Best scavenged items

[Looking4new]

Unfortunately the scrap yards here will not sell anything that comes into the yard. I have tried to buy empty barrels for burn barrels....no go.

An old wood stove makes a good burn barrel. I burn all my garbage in an old Elmira wood stove. Something to think about if you can't get barrels.

 

[RitchElbe]

awesome finds buddy

 

[DT86]

Unfortunately the scrap yards here will not sell anything that comes into the yard. I have tried to buy empty barrels for burn barrels....no go.

Same here.

We used to be able to pick what they had. There was lots of stuff, from new perfectly good cutoffs, used perfectly good scrap to worthless scrap, available to dig through. They would even help finding what you needed.

The last time I went they said that due to new insurance regs they couldn't sell anything to the public. I asked if they could just bring what I needed to me and that was out of the question too.

Major bummer.

 

[RitchElbe]

That's what I like about our local yard...We know the owner and he knows I am a certed metal worker/welder...from time to time I even help the old guys there take a break and cut scrap for awhile, while they enjoy coffee in the winter or cool water in the summer that I keep in the truck. All in all it pays to be nice..These guys keep eyes out for things I might need or want..all the ask is a lil help with the firewood...which I am real good at finding as well

 

[dieselcrawler]

Buddy of mine has a brother who runs a pipeline yard... some rolls of typar type underlayment need to go away. We show up with the trailer... 9 full rolls @ 300' long, 4 partial @ about 2/3, 2 or 3 shorts... 15' wide... we have about $150 in fuel and a days time for the 2 of us invested.

Enough to sell a few rolls to make a bit of cash and still have enough left for any of our projects in the next few years. Good haul...

 

[muddstopper]

I think just about anything useful around here has already been scraped. I used to be able to go to the scrap yards and find all kinds of stuff, hydraulic cylinders, pumps, valves, hoses. New metal drops, occasional used farm equipment and sometimes even the tractor it was used behind. When metal prices where sky high, you could find tons of useful stuff. Now you go by the scrap yards, and they are just about bare. If someone does bring in something worth a hoot, it gets scarfed up the same day. My last hual was some stainless, a 55gal barrel, a tea holder like found in restaruants and some copper tube. Took it all to a buddy and he now provides me with liquid refreshments to the tune of about 10gal a pop. I keep the local grocery stores free of all the overripe fruit I can hual and let nature convert it into a useful product.

 

[davedj1]

I have a couple of junk yards around here that allow some looking over, they sell by the pound, about double of what they pay for junk. I have gotten some nice pieces of 2x2x1/4 angle iron, some 1/4" sheet pieces and a 5 x 30 cylinder that has never been used for scrap prices. I love scrounging another mans junk and make it my treasure.
dave

 

[Looking4new]

I am constantly in the scrap pile at the local dump. I also go over to the used building material pile and wander through there. Got a couple of good shelf units for my shop.

 

[PHPaul]

Not strictly "scavenged", but I used to work for the cannery here in town. They're gone now, but they'd been here since the 1890's under the same family ownership. Needless to say, they'd amassed a HUGE collection of stuff. A lot of it was stored in a garage/barn on the property. It was literally wall-to-wall and floor to ceiling, including the lofts.

By the time I started working there, it had changed hands 2 or 3 times, and the folks that owned it when I worked there wanted that barn cleaned out. However, being tighter than bark on a tree, they didn't want to pay anybody to do it. As a maintenance guy, I'd been through every nook and cranny of that barn looking for spare parts, so I knew with a fair degree of precision what was in there.

I made the Plant Manager an offer: I'll go through it on my own time without pay and separate the contents into three piles: Obvious junk that we should toss or recycle, stuff we ought to keep, and stuff that I was going to lug off for myself.

Somewhat to my surprise, they took the deal. Long story short, I lugged off two working welders (a Hobart AC/DC and a Miller DialArc 250 AC/DC/TIG complete with all the TIG accessories) a battery powered electric forklift, a humungous Hossfeld bender and a couple of truckloads of usable steel cutoffs. There was also a bunch of little stuff that went into my stash of parts/junk.

I sold the forklift and the Hobart for a pretty decent chunk of change, and made a really stupid mistake on the Hossfeld. I didn't research what they were going for and sold it for about 1/10th of the going price. Some guy drove 500 miles round trip to get it, which should have been a hint...

 

[RitchElbe]

Sweetness right there!