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Posted by David Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Friday, December 03, 2010 at 19:29:07 :
In Reply to: OT scrap metal question posted by Kaegi [71.227.129.92] on Friday, December 03, 2010 at 16:59:46 :
If you're near a big port city, there will be at least one major scrap buyer who most of the little guys sell to and who sells directly to end users. They pay the best prices, buy the largest variety of stuff, and can pay you a premium for exotic metals and alloys. I used to sell most of my scrap to Tacoma Metals. They had a hand-held nuclear device that would irradiate a sample, measure what bounced back and tell you on the screen what alloy it was, if it recognized it, or what fraction of what metal was in it if it didn't. For scrap iron, those kinds of outfits will pay you for it when the price is so low that the small time operators will just offer to haul it away for free. There's a similar outfit in Seattle. I think there's one in Spokane too, though I haven't dealt with them.
So, that's the best option, especially if you have something besides ordinary scrap iron. The second option is sell it directly to a foundry. When I lived in Everett, Washington Iron Works, and one other place, would buy scrap iron at their dock. Most of what those sorts of foundries make is ornamental castings, sewer grates, and the line, which don't require very good control of the alloy. Here, Hern Iron Work in Coeur d'Alene will buy scrap directly. There are a surprising number of small foundries in America still. They don't produce anywhere near the quality of the old machinery we find that was made of virgin iron, carefully melted and cast by true craftsmen, but they do make a lot of manhole covers, drain grates, ornamental tree rings, and things like that. Hern even makes cannons "for display only", but people fire them.
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