The UGLY Truth About Scrapping Brass Plugs

hey y'all how's everybody doing okay let's talk about plugs today and what to do with them and how to do them so this is what I like to do if I'm scrapping something like a chord I found or a microwave what I do is I go ahead and I clip it off and I go ahead and I put it in the Vise and I just pry these things out it's super simple I like to do them as I go as you can see it only takes like 10 seconds doesn't really even feel like work but let's say that you save them up in a pile like this sometimes they can be a little stiff to remove so there is a method called plug soup which I'm sure you all have heard where you just put it into water and you boil it softening up this material to pull it out again I like to do them one at a time it doesn't really feel like work it's like 10 seconds this is going to be a little bit of a work plus after about doing 10 of these I find it to be kind of boring so what we got here is 70 various plugs and this weighs three pounds and I'm going to boil this in water to soften up the material I'll extract all of these brass prongs and you'll get a little bit of copper wire to come with it we'll weigh that up and I'll calculate how much money I spent in propane because that's the fuel source I'm going to use now you could use wood which would be free I'm in a full burn ban right now in my County so I can't burn or you could use electricity of course that costs money so we'll see how that goes does it make sense to spend money to pull these prongs out now I've got some of these these are the leftovers and I'm going to set these in the Sun and these are going to bake in the Sun for I don't know three four hours softening up all this material including these big puppies you find out for dryers and electric ovens and we'll go ahead and just extract those just to see how well the sun works all right let's get to work I almost forgot now you can throw these in with your steel shred and the national average price in the U.S for shred right now is seven cents a pound so we have three pounds so this would be 21 cents you might want to check with your scrap yard if you're new to scrapping some yards don't actually require you to cut these ends off of the cords you can bring them in as is my yard requires me to cut these off okay baking in the sun is complete today it was 91 Fahrenheit that's 32.7 Celsius they've been out in the sun for about four hours and everything is nice and soft so let's pull these prongs out all right let's get working yoya I believe putting them in the Sun has made it a lot easier one it wasn't clamped down enough that one a couple in here at a time yeah they're just this stuff is so soft and then we'll do those really big ones as many of you know these big ones can be real tough but I believe putting them out in the sun if I can get it clamped down hard enough there we go just needed to clamp it down better there's one it's so soft sitting in the sun piece of rubber I got a cut off there okay copper came with that probably cut that copper out now for the big boy this will be we'll see how well it works this one was really solid before I set it in the sun yeah that one's that one's tough let's try it some more here it's coming there we are that's a biggen see if we can get this ground well that one broke that one came out with the copper okay so I got all the copper removed from the brass prongs and the copper weighs 1.2 ounces so that is 22 cents in Copper just get that out of the way and we'll weigh this brass here remember this was just a stuff sitting in the sun so we have 5.2 ounces of brass and that comes out to 61 cents so that's a total of 83 cents made foreign [Music] so it took 10 minutes to bring the water up to a boil and then these were boiling for five minutes and I believe that they are soft enough now to remove the brass I'd say it's about the same as the ones that were sitting in the sun they are definitely a lot softer clamp that down a little better as you can see they they pull out get this one out of here clamp that down better they pull out real easily the rest are still sitting in the water so boiling them definitely softens them up really really well that one broke but that's okay that happens bigger of a plug here you can tell how soft it is just by the way it's squishing that material oh yeah I mean that's just really really soft okay pull that out that works pretty well try another bigger plug it's like butter try one of these styles foreign yeah those it's really soft see if I can just do it by holding it in my hand oh yeah that definitely works all right I'm gonna finish up the rest of these and I'll get back to y'all all right y'all last one material is still really soft and that is it that took me 20 minutes to extract all the plugs from the material all right y'all now I'm just going to go ahead and clip the copper off the end there now most scrap yards are not going to require you to do this since brass is made with copper and zinc but I have heard that some scrap yards we'll not call this clean brass with the copper on there which to me doesn't make any sense so make sure you check with your scrap yard my scrap here doesn't care however since copper is worth more than brass I'm going to head go ahead and clip off all this copper to maximize my profits so that's what I'm going to do I'll get back to y'all all right y'all the numbers are in there we got the brass we've got the copper now remember we started with 70 plugs that weighed three pounds could have sold them as shred at seven cents a pound which would have been 21 cents now it took me five minutes to set up all the propane stuff 10 minutes to bring the water to a boil then I boiled it for five minutes took me 20 minutes to remove all of this brass and then it took me an additional 15 minutes to cut all the copper off for a total of 55 minutes now this is what we got 10.4 ounces of brass and at a dollar ninety a pound this is a dollar twenty three I got 1.6 ounces of number two copper and at two dollars and seventy cents a pound this is 27 cents for a grand total of a dollar fifty now if I chose not to cut the copper off and just left it on the brass this would have been a total of 12 ounces and at a dollar ninety a pound for brass that would be a dollar forty two so I increased it by eight cents by cutting that off now the real question though how much money did it cost me in propane so what I did was is I weighed an empty bottle of propane and it weighed 18 pounds then I weighed the brand new bottle and it weighed 32 pounds six ounces that brand new bottle cost me 25 dollars then after I was done boiling all of this I weighed that bottle of propane and I burned up six ounces of propane so I had a total of 230 ounces of propane and that cost me 25 so that equates to 10.8 cents per ounce of propane I burned up six ounces which means that cost me 65 cents in propane deduct that from the dollar fifty and I have a profit of 85 cents for 55 minutes of work now again remember I could have sold this all as what as it was for 21 cents and so 21 cents minus 85 is a difference of 64 cents between doing nothing and doing all of this this is why I don't like saving up my plugs it was a lot of work for 85 cents of a profit in 55 minutes of work that's why I like to do these one at a time one at one at a time as I go now I will say the big dryer plugs and the electric oven plugs that are really big and stiff those I think I'll boil in water because boiling them in water it did work it made a huge difference I just don't think it's cost effective but I'm going to be using I'll save up I don't know 10 of them and then I'll start a fire in my fire pit boil them soften them up and pull those out that way it won't cost me any money and fuel all right well there you have it those are the numbers I thank you for watching this video I hope you enjoyed it I hope you learned something thank you to all of my subscribers I really really appreciate you all being here make sure y'all hit the thumbs up on this video leave a comment I'd love to hear some feedback if you're new to my channel Maybe please consider subscribing I'd really appreciate it thank you God for another day just thank you for all the wonderful things that you are doing God I just pray for Dale's wife God I pray that you will heal her body of her cancer God you've done it before I know you can do it again Lord I pray over her now and ask you to cure her of her cancer be with her be with Dale Lord help them to lean into you and this crumbling time in their lives I lift them both up to you now in the name of Jesus I pray amen all right y'all I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Scrapitall

Views: 221,528

Keywords: how to scrap, how to scrap plugs, how to scrap brass plugs, how to scrap brass, how to scrap for money, brass, copper, how to, junk, trash, money, cash, scrapper, scrapping, scrapping with grandpa, okie scrapper, canadian treasure hunter, miss canadian scrapper, tin man scrapper, nacho stuff, thub print, thubprint, mike the scavenger, scrap & pallet man, scrap and pallet man, project shop fl, simple man, scraplife, scrap life

Id: P-RGEq8Hh8s

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2023