[Dick Linn]

You can often save some money and aggravation by collecting an odd mix of little short pieces during the off season, or buying a bit more than you need at a better rate and saving it for the next season. If you scrounge around, you may find suppliers even in rather small towns. I had one guy, who ran a 1-man steel supply outfit, give the team a 10 foot piece of 3/4" square aluminum tube for no charge. A local machine shop machined an axle at no charge, and offered to let us feed at their scrap pile if we needed. These people live in the industrial world, and it is all around us, even in smaller towns. Think INDUSTRIAL, not commercial, consumer oriented storefront businesses at the mall. I get better deals by visiting the dumpsters behind industrial concerns than I do at the local hardware purveyors.