I spent several hours on Friday and another several on Saturday at
the ultimate metal collectors delight/horror. The man hauled in almost
anything made of metal for 40 years. There is a huge, probably weighs
in excess of 20 tons shear, right next to a shed full of electrical
panel boxes that have been stored so long the original cardboard
wrapping is gone on the top ten layers. The shear is scrap having been
left outdoors for 20 years and being vey obsolete when it was brought
in. The widow's son filled the 14th full haul-a-way with scrap on
Saturday and he isn't half done with the outside work yet, nor has he
started to demo the rambling shacks and sheds.
My efforts involved purchasing and salvaging the smaller stuff
inside. If anyone is in love with or just needs larger carbide
inserts I brought home several hundred pounds. Most were new but so
obsolete they are best scrapped. I have agreed to buy his small
lathe, two mills and some other machines but they are currently not
accessable due to the horrendous piles of metal stuff. Lots of frozen
three phase motors, more old welders and three phase transformer then
you can count and the wildest lathe chuck storage system I have ever
seen. He drove a 2" pipe about 8' long into the ground then slide
10-12 big lathe chucks over it so they wouldn't fall over.
Yes, this is almost a rant as I can't believe all the great stuff
that was reduced to scrap metal and the fact that one man hauled it
all home. His family said he circulated through the local scrap yards
and brought everything interesting home. One room was entirely filled
with shelves of tiny boxes containing nearly every weird fastener you
might imagine. I took a few of the keys, drive screws and SS and left
all the rest.
If this sounds like your house please be kind to your loved ones
and don't leave them with hundreds of tons of scarp to dispose of.
Some of the wierder items he saved included an entire wall covered
with old drafting machines, a breadbox full of used popsicle sticks,
numerous piles of plastic, aluminum and paper containers such as fast
food comes in, brand new cheapistan, full drill bit indexes laying on
top of thousands of quality HS drills, many rolls of 28 ga and smaller
electrical wire but no wire to put lights in the buildings. Leigh at
Marmachine