Buying from Scrap yards?

Hi, Scott. The people at the local transfer station moved the metal dumpster right up by the guard house with the open end of the dumpster right where the attendant can see into it, unless you park your truck right in front! So much for recycling! They are not interested in recycling, only scrapping!

I used to find quite a lot of useful stuff there and tried to swap my metal junk for theirs. A lot harder, now.

A few weeks ago I took a bunch of scrap aluminum to the scrap dealer in Bend, Oregon. They had just posted a sign stating they were no longer selling any scrap to the public. There is a steel dealer in Redmond that still sells cutoff pieces by the pound, but no one here in Central Oregon sells other types of metal.

So, that leaves yard sales, farm auction sales, and up until the last couple of years, old farms that were being demolished to make way for housing developments. I found lots of free metal at such places just before the houses and barns were demolished. Sometimes more metal was found after demolishing! It was hidden away behind other stuff destined for the land fill. I usually asked the heavy equipment operator or just waited till they went home. It was all going into the dump truck, anyway.

The last place had a big bunch of drive shafts with u-joints on the ends. I cut the u-joints off and had a nice steel tube. Used two pieces to make a screw jack for raising the patio frame so I could place new posts. Another u-joint find was a rather long length of ancient farm equipment drive shaft. This went from a stationary engine, across the ground to the thrashing machine, or similar thing. Lots of nice steel shafting. Same thing from parts of an old hay bailer that was going to the dump.

Also scrounged a broken drill shaft from an air powered rock drill. After drilling a series of holes, they pack the holes with explosive and set them off to break up the lava rock. They just went off and left the drill bit. The other day, I was going to cut off a piece and discovered it is hollow. That is where the air goes to blow out the ground up rock. Have to find another use.

My point is, there is usable metal all around you. It may not be what you need today, but you never have enough metal pieces, do you?

Good luck, Paul in Central Oregon

I shop at scrap and salvage yards like most women shop at the mall, if that answers your question. I have furnished my shop with many items from the yards. Hell, I even bought a J&L comparator for the company out of the scrap yard, buried in the mud, for $30 once. Got it going for another $120. We still use it daily. One part of my hobby is to purchase and refurb machinery from yards to resell to support my machinery "habit". I keep the ones I want for myself. I recently bought a pallet of mixed metal junk at auction for $5, and buried down in it was a container with several pounds of large silver electrical contacts in it that I sold for $1,300 the other day. (Iggy's eyes get big) Spot price was $17.55 an ounce at the time. Sold $200 worth of new eprom chips off it also. Ya don't do that every day, though. That will be used for seed money to make other purchases. I sell some items on the spot in the yard using the cellphone to read specs off name plates to prospective "clients", to see If I have a solid sales lead before even buying the item. Cellphone sends pics for approval. Friend of mine made $25,000 on one sale of a specialized piece of equipment like that. Some yards have a handheld piece of equipment that they "shoot" metal with to tell it's composition. That sucka costs around $36,000 dollars, but will sort the trash from the treasures. Check spot price on Rhodium and you'll know why they have that device. Never mind, checked for you. It's at $8,980 an ounce tonight. You likely have some around your house.

RJ

"SCOTT" wrote in message news:050420082054065765% snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net...

Aye, our local (county) dump has much the same policy, only they tell you it is for liability reasons.

Another thing they started doing recently is "sniffing" the used motor oil coming in with a handheld gadget to see if it contains items besides used motor oil.

Jon

Indeed. Very big.

I have a bunch of copper contacts with silver bars soldered on, too. Not worth nearly as much, obviously. Great job.

I should check them out. I have a scrap man who often sells stuff to me.

The local scrap/recycling yard was a source of metal for me for decades. New management has closed it off to salvage by the public. I suppose $100 a ton scrap price is the main reason. Makes an old iron pile worth keeping. Rumor has it a bit of ambition and a knuckleboom truck will make a good amount of dough these days just hitting up the farmer/rancher in the outback. IMO.the metal boom will go the way of the realestate boom just a matter of time ED

Around here, we have places that deal with prime, seconds, scrap, and surplus/junk/salvage. A lot of the places deal in a couple of those.

Prime is full lengths, the good stuff. Seconds are short pieces, off spec, bent ends, a bit rusty, etc. Scrap is sorted using a magnet on a crane. And surplus/junk is whatever gets sorted out of the scrap process. You need to find places that sell seconds or salvage.

I buy most of my project stuff as seconds from either of a couple places that sell prime and seconds. Not as cheap as the dump but I can go buy

I might add that when I did this sort of th> The town where I live has started not letting you take anything from

It is so hard to comment on this, as I have no idea how things are where you live. Some things you may consider: Craigslist, AM radio shows that advertise wanted or for sale items, putting a WANTED ad in your local Quick Quarter (or equivalent), just getting out more.

It's like a garage sale. You just have to go look. You can't find that one valuable treasure in all that trash at a yard sale by driving by and looking out the window.

Steve

Desolder the silver or (silver plated) contacts and sell the bars and contacts as 2 seperate metals. You will bring in more money. A torch will be required for this. Heated vertically, the silver parts should drop away by gravity. Copper spot price is $3.98 this morning. See:

RJ

I have a friend who once ran the local salvage yard. He bought steel at the time for 2-1/2 cents a pound and would sell it to me as a walk-in buddy for

The first guy was located in a low end section of town, and the street scavenger types made most of their money selling him aluminum cans. Location was indeed a big factor in the ability of the people to get their cans to market. They rolled the cans to him in old grocery carts he provided for their use.

RJ

The good stuff at the yard sales is under the tables, or still in the garage because they thought no one would want "that old stuff" . One yard sale around ten years ago netted a 24" throat Rotex turret punch and a 30" sheetmetal stomp shear for $65 for both. The old man who had them was just delighted that someone knew what they were, and that his family would not sell them for scrap after he was gone. They were not even out for sale, but crammed into a utility room in the garage. I had to all but force him to take $100 for the machines, then slipped his daughter enough more so that the whole family could go out to eat dinner together that night. Also brought him back a steel plate a foot square, because by selling the shear, he lost his walnut cracking platform. I think of him every time I use those tools. I doubt he is still alive, judging by his condition at the time. See:

If you're referring to the analysers two companies I know of that make them are Niton

That must be ingots ready for the manufacturer. The *scrap* prices here are much lower:

Bob

--Move to another town; yours is doomed, dooooooomed! ;-)

Sure. the contacts seem to be actual silver bars soldered or brased to the copper. Nothing major. Maybe 3 oz of silver on top of 15 lbs of copper.

I may try to just heat them in the oven or BBQ to get the silver pieces to fall off.

Probably not enough heat in the oven, especially if they are silver soldered on. You might very well get enough heat in a charcoal BBQ though. Got those wheels turning in that head, with that silver sell, didn't I?

RJ

Can you silver solder a silver bar? I think that it would be unilikely?

Anyway, I could give it a shot. Not sure if I can somehow get money for this silver scrap.

I used to keep about 40 lbs of silver in form of bars, as investment, it was a fun feeling.

Sure you can. Silver solder is an alloy designed to melt at a certain temperature. It can be had in several melting temperatures. The stuff used in jewelry making is all designed to melt under the temperature of Sterling silver. The silver bars probably aren't (maybe) pure silver. Someone may correct me but all the silver solder I've used (I'm not a professional) melts below the temperature of silver. Karl