"NN" wrote in message
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Arfa Daily wrote:
"Charles Schuler" wrote in message
. ..
Copper, tin, lead, and other metals are non-magnetic and so are many
alloys such as "stainless steel." Also, metals such as nickel are only
weakly magnetic.

Ally is soft, so gouges easily, light, white, non-magnetic, has a dull
sound
when you hit it, and won't solder to with regular solder. Old ally will
usually sport some white powdery oxide corrosion, and exposed surfaces
may
well have characteristic pock marked surfaces. If the scrap is painted,
or
has not been exposed to the elements, then its a lot harder to tell.
There's
not much scrap pure ally out there, because it's not a very useful metal.
It
fatigues easily and is generally not very strong or resistant to
deformation, and is too soft. It can be made a lot more useful by
alloying
it with other metals, which I guess does affect scrap value, as the
wanted
ally would have to be seperated out from the other metals.

Arfa

There are a lot of alloys out there as you said, lead and copper is
easily identified without a magnet. The alloys don,t rust but do what
you described. Some are much stronger than others yet slightly
brittle. I saw a alloy once that melted before lead did. I guess
one has to take another approach and ask the recycler if alloys are a
issue.


I've seen this stuff too. I think it's called Wood's Metal. I don't know
what actual metals make up the alloy though. Two places I know that they use
it are as the safety plug in a pressure cooker lid, and as the hold-off bar
in fire sprinkler systems, both cases where a very low melting temperature
is required.

Arfa