I spent several hours on Friday and another several on Saturday at the ultimate metal collectors delight/horror. The man hauled in almost anything made of metal for 40 years. There is a huge, probably weighs in excess of 20 tons shear, right next to a shed full of electrical panel boxes that have been stored so long the original cardboard wrapping is gone on the top ten layers. The shear is scrap having been left outdoors for 20 years and being vey obsolete when it was brought in. The widow's son filled the 14th full haul-a-way with scrap on Saturday and he isn't half done with the outside work yet, nor has he started to demo the rambling shacks and sheds. My efforts involved purchasing and salvaging the smaller stuff inside. If anyone is in love with or just needs larger carbide inserts I brought home several hundred pounds. Most were new but so obsolete they are best scrapped. I have agreed to buy his small lathe, two mills and some other machines but they are currently not accessable due to the horrendous piles of metal stuff. Lots of frozen three phase motors, more old welders and three phase transformer then you can count and the wildest lathe chuck storage system I have ever seen. He drove a 2" pipe about 8' long into the ground then slide
10-12 big lathe chucks over it so they wouldn't fall over. Yes, this is almost a rant as I can't believe all the great stuff that was reduced to scrap metal and the fact that one man hauled it all home. His family said he circulated through the local scrap yards and brought everything interesting home. One room was entirely filled with shelves of tiny boxes containing nearly every weird fastener you might imagine. I took a few of the keys, drive screws and SS and left all the rest. If this sounds like your house please be kind to your loved ones and don't leave them with hundreds of tons of scarp to dispose of. Some of the wierder items he saved included an entire wall covered with old drafting machines, a breadbox full of used popsicle sticks, numerous piles of plastic, aluminum and paper containers such as fast food comes in, brand new cheapistan, full drill bit indexes laying on top of thousands of quality HS drills, many rolls of 28 ga and smaller electrical wire but no wire to put lights in the buildings. Leigh at Marmachine