When we helped our friends move houses the day after we helped them relocate their pottery molds, we found some old scrap metal behind their house. It was two 10-foot long sections of 16 gauge square steel tubing, and two 8-foot lengths of ¼in thick 1in wide steel stock. We asked if we could take it and they said yes. We gleefully strapped it onto the truck's kayak rack and drove off.
Today, I took it to the shop to prep it. The lengths were too long to handle effectively, so I cut the square tubing into 4ths, and the flat stock into 3rds.
Grinding metal is boring work. At least it's fun to watch sparks fly all over the place.
We're super lucky to have scored all this steel. It's so much better than the other practice stock we had.