When do you finally throw scraps away

[Ranchmanben]

In Show Me Your Shop, a certain member is getting razzed about how tidy his shop is. It’s somewhat sarcastic but it brings about a question everyone here deals with. When is it time to throw that piece of metal out? Everyone has got those 1-3” pieces of bar stock, readyrod, coil spring, flat bar or and other tiny bit of steel that they hoard thinking that they will make something out of it at some point. Do you ever really use them? Every couple of years I get fed up with looking at those pieces that I don’t seem to ever use and throw them on the actual scrap pile where they get covered in dirt and eventually go back to where they come from.  Does anyone else have a paint can of scrap that they don’t ever get around to using? 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

My paint can got full 20 years ago. I'm now working on the 5th bread crate and still pull some out to use so to answer when is never.

[Frosty]

13 minutes ago, Ranchmanben said:

Does anyone else have a paint can of scrap that they don’t ever get around to using? 

Doesn't everyone? 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Michael Cochran]

I usually save those small bits until it’s time to take a load to the scrap yard. I like to find old metal buckets that’s pretty much useless and fill them with off cuts, punching slugs, etc. When I get a couple filled up and have enough drink cans or scrap copper (read “stuff that’s worth the trip”) then I’ll take it. If it’s small bits of high carbon I’ll save them until I get tired of looking at them since I could always use that 1/2” long piece of coil spring to put a hardenable edge on something. Not that I ever do. 

[MotoMike]

I have started to wonder about that but only have a couple inches in my paint can.  wondered if it was ever the impetus build a foundry

[Michael Cochran]

I tried a couple times to turn my scrap into solid steel again using something like an old bloomery stack. I didn’t know enough before I started and my results were less than impressive. I ended up with somethin like cast iron with a very small amount of high carbon steel and some pieces of nails that didn’t find their way down the stack before I ran out of fuel and fused intact to the semi melted mess in the bottom of the stack. 

[MotoMike]

Michael, you talked me out of it.  for now

[Michael Cochran]

If you want to do it, do lots of research. Lee sauder and Skip someone have some papers available online showing how they do it. They also have diagrams for some small furnaces for this kind of thing. Including the Aristotle furnace. I plan to make another go at it one day but it’s a long process and it’s not really a one man job so I’ll need to recruit some help. 

[DavidF]

I have been saving all scraps with the intent of flattening them and turning them into a Damascus at some point. My thought was to use hardenable steel in one bucket and pull nickel out of old batteries I have which are NiMH. So I can create layers of steel and nickel at a very small scale and it will be my first Damascus attempt on the cheap. I have also seen a guy use baking soda on weldable steel and increase the carbon to be able to use it for knives. His demo showed the baking soda only carburized a very shallow layer, so if you take the scraps and make them thin enough, you could theoretically have carbon all the way through a piece. None of this is practice yet for me, it is all theoretical, but that is my plan for my scrap heaps.

[Glenn]

Take a hot piece of metal and burn a hole at the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket so the water can drain out. Throw the scraps anything smaller than 3-4 inches long into one bucket and 4-12 inches into another bucket. When the shorts bucket gets full, start a 2nd bucket.

Next trip to the junk yard take the 3-4 shorts bucket(s) and exchange it for something useful. 

[Will W.]

3 hours ago, Ranchmanben said:

When is it time to throw that piece of metal out?

Is "never" an appropriate answer?

[Pr3ssure]

2 hours ago, DavidF said:

I have been saving all scraps with the intent of flattening them and turning them into a Damascus at some point. My thought was to use hardenable steel in one bucket and pull nickel out of old batteries I have which are NiMH. So I can create layers of steel and nickel at a very small scale and it will be my first Damascus attempt on the cheap. I have also seen a guy use baking soda on weldable steel and increase the carbon to be able to use it for knives. His demo showed the baking soda only carburized a very shallow layer, so if you take the scraps and make them thin enough, you could theoretically have carbon all the way through a piece. None of this is practice yet for me, it is all theoretical, but that is my plan for my scrap heaps.

This is the best video I've found on case hardening

 

[JHCC]

1 hour ago, Will W. said:

Is "never" an appropriate answer?

Always.

[Anachronist58]

Oh, how big thy yard, how understanding thy spouse,  how camouflaged thy loot, er ah, inventory, from the scrutiny of the municipalities and their incitors!!

Robert Taylor

[ausfire]

It's only a problem when you have heaps of scrap pieces that you know you won't use and can't throw out. I have a huge problem.

[Anachronist58]

And how does one REALLY know that one will never use that bit or this??

3:00 a.m. here on the U.S. West Coast, good night!

[anvil]

Perhaps a better question is when do you quit taking  scrap?

As for your question, anything smaller than 6" mild steel ends up sold,, someday. Anything  longer than that stays on my steel rack. I can't tell you just how many times I've forge welded a piece of drop onto a longer bar, or  carriage bolt to get the length I need.

Most of my  um, er, mistakes end up in my scrap pile and usually don't go for scrap. I've a few friends that like cruising my "scrap" for their own reasons.

Never forget, you can tell the quality of a blacksmith by the quality of his scrap pile. 

As to my question, about 15 years into my journey I became pretty selective as to what I take. I pretty much limit it to wrought iron and sometimes coil/leaf springs as if my stock pile gets low.

I'll take most any high carbon/tool steels to the day. I have some machinest friends who come by on occasions with known drop from their work.   

 

[Daswulf]

I do actually get rid of some little bits. Tho I still have many buckets of mess ups and bits that may come in useful. Their fate will be decided when spring time comes.  I guess it depends if I think I can use it or not. Gotta make room for all the new resources that come in.  

[Anachronist58]

17 hours ago, Pr3ssure said:

and pull nickel out of old batteries I have which are NiMH.

I wish to alert our Resident Chemists to your Idea. As Thomas Powers would say: "May I commend to your attention,"

Recycling of nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries

 

I am concerned about the accidental generation of Nickel tetra carbonyl, which may possibly be quite easily produced by heating (finely divided) Nickel in the presence of Carbon monoxide.

The Carbon monoxide ligands in metal carbonyls are known to be extremely destructive, in very small quantities, to living organisms.

Will the experts step in and corroborate my assertion?

Robert Taylor

20 hours ago, DavidF said:

and pull nickel out of old batteries I have which are NiMH.

for clarification, the original post is by DavidF, and if you are indeed a well informed chemist, I beg your pardon. 

 

[DavidF]

I am only interested in the anode grid. If I understand your concern, it is related to the metallic powder. Is that correct? I am not interested at this point in working with the powders and trying to recover metals. I just want the simple grid which is already in the appropriate form for my purposes

Pr3ssure, thank you for sharing. That is a great example using Tums. 

[Anachronist58]

DavidF,

Yes, my concern is with Nickel Powder, and/or the the breaking-down of solid Nickel by hammering.

Not knowing the construction of your specific anodes, and lacking, myself, expert knowledge (or time to acquire it) of the subject, I am not able to be more informative.

I  note, however, that some anode grids are described as being constructed from Nickel-infused materials, which would be problematic.

Robert Taylor

[ausfire]

I don't throw out much small stock because it's handy to weld onto a longer piece for making short items like key chains etc. My main problem is amassing tons of scrap for use in scrap sculpture. You don't want to discard something that may be useful someday. I now have four separate piles of scrap metal (and an understanding wife) and most of it becomes tangled and heavy and you can't get to the piece you want anyway. One day I will have to bite the bullet and do some sorting. Scrap steel is worthless here though. The best deal you can get is that the scrappy will take it away without charging you. And then only if you have a significant amount. They won't come for a ute load.

 I will keep all the wrought iron scrap though ... I don't use it, but down the track somebody might want it.

[JHCC]

I have very specific plans for these:

[Michael Cochran]

Cannon size shot?

[SLAG]

Nickel carbonyls are extremely poisonous. A nasty gas.

So what are they? They are a nickel carbon oxygen compound. More precisely Ni 4(C=O). The carbon doubled oxygen unit is called a "carbonyl" radical.

This chemical is called nickel carbonyl.

As stated above it is desperately poisonous. If you heat nickel and carbon monoxide you will produce nickel carbonyl and  "you will wake up dead". That is the phrase used by some of the chemists,  metallurgists, and metallurgical chemists I encountered while working in Sudbury and the Sudbury basin in northern Ontario. (a long time ago).

I wish I had coined that phrase but, alas, I'm not that clever. Sigh.

Mr. DavidF you seem like a decent fellow and you have many years to enjoy in adulthood. But doing some of the metallurgical chemistry, you propose will KILL you.

(Sorry for me being rather blunt but mincing words here is not appropriate.

I applaud your desires to recycle and make use of a major and growing source of potentially environment pollution. The saved waste nickel would serve as a valuable  resource. 

Those batteries also have some valuable rare earth and aluminum trace metals, as anode contaminants that must be removed before the recovered nickel can be reused for Nickel Hydride batteries.

The reference that Mr. Anachronist cited is a wonderfully, ("recycling of nickel metal hydride batteries"), fascinating read. I highly recommend it. Thank you Mr. Robert Taylor.

But note that the author claims that the nickel powder used in those batteries must, first, undergo treatment by two carboxylic (organic) acids to remove rare earth elements and aluminum contaminants that are deposited on the anode. The acids are citric and ascorbic acid.

Only then is the nickel further treated in order to extract the remaining nickel from the cobalt metal ion matrix That treatment was the use of a concentrated hydrochloric acid chemical leaching solution.

The paper did NOT mention the use of heat in any of the reactions described. (heat that would cause the nickel to react with any carbon monoxide in the air to produce nickel carbonyl.) Any fire produces carbon monoxide to some degree). Repeat, they did not use heat in any of their described chemical reactions.

If you are still willing to go ahead with your nickel extraction experiments, do some serious chemical reading and then run your thoughts on such a process by a metallurgical chemist who is comfortable with the subject matter. (you can find same at a school of mines, or metallurgy, or industrial organic and also inorganic chemistry department.

Incidentally the Mond (nickel carbonyl) process was/is used to extract nickel form ore. (invented 1890).

You will get a warm welcome from members of a fascinating and very bright group of people researching in a technological area of chemistry.

(I spent many happy years in that milieu).

I hope that the above description proves useful to the readers.

Warm regards,

SLAG.