[TheForge] Re: A36 vs 1018

[Mike Spencer]

Mike Graf wrote:

> I've learned the hard way to never just ask for mild steel.
> ....
> From that point on I have always asked for 1018 if I wanted to forge
> weld something.

So what's to prevent the supplier from shipping whatever they happen
to have on hand in the firm belief that (a) you specified 1018 only
because you heard somewhere that "1018" was an incantation that would
make you sound cool, (2) that you would never know the difference, (3)
that if you do know the difference, you'll never take the trouble to
prove they sent you the wrong thing and force them to give you your
money back and (4) that they can always claim it was an honest mistake
because the Warehouse Guy is stupid and can't read?

Industrial steel suppliers -- essentially mills -- employ
metallurgists and know the difference very well.  If you're millions
of making fenders at GM, they'll try real hard to keep your biz by
making you happy the first time around.  But even big industrial
buyers have problems with big suppliers.  This piece:

     http://archive.metalformingmagazine.com/2008/01/Science.pdf 

by Stuart Keeler is interesting reading.  Slightly less on-topic but
relevant to what you say to suppliers, what they think you mean and
what they think they can get away with:

    http://www.rootcauselive.com/Files/.../Failure%20to%20Communicate.pdf

Once upon a time, I went to a smaller biz more specialized than the
big metals distributor to ask for 1/8" or 3/16" pure aluminum sheet.
I explained in great detail why I wanted pure aluminum -- intricate
hand-forming, malleability and ductility etc. etc. I used simple
words.  The guy says, "Well, we don't have that but we have this
<some-number>".  I reply, "Yeah, that's what they make dump truck
bodies out of.  You can't dent it with a sledge hammer."  "Well, gee",
he says, "availability must be worth *something*!"

Right.  You're in the OR with your appendix about to burst and the
surgeon says, "I'll have your coronary stent in in no time."  "Wait,
wait", you cry in panic, "I need an emergency appendectomy."  "Well",
says the surgeon, "I'm a cardiovascular surgeon and I know how to do
stents, not appendectomies.  Availability must be worth *something*!"

Spencer's corollary to Hanlon's Razor [1]:

    When you have to decide between stupidity and malice as an
    explanation for somebody's behavior, yer already screwed. :-\


- Mike

[1]
       Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from
       malice.
                 -- Vernon Schryver (in news.admin.net-abuse.email)

       You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result
       from stupidity.   --  Robert A. Heinlein, Logic of Empire

       Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by
       stupidity.        -- Hanlon's Razor



-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^