Noisy truckloads of slag

This happened, I dunno, more than fiften years ago anyway, but it's still one of my favorite days.

A guy I knew, who's a landscaper, bought a home with enough acreage to also locate his business on. It was mostly gently sloping land, so he asked if I could grade out a level spot next to the garage. It involved cutting into the hillside, and using the dirt to create a fill on the lower side, leaving a couple thousand square feet of level space. I rented a track loader from a local dealer, and spent a couple of days doing the dirt work.

The final stage of the job involved spreading some sort of stone on the area, to keep out of the mud. It didn't much matter what the material was, as long as it would stand up to his trucks and tractors running/parking on it. He made a few calls, and got a good deal on some material. It was slag, dumped by a mill nearby, and it was called "9AS". It was big enough pieces to make a nice, heavy base.

The first truckloads arrived, and I pointed out where I wanted them to dump. As they raised the beds, and the material started running out, I couldn't help but notice the sound. Rather than just the typical clunky sound of stone or slag, it made a tinkleing, ringing kind of noise too.

I started pushing the piles around, and noticed what all the noise was about. There were lots of small pieces of steel in it. Some were rectangular, maybe an inch to 6 inches per side, maybe 1/8" to 3/8" thick, and others were melted or semi-melted globs about the same size.

I asked the guy if he minded if I picked the metal out, and he said "No problem. Go ahead."

It turned out that about 75% of it wasn't magnetic, and the rest wasn't very strongly magnetic. Yep, stainless steel. :D

I actually made more on the scrap than I did on the dirt work...