Unusual Usables

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March/April 1992 

Some recyclers have found more than a living in scrap. Here, processors with an eye for the exceptional share some of their unique scrap finds and uses.

BY JEFF BORSECNIK

Jeff Borsecnik is assistant editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.

"We were brought up in an era when, if a piece of equipment broke down, you went out into the scrap pile and found a part," says Burton Sternoff, Seattle-area manager for M&M Trade Services (Seattle), of those processors who have been around for decades. Scrap recyclers are indeed a practical lot and many have fixed, altered, improved, or accessorized their plants and equipment with items scrounged from scrap.

Some have occasionally done even better: Macon Iron and Paper Stock Co. Inc. (MIPSCO) (Macon, Ga.) has two operating small balers that came in as scrap along with a third, which was cannibalized for parts. One of the two is now processing plastics for MIPSCO, says Evan Koplin, the firm's vice president of marketing and finance, and the other is on loan to a local municipality that is running a pilot recycling program.

Macon also has culled from scrap a shaker/conveyor that feeds the company's aluminum shredder, merely hooking up its motor to get it running. Every conveyor but one used with the firm's shredder, in fact, was retrieved from scrap. "There's no telling how much that's worth," says Koplin, who adds, "Every scrap dealer in the country does it."

L.I. Poly Cohen, president of Lee Iron & Metal Co. Inc. (Sanford, N.C.) says, "You find anything and everything in a scrap yard." Among the finds his firm has run across over the years have been tow motors and pallet trucks, some of which simply required a new battery to make operational.

Cohen notes that his firm calls in an expert acquaintance to examine scrap loads that contain potentially valuable electrical equipment—a common find, many processors report. How often does the company stumble upon these bonanzas? "You hope to get 100 a year," he says. "But we're a small operation; we get 'em one to five times a year."

How's this for a find: 10 functioning fancy photocopy machines. Richard Charland, vice president of Garbose Metal Co. (Gardner, Mass.) called the source of this "scrap," a major photocopier manufacturer, when these machines, which he says were valued in the neighborhood of $50,000 each, came in. The manufacturer reported that it had gotten no response to an ad it had placed to find a home for the machines, so they were being scrapped—for about 180 pounds of aluminum each. Garbose turned the discovery into pleasant public relations, donating the machines to Worcester (Mass.) Polytechnic Institute, which two of his sons attend.

Less fancy usables are more the norm, of course. Joel Denbo, vice president of Denbo Iron & Metal Co. Inc. (Decatur, Ala.), says 90 percent of the guards on processing equipment at Denbo were salvaged from scrapped obsolete equipment the firm handled. Scrap also plays a big role as a building material at Denbo Iron & Metal. "If nothing else, half my scrap yard is built of scrap," says Denbo. In fact, he adds, "I don't know how people can afford to build any project if they don't own a scrap yard."

Denbo also finds unusual uses for the usables that make their way over the company's scales. The firm purchased as scrap a load of metal racks used to transport automobile front-wheel-drive components to assembly plants. To Denbo, they looked exactly the right size to serve as racks to store firewood. A quick measure confirmed his guess—they would hold exactly a quarter-cord of wood cut to an ideal length of 18 inches. An added coat of paint and some "demo" logs from trees cleared from the firm's property and this redirected scrap was ready to sell to passers-by. "You have to be creative in marketing," says Denbo, who notes that the company's location adjacent to a busy highway helps its retail usable sales.

One load of scrap—actually 15 trailer loads—put the Denbos into another business, temporarily. When the loads of steel office furniture from a recently closed operation showed up at the plant, the firm saw opportunity and ended up running a retail furniture business for four hours a day from August to December, renting a vacant building downtown and running "razzmatazz advertising" to drum up clientele, says Denbo.

The company has also purchased a few scrap military vehicles and hopes to sell them as movie props. "You have to be creative in the scrap business today to make a living," says Denbo. "Anybody that's not is missing some potential."

"Home Scrap"

Central Metals Co. (Atlanta) used to occasionally receive scrap from a retailer that sometimes sold as scrap items the store had discounted deeply but was still unable to sell on the retail market, says Mark Cohen, the company's president. On such occasions, the firm would line all the employees up after closing on Saturday and have a "free for all," with participants vying for microwaves, sewing machines, refrigerators, exercise bikes, and whatever other valuable usables turned up.

Such freebies may be rare, but creative scrap recyclers have found other reasons to bring scrap home. Larry Brock, president of Brock Scrap & Salvage Co. (Cumberland, Md.), has used lots of old metal culled from scrap on his property, including wrought-iron fencing and gates, old-fashioned cast-iron window trim he used around doors, a set of cast-iron circular stairs, and a pot-bellied stove. Brock also installed a brass railing that came from the bank that provides his firm's financing. The president of the bank was visiting one day, remarked on the railing, and asked where he got it. Brock replied: "You sold it to me."

Creative use of scrap has resulted in attention for Brock, who turned aluminum dip baskets, which once held parts cleaned in chemical baths, into plant holders. Rep. Beverly B. Byron (D-Md.), who received one as a gift, told him it was "one of the neatest recycling projects" she was ever involved in.

Brock took up his father's habit of collecting scrap treasures decades ago. The two have compiled a collection of copper and brass knickknacks, including fire-hose nozzles, kettles, tops of flagpoles, decorative oriental plates, and signature plates from scrapped machinery identifying the manufacturer.

Charles R. Sinel, a partner in Berger and Co. (Pawtucket, R.I.), has also brought the job home, so to speak. His basement is decorated with a good portion of a 1950s-style drugstore complete with a pink marble soda fountain counter with stainless steel stools, an old-fashioned jukebox, and a pinball machine. Sinel got ahold of these items through a woman who was cleaning out her father's store, which had been dormant for decades. She originally called to sell him the stools as scrap, but ended up closing a much bigger deal.

After bringing the soda fountain home—"It took six big guys to move it," he says—Sinel was told by a marble expert that a comparable counter new today would cost about $12,000. To complete the scene, he added a few touches, including a functioning penny scale pulled from scrap and a few posters from Hop-a-long Cassidy movies.

Another industry executive, Frank Giglia Jr., vice president of Allied Scrap Processors Inc. (Lakeland, Fla.), has turned scrap culled from his company's plant into a backyard paradise for his 4-year-old daughter, Shauna. Using 4-inch galvanized steel pipe and elbow, a used park slide, a set of metal stairs, some aluminum plate, and a few scrap jungle-gym rings, he built a play area that he says is much more durable than its flimsy store-bought predecessor. Another plus to the creation: It features a double slide, which is appreciated by two of Shauna's friends, twins who like to ride it simultaneously.

Decorative items and furniture pulled from scrap go home with a lot of recyclers. A bit of spit and polish has turned much scrap into antiques. Saul M. Gordon, president of L. Gordon Iron & Metal Co. (Statesville, N.C.), unearthed a turn-of-the-century cast-iron pot-bellied stove, painted it, and, he says now it's a "pretty little table, a beautiful little table, in fact." Burton Sternoff has pulled from his firm's scrap a sophisticated stainless steel submarine toilet, which he describes as "a beautiful piece of metal work." And Leonard Brenner, secretary/treasurer of Brenners Recycling ( Hazleton , Pa. ), turned a fine old cast-iron treadle-operated sewing machine into an attractive table. He's also rescued and revived a few copper tubs that now do duty as decorative planters in his office and home.

Down on the Farm

With a good eye and a little luck, scrap can also outfit a farm.

For a year, David R. Gahagen, vice president of Gahagen Iron & Metal Co. (Commerce City, Colo.), had futilely gone to auctions looking for cattle oilers—a device used to give cattle something like a flea dip—for his farm. When he finally found some at one auction, he was simply at the wrong end of things when oilers came up for sale. But just three days later, he reports, "two came in as scrap, and there's nothing wrong with them." The oilers run about $400 new and half that used, Gahagen notes.

In addition to such luck, Gahagen has been resourceful, using scrap shoring material for fences, railroad flatbed car decks for bridges, and cast-iron valves in place of slide gates to irrigate the farm. "In my case, I couldn't afford to be on the farm without the scrap business," he says, adding, "I don't know how any farmer could start today" without such an advantage.

Gahagen has also constructed a sheltered corral out of railroad car doors, concrete forms, and corrugated steel. Other scrap applied to the farm includes gates, pump and tractor parts, electric-fence wire, electrical panels, beams, and rebar. All of the lighting equipment on the farm also came from scrap, he notes. In addition, Gahagen has retrieved from scrap a "small disc" tractor attachment used to prepare soil for plowing. They key to finding scrap to fit all these uses? "Not being in a hurry," says Gahagen.

Scot Carpenter, vice president of Lee Iron & Metal, has also patiently waited and watched scrap inflow for a few years for "farm scrap." The result: a sickle mower, scraper blades, hay rakes, and a bush hog (rotary mower) for a rebuilt 1948 farm tractor he purchased from a local farmer. Such farm tools would run him $400 to $600 each new, Carpenter says, plus the old ones "have aesthetic value." He's still waiting on fertilizing equipment.

A History in Scrap

For those with a historical bent, there is much to be seen in scrap. And Fred Tosi, owner of Brunos Iron & Metal (Fresno, Calif.), has seen much of it, collecting "anything weird and unusual" from scrap for 30 years. "An antique store doesn't have such a fine collection as I have," boasts Tosi. He's got items with "extreme value," he says, as well as things "only valuable to the person collecting."

Tosi says he has one of the first instruments used to survey land—a sort-of compass with slits and dots aligned to take a sighting—as well as an instrument dragged behind ships to gauge their speed. "I've got so many damn old antiques you can't believe it!" he laughs. He has a collection of "Model T wings"—among other antique automobile ornaments—several handfuls of branding irons, and various kinds of clothes irons, including some that open to accommodate hot coals and others that simply feature a block of metal heated to press cloth. Other "wild things" in his collection include a hand-operated, pump vacuum cleaner and a pyramid-shaped toaster for use on a wood stove.

Another historical item scraped from scrap is a brass locomotive bell with a hydraulic ringer retrieved by Scot Carpenter. He notes that such finds are rare today, since they often end up in flea markets, not scrap piles. (For a look at other railroad scrap finds, see "The House of Poverty," on page XIX).

Leonard A. Formato Jr.'s firm, Central Iron & Metal Co. Inc. (New York City), ended up with some interesting scrap items after the New York mint stopped melting down confiscated jewelry, including assay stamps used to mark purity levels and carts used to haul bullion. Formato, the company's president, notes that a few scrap processors aroundNew York City have come up with other historical curios and marketed some as souvenirs, such as hanging handles from the city's subway. The city has also gotten into the act, he notes, selling historical curios such as plaques taken from the old West Side Highway.

Other bits of history found in scrap include a waffle iron complete with a charcoal-bucket heat source, found by Alvin Hirsh, president of Hirsh Metal Co. (Macon, Ga.), and a two-man, double-handled sledgehammer used in pig-iron casting pits to break pigs from sows, retrieved by Julius L. Chazen, chairman of the board of Southern Foundry Supply Inc. (Chattanooga, Tenn.).

Charlie Sinel reports he bought an old wooden phone booth in perfect condition from a scrap supplier who had used it as a weight to hold down aluminum scrap during delivery to Sinel's firm. A few other surprises weighed in as scrap at his firm include a fixed-position pre-Civil War cannon and a Japanese sword, reportedly from World War II.

Connecticut Metal Industries Inc. (Monroe, Conn.) has come up with some of the older scrap around: an urn of bronze coins from third-century Rome , according to Thomas Mele, president of the company. The coins, which appeared in "a green lump" that was subsequently cleaned and separated chemically, came through an Italian scrap dealer in a shipment from Yugoslavia , Mele reports. The coins are not extremely valuable, he says, being in "average" condition after centuries underground, but many were in good enough shape to reveal that coins of the time bore mint marks; most of these were stamped in Constantinople.

Strange Scrap

Mele found another usable of note: a 38-caliber revolver with the serial numbers filed off, which fell out of a magnetic separator sorting cans. "We turned it over to the police, but, like they said, the chances of getting a fingerprint after it's been soaking in beer are pretty thin," says Mele.

The high times for gold and silver in the late 1970s and early 1980s brought some interesting items in as scrap to Behr Precious Metals Inc. (Rockford, Ill.), notes the firm's president, Ronald Rosenson. The astronomical prices pulled in many silver Panamanian, Canadian, and U.S. coins, some worth as much or more than 35 times their face value. Heady prices also brought in a deluge of jewelry, much of it old—and often ugly, say Rosenson—pieces jewelers long had been unable to sell.

Barry Hunter, a senior vice president with Keywell Corp. (Port Elizabeth, N.J.), reports that some tiny usables from a scrap operation run by his father, Sam Hunter, and Jack Goodman called Overman and Co. (Passaic, N.J.) went to a unique customer: a plastic surgeon. This doctor, who specialized in reconstructive surgery, would stop by almost daily, says Hunter, looking for small bits of stainless steel wire and high-temperature alloys to use in practicing his art. He was a little bizarre, says Hunter, but reputed to be near the top of his field.

On a related note, Gerald M. Cohen, president of Atlantic Stainless Co. Inc. (North Attleboro, Mass.), says his company once received artificial legs as scrap. ("One of our guys wouldn't touch them," he notes.) On another occasion Atlantic purchased some cadaver tables as scrap, Cohen says, but "the market was dead for those."

The House of Poverty

Possibly the best collection of scrap treasures held by a processor is in the House of Poverty, a museum stocked and operated by Monte Holm, founder and owner of Moses Lake Iron & Metal Inc. (Moses Lake, Wash.). Holm, who spent six years as a self-described hobo/sheep herder before entering the scrap business at age 19, named his collection as he did because he literally started his scrap business with a dime, he says.

Holm's museum captures much of the history of the Northwest. He's got a "wind charger" used in the 1920s to generate power on a farm, "the first powered well-driller in the country," and a "steam donkey" used to drag cut logs. He also has a Stutz fire engine, which once served in Spokane, Wash., and is one of only six still in existence, he says. Holm bought the fire engine as scrap from a nearby farmer 30 years ago. "The Stutz has over half a ton of brass in the motor," says Holm. "For a scrap dealer, that's kind of hard to keep!"

Other items in his collection include antique hot-air engines and "one-lung" gas engines with two fly wheels, more than 100 in all, all pulled from scrap, and reportedly "all in perfect shape." Holm, who boasts no ability in fixing up these treasures, says it's easy to find skilled hobbyists to rehabilitate the antiques, noting that they work mostly for the love of it. Many of the larger items in his collection are simply stored outside, protected from deterioration by the area's extremely dry climate.

 For Holm to name all of his special scrap finds "would take from now until three weeks from now," he says. He's got a wood-wheeled sheep wagon, several functioning 140-year-old "tire shrinkers" used to fit metal rims on wooden wheels, and an old-fashioned, large-wheeled steam-powered farm tractor. He has cast-iron stoves and railroad lanterns used by signalmen or hung from the rear of cabooses. And he has a collection of old wrenches; more than 300 branding irons—including, he says, the first used in the Northwest; locomotive bells; and dozens of ornate cast-iron trivets, all better than 100 years old.

A miniature train bought as scrap, which rides on rubber wheels and was used in parades by a large railroad company, now carts young passengers around outside the museum, which brings in tourists, collectors, and others, sometimes as many as 100 in a day, says Holm. "I have people from all over the world come to see my museum," he says. "I won't charge or take a donation and I give everybody who comes through something, even if it's only a handful of candy."

Holm's experience as a hobo is a central reason he operates the free museum. He recounts a stretch of four months he spent in Minneapolis one winter in bread lines: "I was 15. People weren't too good to me. I said at the time, `If I can ever afford it, I'm going to be good to people.'" He seems to be determined to be make as many friends as possible and share his version of success—hence, the museum.

The House of Poverty includes antiques Holm traded scrap for in addition to those he found himself, such as the 18-inch brass whistle off the first steamship used on the Pacific Coast, the Beaver, which was owned by the Hudson Bay Co. and eventually sunk. "Canadians sometimes come down and see it and are kind of put out that I have it. They ask where I got it, and I just tell them I'm so old I don't remember!"

Holm's years of riding freight trains and his subsequent career scrapping railroads—"I took out 23 railroads and cut up over 200 steam locomotives in my life," he says—got him into collecting train memorabilia. "When I was a kid, they kicked me off so many trains, I said I was going to have one day," recalls Holm. He got his chance, buying as scrap, then refurbishing, the last steam locomotive to run on the Alaska Railroad. This engine sits on a siding next to the adjacent highway, where it is lit at night and is accompanied by a luxury private car used by Presidents Truman and Wilson, which Holm says a major railroad sold him by mistake. Also displayed are several cabooses, which hold a special spot in Holm's heart: "Once I nearly froze to death in a boxcar during a sudden storm in South Dakota; a conductor found me and saved me by putting me in a caboose."

The museum also boasts many other smaller railroad curios, including a 100-year-old pot from the Central Pacific Railroad, the first railroad to cross the country, that has a sign telling passengers "Do not empty this toilet out the window."

The House of Poverty, which Holm erected about 18 years ago, has gotten considerable press and Holm might well be the best known ex-hobo/curator/scrap processor around. He has been featured on "Good Morning America," written up in various regional newspapers and small magazines, and interviewed for a national program on hobos. Moses Lake Iron & Metal also promotes the collection with a photo on the calendar it distributes annually. Most of the museum's advertising, however, is by word of mouth.

Holm has also received considerable attention from some parties who would like a few of his treasures, including the state of Alaska and the city of Spokane, as well as envious collectors of all kinds of items. "I always tell them, poor as I am, that I'll never sell. It doesn't make any difference what they offer. 'Poor people are happy people,' I tell them, and it irritates them—and that's good for 'em."
Some recyclers have found more than a living in scrap. Here, processors with an eye for the exceptional share some of their unique scrap finds and uses.
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