Dear Jennifer Friedman,
Copper “flashing” as used in roofing used to be fairly common but is
now rarely used except on high-end jobs. So Home Depot, Lowe’s and
that sort of home handyperson place is not likely to carry it.
However, if you have a commercial sheet-metal or tinsmith shop in
your area that does roofing work, they will likely know where to get
the stuff fast and easy even if they don’t happen to have any in
stock. After all, they never know when they might get a call for a
fancy job repairing an old church roof or the like.
If I were starting to search from scratch, I’d look in the local
yellow pages (or the nearest city if you’re way out in the sticks)
and look for the oldest sheet-metal contractor or roofing contractor
in the area. Talk to the oldest guys on the payroll. They would, at
least, know what you are talking about when you ask for copper
flashing. It comes in rolls of various widths, 6", 12" and probably
even wider. They could probably order a roll for you if they don’t
have any old left-overs gathering dust in the back room.
If I recall correctly (it sometimes happens that way) the stuff is
fairly thin, about 22 gauge. Anyway, that sort of industrial source
is likely to have a price more-or-less reflective of the straight
dollars-per-pound value of the copper, whereas craft-type suppliers
will more likely tend to treat it as a precious substance, doled out
in small, wasteful packages at highly inflated prices.
Oh yes, I have seen the garden store copper strips mentioned by K.
Hung in a post a few days ago. That stuff is very very thin, really
almost what I would consider “foil” rather than “sheet” copper. I
don’t know if that is what you want to use. Anyway, it comes in
rather narrow strips and I think you mentioned you want bigger
sizes. And, by the way, that copper foil is almost useless for
stopping slugs so don’t waste your money on it for that purpose.
If garden slugs are your problem, write to me off-line and we can
share slug murder recipes and tactics.
Marty in Victoria , BC, the “City of Gardens” - where the average
garden slug is bigger than an ear of Iowa sweet corn, an Arizona
Gila monster, or a New York City dachshund, and eats its own weight
in fancy lettuce or broccoli before you’ve had your morning coffee.