

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Lots of ‘stainless’ steel cooking pots/pans are actually layered with other materials to conduct heat better.

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It doesn’t matter because I’m probably going to cut it up into coupons for welding.

Stainless is hard because you ideally want it to weld without any color, or rather just some gold and maybe light blue hues at most.

So I’m practicing a lot.

Silverware works too if there’s any scrap, they’re all stainless.

If you are welding any food grade material all oxide must be gone, either good welding or electropolishing.

Because oxide on stainless will cause it to rust.

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Government run places of course allow you in, to dump. You drive up, weight your vehicle (they may check the contents) and you give them your ID. Then you go dump your stuff and return to weigh your vehicle and pay. I think this is standard procedure in most countries. These are the same places, usually, that the gov trash and recycle trucks unload at, if you are searching

If you just walk up and say you want to scrounge their stuff, they will no doubt (and rightly so) tell you to F right off! That is not their purpose…to get sued…

Go in with their purpose on the table (you dumping somethung)and your purpose in mind (asking quickly for a random thing you saw as an aside and moving more quickly as to not bother them: aka in and out in less than 5 minutes) :slight_smile:

Or just ask private ones, probably easier. Many accept selling if you don’t become a hassle for them. Again, meaning fast and not literally digging through their shit.