The feed lines for my antennas and rotator was deteriorating, so I replaced them and ended up with a fair bit of coax cable and 9-pair,
18 AWG wire. I cut the jackets off and tossed the insulated wires into a fire I was using to burn up some wood scraps from the shop.After the fire was out, I collected up the copper and tossed the really bad looking stuff in a 5-gallon bucket with some water and some crushed granite. Rolling it around the front yard for a while did a lot to clean up the copper, but it was a big PITA to separate the bits of copper wire from the granite pebbles.
The copper brought over $150 at the scrap yard.
If this happens again, I'd like to have a different process, so I had a couple of thoughts.
- Some of the copper in the fire was melted. The fire was made up mainly of softwood scraps. I've got acres and acres of Texas Juniper (they call it cedar) and I was wondering if I could make up something like an oversized Gingery furnace to melt the copper down using a wood fire. I know it is difficult ot cast copper at home, but all I would be making would be ingots.
- It might not be too bad if I could turn the 5-gallon bucket and crushed granite into a vibratory tumbler, but it would need to work in two modes. The first mode would keep everything stirred up, but the second mode would encourage everything to settle out by specific gravity (with the granite on the top and the copper on the bottom). Can anyone offer advice on how to induce the two modes? I have lots of spare motors sitting around ranging from 1/4 to 2 HP.
Thanks, Ed