beat cost of buying ground blanchard steel by having someone do it for you?

[coppercone2]

So I need some ground flat bars for my welding table. I bought a few but there was a problem that occured between me and the plate manufacturer, so I just have two cross bars that I bought a while back. On top of these cross bars I want to lay ground flat bars and have pins at regular intervals that stick out of the side bars that I can put the top bars on to change the spacing between the plates on my table.

I would want 3x 6x36 inch flat bars, and 1x 12x36 inch flatbar, so I have 6 inches of free space I can shuffle around. At a thickness of 0.75. The idea is you can lift one of the plates up and put it ontop of a different pin set (i.e. if you want to make a mostly solid surface that is 30 inches long), or if you want a 12 and equally spaced 6's. 5x36 might be accpetable too, I need to think about it.

This is the best price I found
http://www.niftybar.com/files/2415/3920/0903/PriceListLO_9000_1_2017_1.pdf

The materials cost is 780$ from the website (cheaper then mcmaster). Weight is like ~300lb. Dunno how much shipping would be.

It will not be used for hammering or feature a heavy vise etc. Just precise welding work and general work if it has a piece of wood on top (no banging, punching, etc). Like putting something small on top and putting screws in or whatever. Not working with nasty stuck shit. I want to build a wooden cover over it (like 3/8 inch nicely finished wood with a over hang) that I can put on the table when there is a grinder near by. And maybe a another cover made out of sheet steel that I can put over the top bars, if I need to do something nasty like flux shielded welding (like [ shaped peices of sheet (stainless?) steel with a soft interior liner that would sit right ontop of the blanchard plates like a blanket.

Can I do better by buying non ground flat bar and sending it to someone for grinding?

[Housedad]

It is a subjective question.  The price of steel in your area, how far away the grinder house is, and how much they charge for your piece vs using their stock.  All you can do is get estimates.  Rates vary across the nation.

Blanchard ground is nice, but not a requirement. 

Over the winter, a close friend wanted to build a new table, but since he knew I had a mill with a 11"x58" table in my garage, I let him rope me into machining the all the surfaces of some plates for him that were the same size as you are doing, at 6" x 36".  The finish is as good or better than blanchard and I drilled and tapped a few holes in some of them for holdowns. 

If you know anyone that has a large mill and are willing to pay them for dulled or broken cutting inserts, It is the cheapest way to go, but not many folks have a machine like that in their garage.

Well, He does owe me helping pull my truck axles this summer.

(edited for spelling)