[TheForge] A36 vs 1018

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

As small volume customers, most of us have more nuisance value than 
profit prospect to steel suppliers..hence the response..pf

Mike Spencer wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
>