Scrapyard Experience

I took a load of scrap metal, mainly swarf, to a large commercial scrap yard yesterday. It's the first time I've got rid of scrap metal in return for cash. It was an 'interesting' experience, but not one I will be rushing to repeat. I had the following in the car:

45kg of cast iron swarf and discarded castings

35kg of steel turnings

6kg of aluminium turnings

7kg of gunmetal/brass/ bronze turnings

After a hiccup about the sequence I realised I had to queue up to go onto the ingoing weighbridge and then go into the office. During my trip to the office the computer fell over, not a good start. I also needed a photo driving licence for ID; no license no cash, that simple. Eventually I got a paper slip, plus a hard hat and hi-viz jacket and was told to 'go over there' and wait for the man in a white hat. After having to ask again on the way, I did eventually see a man in a white hat, who directed me to dump the cast iron and steel in one of several huge heaps. There were some old cars, but it seemed to be mostly industrial scrap; thousands of tons of it.

I then did a 'tour' of the scrapyard one-way system to the non-ferrous section, where a forklift eventually dropped off a large steel container at the back of my car. I put the aluminium and bronze in this, and it was then taken into the nearby shed and the scrap weighed separately. At the end of this, plus a few 'choice' phrases from the operator, as he'd just made a boo-boo and was expecting some interesting words with his boss, I got a second ticket detailing the weights of aluminium and bronze. Then back to the entrance to queue for the weighbridge on the way out.

Once on the weighbridge, back into the office, hand back the hard hat and jacket, and all the bits of paper. After a magic calculation cash was handed over.

In total I got £29, which was rather more than I was expecting having talked to the yard before going there. It broke down as follows:

Cast iron/steel - £11

Aluminium/bronze - £18

I was there nearly an hour and half and it's a 30+ plus mile round trip. Was it worth it; probably not. Apart from anything else I count myself lucky to get out with four functioning tyres on the car, given the amount of scrap lying all over the ground.

In future I think I'll make more regular trips to the closer council tip to get rid of steel scrap. It's just not worth enough to make a trip to a proper scrapyard worthwhile. However, I plan to keep aluminium and copper alloys separately and once I've got enough then visit the scrapyard again. Two advantages of non-ferrous scrap are that it's much more valuable than ferrous weight for weight, and it's weighed individually so you don't need to queue to go on the weighbridge. So the whole sequence should be quicker.

Regards,

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 18/08/2012 18:04:48

At least they seem to be taking some notice of ID. My local scrapyards are somewhat smaller and with no industry around would probably be really puzled by scrap that looked like a birds nest.

Did you check out the options for buying aluminium and bronze for your own casting?

Andrew,

Just done the same exercise or close to it.

Had a clear round on the yard, my scrap is placed in one of those 1/2 tonne tipping skips that two friendly gypo lads collect. They have been coming years, their dad used to collect it and then handed down as the lads came of age.

believe it or not, very trustworthy, they will not come on the property without my say so. This scrap is absolute rubbish, turnings, floor sweepings and real tat. They collect it, all i have to do is lift and tip the skip with the fork truck. I get nothing for the scrap but the skip won't go in the van, to big and I have no way of getting it to a scrap yard so to be honest I'm just grateful.

Heavy scrap went into the same skip at one time when prices were low but now I'm keeping selected heavy bits back.

last week i got fed up of falling over an old wheel barrow stuck up with concrete and with a buckled solid wheel so put the barrow into the van and threw the heavy bits it, probably had a 1/4 of a barrow full. Went down the scrap yard, 1/2 mile trip, pulled up outside the office and got a fork truck to offload the barrow and put it on a set of scales. It made £13 exactly, then spent another £10 buying a load of thick walled heavy tubing

In my case it wasn't about the money but more about falling over this damn barrow plus any trip to the yard is a good excuse.

I do carry a hard hat and hi-vis vest in the Donald so other than a quick request I'm free to roam about.

Only problem is they process scrap that fast that you can miss loads and it all depends on the day what's there.

I do agree with the photo ID, I don't have to show mine anymore as it's on record and the Donald is all sign written up and the camera's catch everything.

John S.

Edited By John Stevenson on 18/08/2012 20:44:06

My thoughts were Bazyle's - at least they wanted proof og ID!

I long for the scrapyards of 15-20 years ago, when you could climb tottering piles of wonky cars and pull off interesting bits. Sdaly back then I was just 'pimping my ride' not looking for model engineering supplies!

Neil

Annoyingly a branch of the same scrap company, but in Biggleswade, which is closer to me, and just down the road from the toolshop I use, said they didn't take turnings, for that I'd need to go to Bedford or Newmarket. There were some large piles of turnings in the scrapyard, probably several tons of steel and aluminium. It looked like the depth of cut on the steel was about 0.25", and 0.5" for aluminium; makes my efforts look rather pathetic. Having said that most of the scrap steel there seemed to be industrial plate and construction sections. While there were some cars and vans delivering scrap most of the vehicles were large lorries, including one from a large local builders merchants.

It never occurred to me to ask about buying. If I was doing my own castings I think I'd prefer to start with virgin metal. Initially some-one looked at my bronze swarf and rather dismissed it as 'class 3' as it was contaminated. However, on the weighing ticket it says class 2, which I assume is worth more per kilo.

When I was machining a lot of aluminium on the CNC mill I enquired of a few local machine shops about getting rid of swarf. They mostly did the same as JohnS, put everything (and I mean everything, metal, oil, dirty rags etc) in a large container, and a man with a van came round and took it away for free.

From a commercial point of view I guess it's not worth taking swarf to the scrapyard unless you're producing large amounts of the stuff, and it's clean and separated into the various metals, in which case the yard may collect it anyway.

Regards,

Andrew

They won't let you in the door to root around or buy in Edinburgh

'elf and safety and insurance issues

What cost 100 quid new I could get for 15 in the good old days

If you weight swaft in commercially it has to be centrifuged first to remove any cutting fluid.

It's a two way street as the producer of the swarf can recycle the old cutting fluid to mix in with new and at £700 plus a drum it's well worth doing.

John S.

My experience of metal scrapyards is that the money from the scrap doesn't cover the multiple punctures on the car.

I have acquired some useful bronze bar originally marine propshaft which is useful for some loco parts, but no good for silver soldered boiler fittings as it contains too much lead. Fred Dibnah got caught out using something unsuitable for road engine axle bearing I recall.

Nick

I hope I am not going against any forum etiquette by posting this here, but I came across this thread in my search for aluminium swarf for an art project. I have been calling different metal shops to see if they have any, to no avail.

Is there anyone who has a few kg's of aluminium swarf to sell me? I can come and collect it if you are in London (zones 1-3). Any other metal would do too, although I prefer aluminium.

Thanks

Karen

Interesting story from Andrew. Well here it's a bit easier. I had some not so good experiences with the smaller scrap merchants around here (Method: have a look, tell a minimal amount) I went to the bigger ones. I have to say that I collected much material from a house demolition; usually I bring the steel stuff from the workshop to the communal recycling center.

So I had a trailer full of steel/iron; most weight consisting of the heater radiators. At this place the same method as Andrew described: over the weighbridge, then they lifted the whole stuff with a large magnet (lifting the trailer too in the first tries!), then to the weighbridge again and getting some cash there.

Steel price: CHF 160 per ton (I had 420 kg). Just paid a tank filling, but that's what I wanted.

1 CHF = £ 0.66 = $ 1.05 approx.

For the other stuff (at a later date) I went to a really large scrapyard. No hard hat, no red jacket, no id card necessary there. But you had to keep the eyes wide open: swarms of forklifts driving around; large trucks everywhere and railway waggons being shunted around. You park the car in a safe corner and thell the very friendly man at the weighbridge what you have. As I had 4 different materials (copper from the rain gutters, brass from faucets, aluminium as profile stuff and swarf) he directed one of the forklifts to bring 4 containers (which had their empty weight written on a plate) around the car. Stuff went into the containers and off to the weighbridge. What's your name please; the office is over there. In the office there was some busy calculations, then I signed the receipt and a nice girl handed me quite a nice pocket money.

They paid: for Copper: CHF 5.65 / kg (my first delivery a xouple of weeks ago it was around CHF 6, so the prices are quite volatile)

Brass: 3.40 / kg

Aluminium: 0.80 / kg (both swarf and large pieces the same, but treated as two articles)

Unfortunately it is not possible to raid the large heaps full of interesting stuff. I wish they would open a small shop...

Greetings, Hansrudolf