Got some New business

so last night i showed up at this guys house to remove an old empty oil tank. (as a side note my yard DOES take oil tanks they just need to be cut in half) but anyway before coming i spoke with him on the phone he told me the tank isnt extremely heavy and i should just bring one more person but it is gonna need to come up some stairs. what he failed to tell me was that the tank needed some pieces cut off in order to get out of his basement and that the tank really weighs a good 500 pounds. me and my worker took an hour to move it to the staircase. after another hour of trying to get it on the first step the guy decides to call his friends . we finally get it out of the basement and into my vans after 3 hours of work but then my night turned great and the work all seemed worth it when he mentioned he also had a 650 pound boiler that needed to be moved next week and one of his friends has an aluminum shed he just took apart with so many pieces he doesnt think itll fit in my van and the other friend picks up scrap cars with his tow truck but doesnt take any scrap metal so he was looking for someone too pick up the scrap metal and he said i can be his guy. i gave them all flyers and told them see them soon and hauled the tank back home im getting ready to cut it up now and make a trip to the yard and see how much it really weighs..

Good deal! I'm curious of what the weight actually was. Keep me posted.

"Can I scrap it?"

it ended up 500 pounds so i made 50 bucks off it and the boiler ended up 875 pounds of cast iron so i made 130 dollars 180 all together not bad

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Take it from someone who scrapped almost 110 sheds last winter. NONE OF THEM ARE ALUMINUM. Sheet metal, which EVERYONE believes to be aluminum. Do yourself a favor and charge a small fee to dismantle them. Other wise, a big waste of time!

If metal sheds were aluminum NONE would have survived last winter in the Northeast! I lost my steel shed along with just about every other one in the state when the roof collapsed under the snow load! AL sheds would cave in way too easily!

The thing of it is, aluminum sheds DO exist. GB did you touch every shed with a magnet to verify?

110 sheds over a winter is crazy. I haven't had a call for ONE.

Originally Posted by Scrapette

Recently I saw a large pile of metal roofing behind some buildings. The pieces are long and would have to be cut. Would it be worth it to take it away for free? How much does a portable sawzall cost? Any brand recommendations? Thanks for any answers in advance.

If you enjoy doing things the hard way (and some do) you could use these.



BTW most any name brand sawzall should treat you right. Even a HF would prolly do okay. I have no experience with an HF sawzall. Have had good success with their angle grinders though. Jump on Cl and see if you can score a name brand for cheap, or hit up some pawn shops.

For some reason angle grinder discs wear out really really quickly when used to cut thru roofing material, even when theres several sheets stacked onto each other.
I guess its because of the thin sheetmetal section & each sheet wants to grab & bash the grains of grit off the disc.

Normally when grinding, the individual grits should rub against the metal, when doing that it will rip the surface of the metal, abrading it away.
As the individual grit wears, it gets blunter (imagine you pushing a big sharp gritty rock over a sheet of glass)
that causes it to heat up & the grit will expand & the blunt surface will chip away, leaving a new sharp surface to do the grinding.
The bonding material (glue) is a big factor too.

The harder the metal being worked, the smaller the grit & softer the bonding material.

Anyway, theres a certain metal disc that can be used in a skillsaw to cut thru thin roofing metal.
They work really well & don't blunten, they are very very LOUD though...
I haven't tried this yet, but I keep hearing about using a old worn out tungsten tipped blade, backwards in the skillsaw.

Keywords 'backwards' & I think a normal blade will do this too, not sure, mighta be to do with the sort of metal the disc's made from.

Wear earmuffs, you can close your eyes, but you can't close your ears......

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

Take it from someone who scrapped almost 110 sheds last winter. NONE OF THEM ARE ALUMINUM. Sheet metal, which EVERYONE believes to be aluminum. Do yourself a favor and charge a small fee to dismantle them. Other wise, a big waste of time!

This made me chuckle. My girlfriend's parents found out I scrap computers and asked if my buyer also took aluminum. I said sure, I get a lot of aluminum heat sinks to scrap, so they said that they had a whole lot of aluminum from an old shed I could have. When I got to their house it was 2 thin pieces of metal about 2 pounds each, and it was magnetic sheet metal (steel). I thanked them and tossed it in my trunk, lol.

About 30-40 cents? That's a decent pay day.