Melbourne Scrapper

Hi, I'm a new scrapper, been into it for a few weeks and love it.
it's been hard work so far, have used muscles I didn't know I had,
so many bruises it's not funny, and now that i've started to scrap
items I got past few days, i'm cutting my hands up and have 7 bandages on my hands already.

I thought I needed to join a forum and release some of this scrapper energy inside, no one I know
really wants to hear me rant about scrapping anymore so here I am.

Been watching video's on youtube on scrapping, some good stuff out there, lots of scrappers
wanting to share experiences ect, it's great.
some in particular I enjoy are mike & jack the scrappers, scrapper girl is quite handy and a couple others
I can't think of right now.

I'm scrapping electricals mostly, don't have a truck or tow bar so am limited to size, not doing scrap steel
or large items like washing machines or fridges yet, I do pick up the odd nice chunk of steel though.
I see many have made a business of it and advertise ect, some even pay for scrap which I find a little weird
but if your low on stuff and you can flip things for profit then why not.

I do want to make money out of scrapping but I'm getting enjoyment out of it pulling things appart.
and I like copper and think I won't be selling my best copper for a while yet.
I've timed my start real well as there's been hard trash collections in nearby areas to me and others coming on
in the next few weeks so I have an abundance of goods at hand.

Not sure if they do hard trash collections in the states? like where every house can put out all there hard rubbish
out front, once per year, and the garbage trucks pick it all up?
well that happens here in australia anyway, and checking municipal websites tells me exactly when areas do it,
I have mapped out 5 weeks over the next 8 weeks where there's hard trash going, if I did have a truck then I'd do one load a day of scrap steel which I could cash in for fuel money and the rest of the day i'd do electricals.

My main problem is scrapping the goods, I can't stand in my garage picking away at a few items when i'm missing out
on so much stuff, how do you's manage to scrap things if goods are running hot?
there's only so much space to store things, what then?

in the past couple weeks of loading up i've seen at least 20 different scrappers going through the same areas,
they all have their own idea on what they pick up, most though have little trucks so they mostly do scrap metal.
some only pick up things they can resell, but so far it seems i'm the only one going for ewaste, sure there's the locals
that go around the piles and cut the cords off tv's and everything, some might take off a few covers and undo the yolks, other goof balls just break the yolks off the tubes, but I prefer to take the whole thing.

vacuum cleaners are weird for me, red ones, I cant believe how many red ones are being thrown out.
at the start of picking things up I did a lot of tv's, some of the biggest, fattest tv's ever made!
well I wish I didn't as they take up too much room, I was missing out on a lot of good things because
I was going up & down with massive tv's when I could be loading in 4 or 5 pc monitors in the same space.
and much less back breaking work moving them about.

My favorite monitors are macintosh, there are 4 different colours of copper in them,
I like keyboards, have a lot of 'em already and I like anything that's electrical, heavy & very compact.
my least favorite items appart from tv's are speakers, just big empty boxes and take up too much room.

so anyway, I'm hoping to read up on all the info here and learn some more.
once I really start scrapping things I'm sure i'll have heaps of questions and wanting to identify bits.
I want to scrap everything I get right down, I won't be selling things on ebay or anywhere, I just want the metal really.



ok now don't laugh but this is my car, so you can see there's certainly no washing machine going in there,
but at the same time it's not running a 307 chev either, runs on the smell of an oily rag and I could fly to the moon on a tank and a half I reckon..



This stack of tv's mostly has been sent to the back fence for now, both the shed & garage is chocka block full
and more so it became clear real quick that I couldn't get to these tv's any time soon even if I went flat out from now.
so this is the relegation area, when I scrap my way into the garage, every tv will be taken out and a spot out back will be found for it..



This is the entrance to the garage, I have since cut through enough to stand at my bench just to the right and make a start at scrapping things.
the back half is all tv's to the roof, real big tv's unfortunately, and in between the gaps is everything small that
dropped in..



I am trying to get some order outside so i've been stacking printers in one spot,
wish I could say that's all there is but there are more packed away and many more to come if I want.
I haven't scrapped a printer yet, is it worth it or are these just empty plastic shells more or less?
there are a few that are heavy but mostly cheap printers i think.



well that's my intro, your sick of me already aren't you?

Ben.

Hello Ben, welcome to SMF! First thing you need are some good leather gloves to stop those cuts, I use some good ol fencing gloves for metal. Next thing you need is a trailer for your car, there's lots of threads here with ideas for getting one from an old camper or boat trailer. Then you'll need a place to recycle all those TV and monitor tubes, and a buyer for your Ewaste. Those printers just grab the ink cartridges and look for a recycler, I seldom even grab the boards any more, they're just not worth enough for shipping, and stay in the shred pile, mixed in with tin. My staging area is kinda like your back yard, layed out like a gauntlet with a path through the middle, with a place to pile light iron, another for short iron, computers, monitors, misc. piles of stuff, etc., with most of the non-ferrous stuff closer to the workbench(the empty cabinet from an old wood, or really particle board, TV)
Yeah, we have clean-up days in most towns here too, I wasn't even aware of the last local one until 2 weeks after it(I live well out of town and don't get up there that often)
Anyways, happy scrappin man!