For the love of scrap

Been having a giggle at myself thinking back on the things I've done for a little scrap.

I burn a lot of wooden pallets so every morning clean the fire out with a magnet ( that I stripped out of a microwave ) then fill up an old 20lt oil can takes me a good month to fill it up.

I've also stripped down an old wardrobe and got a grand total of 1kg worth of metal from it ( made myself 12p for an hrs work ) when the price was £120 a ton.

I now keep all my metal food tins and drinks cans as well worked out it takes 34 food cans to make 1kg and at today's prices makes a grand total of 5p per kg ( £50 a ton ).

Just wondered what you guys and girls do that others may think your mad for doing.

all metal is money... just not that much lately! I have been known to remove the metal cutting thing from a box of floss, or the cutting edge from a box of plastic wrap. It all adds up!!!!

Very true I've even stripped a few double mattresses most can have upwards of 10kg of metal in them

I sweep my bonfire pit with a magnet as well, burning old fence panels yields a lot of nails and other hardware. On a side note, how much of this do you think gets lost in the soil when we just chuck buckets of this into the yards shred pile? I always wondered if some places have a separate baler just for small parts, so as to not lose material.

I put the tinyest metal parts in with my metal, Brass bits from BIC lighters, Steel staples from newspapers and magazines, anything metal has its place.
Andyheims quote.On a side note, how much of this do you think gets lost in the soil when we just chuck buckets of this into the yards shred pile?

Andyheims question about yards loosing metal in the mud..
Last time I was at the yard I asked about a weird clamshell shaped thing that looks like it goes on the end of the diggers boom.
It turns out it does.
Its a typical clamshell bucket with a round metal screen inside it.
Somehow they pick up a load of metal from the mud and close the clams, the metals inside the now whole round metal screen. They hit a button in the diggers cab and a hydrolic pump starts up, its connected to the round metal screen inside the clams.
It spins the metal screen around, just like in a clothes drier, and all the mud and water gets flung off the metal that's inside it.
Once its done, they open up the clams over the steel bin and dump the steel into it.
The small steel that's still in the mud will get taken out later in a normal conveyor type eddy current setup.