Most steel disputes are not discovered at the mill — they are discovered six weeks later, at the fabricator, when the material will not weld or the ga…
A mill test certificate — MTC — is the identity document of a steel shipment. If you buy steel and cannot read one, you are trusting the seller's word…
Buyers often compare quotations weeks apart and wonder why the same product moved 8 %. Steel is a commodity with a raw-material index underneath it; u…
Steel is heavy, hard-edged and shipped in the same containers as everything else. Most transit damage we see is not caused by the sea — it is caused b…
One of the most frequent specification errors we see is buying hot rolled where cold rolled is needed — or paying for cold rolled where hot rolled wou…
Designers outside the motor industry find electrical steel nomenclature opaque. It is simpler than it looks, and understanding it saves real money on …
Flanges are the classic mixed-standards product: the pipe is specified in one system, the flange arrives in another, and the bolt holes do not line up…
Suppliers answer complete enquiries in two days and vague enquiries in two weeks — if at all. The difference is five lines of information, and it is t…