How To Make Money Scrapping Metal For Beginners - Scrap Metal Tips, What To Look For

it is scrapped Dima dudes always a very exciting day for me but this time I hope that isn't my car this time I figured we do things a little differently because it was mentioned to me that while there is no shortage of scrapping videos on YouTube it might be fun to do a quick start just the basics how to guide for someone who's looking at getting into it or isn't really sure where to start I know a lot of people who watch my channel already have plenty of experience scrapping and if that's the case well this is not gonna be anything you guys don't already know but thanks for hanging out anyway let's do this thing now in order to get started you're gonna need some tools and I wouldn't suggest anything less than a magnet a pair of wire cutters sometimes I prefer these ones they're a little bulky and to be honest tin snips like these are the wrong tool for the job they are gonna go dull if you use them to cut through wire all day but when they're sharp they make things go fast and smooth so I still prefer them you also need a quality pair of grips and these ones are my personal pick I know there's a ton of different ones on the market but I like these because they've got a lot of grip a really wide mouth if you need they adjust quickly and I didn't think I would use them as often as they did but when I lost my first pair I replaced them immediately I like these ones and a multi head screwdriver as a bare minimum there's an upgrade this is the way to go cordless saves you a lot of effort and time and be sure to bring it with the longest Phillips head you've got to maximize its usefulness I had one and I lost it because it was so useful I had it with me all the time anyway your magnet here is definitely the first and foremost because that helps to identify ferrous metals ferrous meaning containing iron and that is the most common kind of metal you will find anywhere you can find mountains of it rusting all over the place now for any full-time serious scrap or that rusty stuff is gonna be the bread and butter you're gonna find it everywhere and if you have a truck or a trailer you could reliably expect to fill it up and get 40 to $100 a load and you can probably do that twice a day if you just cruise picking up washers dryers stoves microwaves old computer cases everything that stuff would go in a shredder built-in and the nice part about that is you don't need to worry about cleaning it out please go ahead leave on all the stickers and the plastic garbage and the fasteners it doesn't matter they don't care same money you might want to remove the goodies like the copper that's in a microwave or the stainless steel drum that'll be in a washing machine but that's totally up to you if you want to spend your time doing it you don't have to I'm sure they'll be happy to pick it apart after you leave now for me personally this is all the space I've got so I don't usually bother with that stuff the most I've gotten out of a steel run in this was 40 bucks and I was focusing on the densest pieces I could find so talking about heavy bars and bed frames and I did have some computer cases and some microwaves but I think it was bearded diver who suggested this to me they were completely full a little bits of steel so all the screws and little corners and just junk that was metal I put them inside the cases so these were very heavy little metal boxes and 40 bucks is decent so there's really nothing wrong with that but I certainly don't focus on steel so much because the pile gets pretty big pretty fast that's kind of its value though one more tool that you might want to be sure to bring it's a luxury item but it's pretty nice pair of gloves wouldn't be without it that's just me now the one piece of steel grab everytime is these things now I used to ignore them brake drums and brake rotors they're cast-iron so the value is a little higher anywhere from one to three dollars a piece so that might not seem like much but everybody just leaves them lying around and it does not take long to build up a big pile of it and when you find one you usually find two or four so it's one of the easiest five to ten dollars you'll make I wouldn't leave them lying around some other common places you'll find cast iron which I don't have any examples right in front of me are the grills from some barbecues they've got to be the heavy thick ones though and old clawfoot bathtubs yeah that's why they're so heavy most of them are not made it of course and they're actually cast-iron covered in I don't know what they're covered in now with the ferrous steel into an out of the way let's talk about the stuff that a magnet won't stick to this is the stuff that I focus on because it takes up a lot less space the next most common type of scrap you're gonna come across aluminum and wire let's start with insulated copper wire that means it's got the plastic insulation still on there's basically three categories insulated copper number one number two and number three they're graded based on the percentage of their total weight your scrap yard is going to get out of them in actual copper number one being the best and that a decent rule of thumb here is if you bend it and it holds that Bend it's probably some decent number one solid core now different scrap yards sometimes have a different interpretation of what exactly insulated number one copper wire is so best just ask them to give you an example of the smallest stuff they'll accept as copper one now number two that's your everyday stuff the snicklefritz the power cords the little connective wires inside appliances may see adapters like all sorts of everything else that's where that goes now number three is of course the lowest of the low we're talking about Christmas lights bulbs on little plastic bits stuck on just glow yield out of all of this now I did a video a little while back where I experimented with different types of Christmas lights to see how much you increase your pay out by the hour you spend chopping off all of the bulbs and in short if you're gonna do it just do the ones with big bulbs it seems a little counterintuitive but those you'll get about $7 an hour if you work fast and so if you've got a big pile of them and you got nothing going on personally I'm gonna bring them in just like this cuz that is all the time I have in my life for Christmas lights now that number two stuff the everything else my yard wants it cleaned like everything cut off no connectors I'm gonna have to find a pair of scissors and get this off because that's not good enough for them but to give me a good price in the Latta me pile pretty much anything I want into the number two pile as long as it's not coax nobody wants coaxial do not let it in here number two pile because your scrap yard will not be happy that's the stuff that TV and old video game systems we're connect it looks like it's got a nice solid copper core but that events solid copper center running through it is actually a steel wire this is copper coated worthless don't even pick it up now outside of those here's a couple of the types of wire your scrapyard might pay more for if you keep them separate the first one cat5 from talking about ethernet cables you're gonna need to cut the the ends off of this but the places that wanna separate will give you a higher price for it I think it's because it's got five small strands of very I don't know why it is but they pay a little more the other one this BX cable it's they believe the proper name for it it's got an aluminum casing on the outside and the inside is this nice solid core kind of stuff and that stuff adds up quick cuz it's heavy some places will pay more for this housing wire kind of stuff too and these kinds of ones that's a high copper content with an aluminum sheet so they'll give you a totally different grade for that as well there is one to watch out for to keep an eye out or you might be tricked see these yeah it looks like a really nice too thick piece of wire but it's a little suspicious one because it's super flexible and - it really doesn't weigh very much so if you take your snips and have a look inside you see that silver Sparkle on there yeah this is aluminum wire with a copper coating that's another thing you scrap your doesn't want you sneaking into the number two copper insulated bin and honestly unless you've got a lot of space I would just put it back even these things here it look like they've got copper on them that's copper coated steel also not worth anything into the Shred if you've got a shrimp in now if you find a whole pile of aluminum wire at once I wouldn't leave it lying around because it is worth money but takes a while to add up so unless you've got more space than you know what to do with or you somehow find it all the time I wouldn't feel bad leaving it behind that'll lead us nicely into the most common scrap metal and actually the most common metal in the world aluminum now aluminum is fairly easy to identify because of three different reasons the first is it's extremely light the second is it's extremely flexible and the third is it's almost whitish silver color there's a lot more kinds than you might think but for scrapping it's primarily grouped into three different categories first one we see here is old aluminum it's really thin it's probably been hammered or milled flat somehow it's used on things like siding baking trays and pots and pans the fact pots and pans are a really common source of this stuff doesn't weigh very much so it does take kind of a while to add up but fill up a bin and you'll probably have 10 or 20 bucks worth and it's super common you will find it all over the place so it doesn't take as long as you might catch it now the next one and the easiest one to get excited about aluminum extrusion or extruded aluminum try and ignore the plastic bits on these aluminum extrusion is a process in which they take a piece of aluminum stock and they heat it up and they force it through a shaped die so that it comes out the other side in the shape that they want this somehow makes it stronger and it's generally a much purer grade of aluminum so it's worth a little more you can tell primarily by looking at the shape and if you see these machined edges like they've been cut down and there's no seams connecting things together or they have little little divots or shapes where things will stick on to them that's aluminum extrusion most common sources of these will be fence post hair of getting pieces free legs will be aluminum extrusion and also something like this extruded stuffs a lot denser so it adds up a lot quicker but you might mistake it for steel if it wasn't that it was non-magnetic and so easy to scratch now the other one is cast aluminum you can tell it's cast because it's light and it's got a complicated shape so you'll commonly find this on waffle iron as well as barbecues and something like this base of a saw if you're not sure if it's cast just hit it with a hammer it's really brittle oh another point about aluminum extrusion there's actually quite a few different grades of this stuff I went to one scrapyard and they wanted me to separate everything there was like four different bins that they wanted it all the they wanted it took forever I don't take aluminum to that yard anymore because I honestly don't have time for that stuff I go to one word that just lets me throw all of the extrusion into one band gives me one price it's great there's one other kind of aluminum that's actually pretty common that you want yes and aluminum rim we just take a minute to appreciate how messed up this one is it was not me and I have no idea how he did that OOP I got a little water going on here aluminum rim is actually an alloy so it's a different grade and different price but it's a good price so grab maybe got oh and most radiators and cars are also made of aluminum all of the new ones are and those are a different grade as well now I find aluminum to be one of the most important scrap metals to clean and I'm not talking about with a brush and soap and water I mean removing any of the none of Lumina bits from it because it's worth about three times as much this way something like this piece I'm not really sure if I'm going to bother cleaning it or not because it's just got a few of those scrap yards have a certain percentage of contaminants that are allowed in the bins that they sell to their buyers so if I have a big enough pile of aluminum and that's just included in it I might be able to talk them into just grading it along with the rest of the stuff I think they told me 5% which is actually kind of a lot the only problem is aluminum is really light so just a little bit of steel can put it over 5% we'll find out either way I'm not spending all day taking those off something like this these rivets are aluminum not sticking but that plastic is gonna ruin it now this PVC can be pretty resilient but if I can break it off with a hammer that'll save me a lot of time well work now if it's really dirty they'll call it aluminum breakage which is not worth very much at all but the thing is aluminum breakage is something that's has aluminum on it I drove into a dumpster one time and I found these two really big aluminum frame windows that still had all of the wood that they were built on and around stuck on to them and I didn't want to spend all day taking screws and nails taking that thing apart so I just threw him my car took him to scrap here the way they were they didn't like them with the glass in there so I smashed that out over a bucket I still got 30 bucks for a quick run so well lumen breakage isn't all bad just you just want to make sure it's heavy enough to make it worth it now other less common things you should definitely keep an eye out for because they are worth a lot more than aluminum let's talk about copper and brass that was really loud you're not gonna find copper very often because everybody's after because everybody knows it's worth money but it's easy to identify because of its color its copper or at patinas green and it smells like blood it's also heavy and flexible we use this stuff in piping because since it's so soft and flexible it's easy to fuse together but it also doesn't contaminate water with rust or anything like that they kind of switch to plastic for a lot of applications because it's gotten really expensive because it's so awesome it's seriously an amazing metal it doesn't rust it's really malleable it's got a really pretty color and it's extremely conductive so it's just incredibly useful for so many different things it's common in microwaves and old tube TVs but if you're gonna scrap those you're only gonna get about $4 out of each of them so honestly I don't really do them anymore but if you're going to I would suggest stacking up a whole bunch of microwaves and doing it really fast the old tube TVs the good part is not what you might think it's nothing yoke the really obvious copper part it's the copper it's the degaussing cable that runs around the actual glass on the inside now copper also has three different grades there's number two copper which means it's got contaminants like solder or paint on it there's number one copper which is like this one here it's kind of dirty but it doesn't have any contaminants on it or even this one because it does have a green patina but it's still you know a pure chunk and then bare bright which really shows the beauty of this stuff and it has to be exactly what it sounds like bear and break the wire fall is the same grid this stuff number one this stuff they're bright now this stuff's pretty heavy so you do want to put the time into separating your number two from your number one this solder no good but if you chop it off right here then that whole length becomes number one and then the end it still has solder I don't you just throw it into the number two I have a little pipe cutter it's a tool that you lock on and then turn and turn and turn and turn but I want to sleep that takes forever the stuff is soft enough you can probably if you have a sharp enough X just chop through it with an axe on a chopping block but more than likely just hit it with something heavy tillis flat and bend it and bend it and bend it and it'll come right off it's easy the next one we better talk about is brass we can find it in all the same places that they would have used copper but copper was too soft so things like this faucet head all the fittings and threaded parts are brass because copper be too soft but it's still a copper tubes on it a lot of the time the silver bits will be chrome or zinc plated brass as well but you're gonna have to get that layer off before you can really tell um you might use a file you might use a saw but when I'm in the field I just grind it on a piece of pavement and oh look see that golden yellow got ourselves a piece of brass now brass is another one of those ones that you really want to clean meaning taking off all of the steel and plastic and whatever isn't brass because it's worth about three times as much when you do stuff like this unfortunately can be really really difficult to take apart so a lot of the time well I just leave it in a pile because it hurts my feelings bringing it in the way it is and getting almost no money for it knowing that it's worth quite a bit more now for me taking those things apart a scroll saw would be a dream come true because then you could just saw straight through the difficult threaded in parts and it would fall right apart so if you have access to one of those well go you it's also pretty common for door handles but unless it was a big heavy piece like this I find them too much of a pain to take apart and you will want to do the magnet test on the hardware as well because often times those are breasts other places you'll find brass these plugs they go in as dirty brass but they do add up and even the ones that don't look like they're brass if you do a scrape test on them you'll find that these are just coated with something to make them silver and more visually appealing they're still brass a lot of decorative house wares are brass or brass in disguise even this candle holder is in fact brass that sexy white brass is one of my favorites it's extremely common if you know where to look for it and it's worth a lot because it's basically copper in disguise it's an alloy of copper and nickel I think it's a nickel so well copper is worth over 2 bucks a pound brass isn't far behind it about a buck and a half but brass wins over copper in the where they use it it's generally in big heavy chunks so that stuff adds up quick all we want to get good at finding an identifying brass like on car radiators the way they used to make them they used to be made out of big chunks of brass and copper those are money if you can find one you'll need to do a scratch test to identify them notice generally something that old they'll just look completely black on all the brass parts and the copper all look like this really muddy green but you'll be happy when you do find one trust me they're out there oh speaking of big chunky things that add up fast lead you don't want to find you some lead yes I'm talking about lead acid batteries you can identify them pretty easily cuz it'll say right on it lead acid battery it's exactly what it sounds like it's a battery made out of lead and acid something to do with the way electricity works go ask a bee I don't know you'll also find that acid batteries built-in things like these portable chargers anything that needs to carry power with it Entebbe it's got a battery might be led you should check but these things are really heavy they add up quick and people throw them out all the time so keep an eye out for them and check a few different scrap yards to find the best price because if anyone's giving you less than 30 cents you're probably getting ripped off that's Canadian I don't know about you guys down in the steeps other sources of bling a leaded glass window it's not just a fancy name this one's frozen to the floor I'd show you but it's a sheet of lead they used to use those on roofs and doors and it's a fire proofing kind of a thing lead is pretty easy to identify because it's really heavy but it's also really really soft of course wheel weights you know the thing that the balance your tires with and then the even rarer metals then those are actually more common than you might think the platinum silver and gold yes we're talking about a waste now I got to say Canada is a little behind the ball on this one people down to the States you guys have way more places to bring them in it seems like every scrap yard down there is accepting low mid and high grade circuit boards so call around cuz you might have someone local and that would be a lot easier you'll find this stuff all the time I'm talking about computers laptops cell phones to be honest I don't have a heck of a lot of experience with that stuff because I've never sold any of it but dumpster Marcus seems to be all over that game and following his advice I've been stacking up motherboards Ram Goldfinger cards video card some sound cards and hard drives and cell phones so those are the ones I'm stacking in a bin and someday I'll sell them there's a guy that contacted me who was out in Ontario and apparently he's buying them and there might even be one in Vancouver now I'm not sure so even as a Canadian save them somebody wants those I'm gonna do a video of that upcoming when I get around to it don't rush me now the other thing you're gonna find when you're scrapping these electronics is more copper but you choose your own adventure on that one things like these electric motors these things are also electric motors so just throw those in a pile then while you're picking apart circuit boards you're also gonna find this kind of stuff these are also copper bearing motors but they're very small even these ones which seem to have a high amount of copper on them I've picked them apart before and like had all the copper floss that comes out of them in my opinion I wouldn't bother maybe if you had buckets and buckets of them and you had a hammer oil to throw them into yeah this one's up to you guys now the couple more exotic once we've got to talk about before this video is complete let's start with stainless steel this one you'll actually find more often than you might think identifying it can be a bit of a headache but your handy dandy magnet is your best bet here it's not magnetic but it's also a lot heavier than aluminum odds are it's stainless you can find that a lot of different places like backsplashes or faces of appliances in kitchens or something like a water fountain which has to be strong but also not rust it can be difficult to identify because sometimes even stainless is magnetic that's because there's different grades of it and I looked this up I'm not a nun expert on this sort of stuff but apparently it has more to do with the crystalline structure I mean if it was simply a matter of whether the stuff and it was magnetic it would still be magnetic because it's still made out of steel now apparently the surest way to determine whether it's stainless steel or just regular steel is the spark test this means you grinder or something that'll make it spark and the length and color of the sparks will tell you now I don't have a big enough operation to have those tools hook up and like do the smart test on things all the time so for me the most reliable way of identifying it and this is actually true of a lot of metals is just thinking about it I'm thinking about its application see stainless steel is gonna be used somewhere where they can't have it rust but it needs to be really strong so with that in mind if it's not copper or brass and it's too heavy to be aluminium it's probably stainless if it's been sitting out for a while you can also just look for rust spots on it because it won't have any now I've used to just ignore the stuff cuz I couldn't find a yard that would give me a decent price but once I found one now I definitely stack it up because the thing is it's worth about the same amount as aluminium weight wise but it's a lot heavier so it adds up really quick definitely don't pass it up now the two other exotics one would be a catalytic converter I don't have any right now I sold all of mine but they contain platinum palladium and rhodium it depends on who made them and how old they are as to what they're worth but they go anywhere from like a little bit to a whole bunch so I'll put a couple pictures over here and if you see the honeycomb pattern on the inside of where the exhaust flows through that's where all the magic happens that's really good stuff is so you'll know when you see it don't leave them lying around your yard or they will walk away last one I wanted to mention you're probably not going to find any of these but the carbide tip drills these things they're used in mining that's mostly steel but the valuable part are these little nubbins on there that's carbide and it's worth about $10 a pound and these things are covered in it now that is not something most people run across in their day-to-day lives but there you go that's pretty much it for the basics I think the only metals you might find out in that are magnesium and nickel but you probably won't find those even in nickels they're actually mostly made out of zinc and if I may be so bold as to make suggestion maybe don't scrap air conditioners refrigerators and water coolers because you only get four to eight dollars in total out of any one of them and I don't think it's worth releasing all that free into the atmosphere and degrading the ozone layer that's just my opinion that's why I stopped scrapping them there are professionals out there who can reclaim the freon gas and reuse it and it's actually a valuable resource but the one that I you lost his job and I don't know where to find another one so now if anybody watching this has any suggestions please add it to the comments down below because I know there's stuff I left out and this sort of industry is different in different regions otherwise definitely read the comments because that's where some of the best information is I don't know everything but I learn a lot from the other people who are watching this channel oh well you're here let's talk about stripping wire I got a piece I'll show you how I do it alright so dead simple just a big knife slice an edge off like that so you got something to work with hold it facing the other way get the knife into the edge that you just cut off yeah this definitely works better when it's straight hold it on an extreme angle so the blade itself is just touching the copper and then you can kind of just pull it through then just peel that off it's so bad really it's a lot better with sharp knife now I only do that with stuff that's generally thicker than a pencil this gauge right here this is definitely worth the time it takes to strip it but if you were gonna do that I would suggest a wire stripper Uber's immediate up a wire strip it he seems really happy with so um I'll put a link to that as well as the video actually check out the description because I'll put a link to the some of the tools that I mentioned and any relevant video I've done a couple in the past and then you might want to check out over zum-zum wire stripping one so more information in the description and down in the comments and if you enjoyed this video and you think someone else will get some value out of it then please click the like button because otherwise it disappears into the abyss that's how this works either way happy scrapping and whatever your scrapping leave it better than you found it keep doing the thing [Music]

Channel: thubprint

Views: 801,552

Rating: 4.8364301 out of 5

Keywords: how to make money, scrapping metal, scrapping metal for beginners, scrapping metal for money, scrapping metal 2018, scrap metal tips, scrap metal tips and tricks, scrap metal 2018, scrap metal 2018 tips, scrapping, scraping, how to make money scraping, how to make money scrapping metal, make money scrapping, make money scraping, make money with metal, how to make money with metal, scrapper, making money off scrap, thubprint, do the thing

Id: PXcfPbpH0cI

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Housebat22]

There needs to be a union or something for the scrappers on youtube lol I love the scrapping community on yt it’s a very small but tight knit one

[u/[deleted]]

I've been binge watching this guy while I rio shit apart. He's hilarious!

[u/YOUREABOT]

I have a Vibe as well. It has a decent towing capacity for being a 4 cyl. and have thought about getting a trailer for doing scrap.