Hi! I'm writing my NaNoWriMo piece, and part of it involves my MC arriving at a garage. It's the commercial ones, where three or four cars are worked on at any given time. Anyway, she needs to find some metal to use as extremely temporary armour, but I wasn't sure what type of metal she'd find. The garage has been abandoned, so most of the metal won't have been touched for weeks. I don't know how that will affect the metal. I know as little about cars as any person possibly can xD Thanks in advance!
@Bookster swords, low powered pistols and hunting bows! She needs it for a few days, since she just got out of prison. So I understand the metal is going to be 99% useless!
It would be possible to make a shield from a panel of the truck or something with an angle grinder, but it would not stop many bullets, and maybe not low ones like .38 caliber either. Sheet metal heavy enough to stop those rounds would not likely be found in an auto shop, but I've never worked in one.
Sorry, there's nothing I'm aware of in the basic auto garage that would be light enough to carry that would protect her from those weapons. Inside the garage, she could wheel a tool chest around as protection.
There are all kinds of things if your character can cut them with a blowtorch or a metal saw. Tool boxes come in all sizes and very large ones have doors you could rip off or drawers you could use the bottom of.
These guys are hardcore. Might help. http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-273556.html This one, just for entertainment, but pertinent.
I doubt anything in the garage would be useable as armor. As others have said, most of the metal used to make/repair cars is thin sheet steel, which is about as good as paper when it comes to stopping bullets. Same goes for tool chests; too thin. Even car doors can be penetrated by bullets and most are too heavy to carry around, so your character would be lugging around something that weighs a lot and won't protect her much, if at all. If she can weld and/or grind, that opens up all kinds of possibilities, but both of those things are noisy and might attract the kind of unwanted attention she's trying to protect herself from. If it were me, I would grab a few bits of metal and strap them to my vital bits using cloth or whatever, grab something I can use as a weapon, and move on, hoping I find something better elsewhere. Layers of cloth (especially leather) makes decent armor, though it probably won't stop a bullet. A welder's mask and gloves would make decent armor, too, but she won't be able to see much.
Wrapped in oily rags, two tyre sections over her ears, and an aerial up backside, lady was rat in the garage, rat-girl, disguise after night's failure with grinder, screwdriver, sixteen car doors. 'What was that?' said Hank Nasty, Tommy gun held in his fist. 'A rat, you dirty rat,' said Chewbowski, assassin pimp. Heh /
