A beginner's guide to scrapping Brass. How to identify this valuable scrap metal - plus handy tips!

hey guys Kristin ultimate recycler we're going to look at some scrap metal again in this particular case brass I just thought I'd do a run-through on brass for any beginner scrappers out there one of my subscribers asked me to do one on brass I know there's plenty out there on YouTube and everyone has their own take so this is my take on brass for scrap metal you can see here a bit of a range of stuff that keys are most often made from brass plumbing fittings ornamental pieces light fittings Hardware doorknobs drawer knobs and just general piping sheet press and more larger plumbing fittings so it's a very common metal and it actually pays quite well and it's actually reasonably heavy it's an alloy of copper and zinc there are various forms of it and also as far as scrap prices go you need to be sure that it's brass and needs to be pure so let's look at identifying brass first and then we'll look at the the purity or the contaminations and what they mean to your price okay so what tools we're going to use simply a magnet and a file the magnet will sort out any ferrous stuff and we'll just scan across these keys to show you how easy that is the ring on those keys is steel and not brass that's fine and we have a steel e there that's actually a suitcase key so you can see our magnet can give you some instant results regarding the any ferrous metals it doesn't mean the rest of it is brass so we'll look at that's where we bring the file into it let's scan across the rest of it we've got the magnet that's fine that's fine so we can scan across the rest of these and a quick scan here we go these brackets they look brass but they're not they're just brass plated the world is full of trickery and if you threw those in your brass pin and took him to the scrapyard most likely they'd be spotted and that would downgrade your entire load this one's not magnetic these aren't awkward here this pipe is and again it's just a look-alike looks like brass but it isn't so both those ones would contaminate our load so the magnets handy for killing stuff easily and we're not finished with it yet but let's go to the file and we'll have a look at these keys here so would obviously have to get that key ring off there but any keys that look like brass will be brass there won't be any issues there you can also tell on some of them bit of corrosion coming through a bit of green verdigris which is the copper component of the brass so that was plated but you can see the base metal underneath so that would certainly be brass now issues there we can go on color with the keys however these silver looking ones if you can get aluminium keys I can tell by the weight of these that they're not and with some experience you will learn very quickly that yes they'll be fine they will be brass but the file is a good way of telling and what's under the plating one tip with an old file is use the edge invariably no matter how much of files been used very rarely people actually use the edge so the edge cutting the cutter part of the file you'll find is still very abrasive and it does go through the plating really easily so a quick foil across there I was in the camera in and we'll see if we can see the yellow coming through the silver so yep definitely brass so easy way to tell and let's have a look at some of the plumbing fittings wall of zoomed in this one's chromed and if we cut across hurt and you can feel the fire really biting yeah and you can hear it and there you go you should be able to see on that how nice and yellow that is underneath so a lot of plumbing fittings are chromed now fold a little bit on the showerhead as well and you can see the yellow there as well so the magnet test these past and the foil test showed yellow very confident to their brass no problems at all and most plumbing fittings will be this old tip occasionally on these top sections they used a diecast pop middle and again easy to check with the foil and there we go we'll zoom in on that one and definite Hill idea the reflection in this spot is not real flashy here you go you can see that nicely so that tip will be all brass no problems at all now I do actually not sell some tips for scrap because some of the old ones I actually sell quite well through the shop and I'll touch on pricing in a minute but we're just still identifying this piece here that has been rather Glary it is a yellowy kind of hue and it's going to be a bit hard to show the actual color we are am it's reflecting badly but even though it looks a bit like brass if we run the file across it it's extremely soft I can feel the foil almost cut right into it and if I can zoom in on that spot you can see that that's actually not yellow it's silver underneath so whilst we had some pieces that didn't look like brass that were when you have some pieces that do look like brass and they're not so that one is actually aluminum and it's extremely light so with a bit of experience you'll get to know that without even touching it with the foil but the foil is good proof the magnet proved that it wasn't ferrous but as I said earlier doesn't prove that years brass so the foil tests showed that that's not it's quite soft it's very light I know for certain that cell iminium these other ones that we just tested with the magnet we've ruled them out from being brass but even if I run the file across those as well we're going to get that steel silvery look so that fails both tests so there you go that's how you can steal a sword a lot of brass will touch on this one here this past the magnet test it is fairly light so we don't conclusively know it's brass yet so let's run the fall across preps on this spot here and you get a feel for the hardness now that actually I don't know if you can tell from this light but that actually is yellow so that is brass I'd suggest doing this outside inside sometimes it to be hard to tell the colour and on the Camry you're going to get a lot of reflection but that's definitely brass so and we know all these plumbing fittings will be they pass to make the test general rule of thumb if they're plumbing fittings and the clearly metal they're likely to be brass but we'll do a quick check as well with the foil and that's very clear to see that that's yellow under there now what's saying with the hardness you get a feel for how much drag is on the foil how soft the middle is and it's worth your while practicing a little bit on some aluminium which we know is soft perhaps some copper which I haven't actually got any copy here copper is very soft and you'll really feel the foil cutting very easily brass is much harder than aluminium and copper and then you could go to perhaps stainless steel or normal steel is a little bit harder again and with a bit of experience you could almost pass a blind test by saying that feels like copper that feels like brass so it's just some more clues for you to identify it and with a bit of experience you'll get much better at it so all our plumbing fittings our brass that like beating his brass they're all brass the keys are all brass except we better get that key ring off there because that would contaminate our load now with hardware this handle looks brass it past the magnet test we can do a quick foil test here to check it feels like brass on the file it's yellow there so that's brass as well most of your hardware would be the old doorknobs a brass but I do want to talk about that one in a tick now you do need to be careful with cast pieces particularly older decorative pieces because some of these will be brass and some won't work I said the world's full of trickery and here's where the fire really does help because these all pass the magnet test so let's look at a few of these old draw pools now you'll find that the older ones the early genuine ones and I'm aware of what's old because it's my trade all the early ones will be brass and you can see by the back of that it looks brass if we do the foil test it does show up yellow and that's definitely brass they all pass the magnet test but these more modern reproduction handles if I can zoom in on both of these and show you there's some things to look out for will you see writing casting it like that and you see all these casting points that's some very typical of a diecast zinc type material this one's a good example as well you can see some writing in there these casting points and I filed this one just before to have a look and if we can zoom in on that I'll try and fold it a bit more it's soft as well and you can see that silver so whilst these look like brass they certainly intended to look like brass they're actually not these are a diecast zinc or a pot metal and the screw on that one was actually steel and I should have passed the magnet over two bit more thoroughly so if they win in your bar spin does a fair chance your load would be contaminated and I would reduce the price so you need to be a little bit clever on some of these it's a matter of gaining experience the old ones generally are brass and your ones quite often aren't even though they look like brass now that sorts those out the doorknobs as I said the old ones are generally brass now this one presents an issue with contamination and that's what we're going to talk about next now once you've sorted all your brass from your fake look-alike brass we've got to make sure it's pure now this one this old doorknob you'll see it's got an insert there and if I checked a magnet on it that sticks so the door note is brass it passes the test and the foil shows that it's yellow but it has a metal into it so to sell that as brass and get a good price you would need to get that steel yet if it's not an easy job I'd suggest don't worry it's a matter of economics and I'll talk about that shortly so I probably wouldn't bother trying to get that out there I would throw that in a dirty brass pin you get a lot less price but you know it's a matter of time spent and we'll just demonstrate that now okay I've got my trusty scales or one of my trusty scales I still like to use the old analogue scales sorry this doorknob is contaminated door knob let's see what it weighs all right so about 50 grams now the current price of brass well at least before the corona virus started impacting the world the price of brass was bit over $4 a kilo so we'll work on four I have heard it actually got up to nearly five at one stage but let's say four dollars a kilo this is one twentieth of a kilo so one tenth of a kilo would be forty cents this is twenty cents worth of us if if it was all pure now it's not we know that that centerpiece is steel it probably contributes a fair bit to the weight of it as well so for twenty cents well all right let's say ten cents with a brass is it worth you I'll be the grinding or filing or cutting with a hacksaw and trying to get that piece of steel out for ten cents in my books no but look if you enjoy that sort of stuff go for it you know people can sit down and spend five hours doing a jigsaw that's five hours of their life and they don't get any return other than satisfaction so if you get satisfaction stripping all this stuff absolutely fine by me but it is important to be aware of the economics so I will just throw that in the dirty brass pin where you'll probably only get 50 cents a kilo instead of four but you haven't wasted time on it with regards to weights let's look at this door handle here now this one we identified as being brass no issues there it's nice and pure no problems at all let's weigh it we'll put it on these scales and we've got just over a quarter of a kilo so let's say it's a quarter and let's say brass was four dollars a kilo there's a dollar so one dollar for scrap and I think it's important to keep these things in perspective now that's a really nice door handle I don't know that it's overly old it may be 1970s perhaps rough guess but it's a nice solid brass door handle for one dollar now all right admittedly I have a shock and I would never put that in the brass pin I would put that in the shop and I'd probably put maybe a ten dollar price tag on it because I could see someone wanting a nice old all night or old ish or no brass door handle maybe for an outdoor toilet or you know a bit of a nice door into the man's cave so I see a much better value in that than scrap brass but admittedly most of you don't have an outlet to sell things it probably wouldn't be worth trying to eBay because the post did you'd eat up any any value your head but you know if you having a garage so I'll put it out for five dollars put it out for two dollars you're still doubling your price of the brass but it's up to you if you're just scrapping for for the fun of it and want to cash brass in go for your life it's just important to be we're aware of those values now just on the lines of weight here's a big heavy piece of brass this is an old dumb trap from under a sink and it passed the magnet test before and it's passing the foil test nice yellow brass sometimes these are actually copper this one's our cast brass copper ones are obviously going to be worth a bit more so let's weigh this and see what it works out just to give you an idea of how a brass can head up in value I had to use my other scales for these it weighs too much so we're about one and a quarter kilos which would be for say five dollars so there's a five dollar piece of brass you can see how it can add up to be a fair bit of money once you start picking it up so that's a nice little piece now the last thing I want to talk about in this video is red brass or gunmetal I've always known it as gunmetal I know in the States and in Canada they refer to it as red brass mostly on older pieces this is an old plumbing fitting and I'm not sure how well the lights gonna compare here you can see where I filed it as compared to the yellow of brass wizard wood piece color combination so it's a got a pinkish sort of hue it's and the reason is it's a much higher percentage of copper and now I think red brass or gunmetal also might contain zinc in the alloy but it is worth more and it's worth separating if you're going to turn up some quantity of it if you're not well it's not worth separating you know you wouldn't take just two pieces into the scrapyard Amar's or pudding with normal brass because it's got a higher percentage of copper in it it's going to be better value it won't contaminate your load of brass but to give you an idea of larger pieces of that a lot of the old plumbing fittings and this I actually found this along an old Creek now this is the housing of a water pump and it's heavy it's very thick it's quite an old piece and it's pure there's no metal bolts in it or anything it's pure brass or in fact this is gunmetal I'll grab my file and file a bit across the top here and you can see there that's got more of a coppery tone to it so that piece weighs 15 kilos I'll tell you what it got heavy carrying it back to my youth so 15 kilos of gunmetal or red brass a while about back I probably would have got about six dollars a kilo for that or at least 550 but even at five dollars by 15 kilos there's $75 so you can see big pieces of brass are certainly worth grabbing okay well I think you'll hopefully got a bit out of all that feel free to ask any questions if anyone isn't a beginner scrapper and and wants to point out something I've forgotten to mention by all means point it put it in the comments but hopefully they answers the questions my subscribe ahead about scrapping brass and where the value is and what you got to look for and keeping it pure so I'll do some more videos on scrap at some stage I'll probably touch on copper and stainless steel and aluminium all the common ones so look out for them and keep following my channel it's much appreciated cheerio

Channel: The Ultimate Recycler

Views: 15,709

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Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020