[dataway]

Since it seems every body shop supply store in the area has gone out of business I need to order, or take a trip to the steel supply house to pick up some metal for patch panels.

Question is ... is typical 20ga body steel cold rolled or hot rolled? In the past for large fabrication jobs I'd get 4 x 8 sheets of cold rolled, mostly because it's clean and smooth compared to hot rolled.

Never thought to find out if "body steel" is cold or hot rolled.

Will probably just make the trip to pick up a 4 x 8 foot sheet ... stupid prices for small amounts to be shipped.

Update: Probably never mind, it appears hot rolled is not made thinner than 16ga .... so it looks like it will be cold rolled.

[dhutton]

I have had good luck ordering 2x4 pieces of CRS 18 gauge from onlinemetals.com

You have to be careful and figure out what is the max number of pieces that gives the best shipping price by keeping it in one box.

Don

[dataway]

Went to my metal supplier ... picked up what was supposed to be one sheet of 20ga, and one sheet of 22 ga. Mic'ed them when I got home (an hour away) and it was actually two sheets of 21 ga. about 0.031" jeez it's hard to find REAL 20ga .036" steel.

Ended up buying a couple of square feet from McMaster, exactly .036" which is the same as I found most places on my GTO that I could get a clean reading with a Mic.

One of the problems seems to be most of the metal these days is coming from foreign sources that use metric thickness so US suppliers are just ordering as close as they can to US gauge sizes. Pretty sure even the Canadian stuff is actually metric.

Next time I'm down at the supplier I might mic their 18ga and see what they are actually selling ... my guess is it's a few .001 less than actually 18 ga, which would probably make it very close to proper 20 ga.

[Shiny]

This thread at least tells me I'm not alone.

I thought it would be easy to find a sq ft of 20 ga to practice welding.

Not so much.....

Home Depot thought about stocking 22 ga but then forgot, I guess. So I sucked it up and drove a few miles to Ace Hdwr. I luckily found a 12x24 sheet of 22 ga. I think the only reason it was in stock is nobody but me would pay that much for so little....

Onward

[dataway]

I THINK, after modern cars moved to thinner gauge metals that the need for 20ga is so low that it's not being made much anymore. Used to be real easy to walk into any body shop supply store and get a 2' x 2' sheet for a reasonable price.

I noticed that even McMaster doesn't appear to sell steel sheet by gauge anymore .. and most of it is "aluminized" which to me doesn't weld as nice as old school raw cold rolled sheet.

[Shiny]

I suspect the aluminumized thing is also about keeping them looking clean on retail shelves. I noticed that's what Eastwood sells, and it's about the same price per sf as Ace. When I went into Home Depot, their little rack was empty except for a few heavily rusted and bent pieces.

Fortunately, I currently don't need to patch anything but the year is young.

It's available online for sure and probably at the local metal supply, I just thought it would be easier to find.

I'm over it.