Anyone know what this thing is?

I don't know if the pictures will up load but I found about 10-15 of these giant steel/concrete rocks weighing around 1200-1500 lbs a piece downstream from the old Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces. This is the only place I have ever seen anything like this. most of them have been there since at least 2008 when I first noticed them. I moved some but others are in some hard to access areas and moving them by hand kinda isn't possible when you gotta climb a 30 ft. high hill alone since these things are so heavy. they all ended up literally 3-5 miles downstream from Bethlehem steel so I'm gathering they came from there after years of flooding but does anyone have any idea what they are or how they ended up here?

Interesting but i have no idea

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Originally Posted by ScrapmanIndustries

I don't know if the pictures will up load but I found about 10-15 of these giant steel/concrete rocks weighing around 1200-1500 lbs a piece downstream from the old Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces.

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Looks kinda like mixed iron slag.

I guess if you could bust it up with sledge or jack hammer you could turn it in as shred

I was thinking slag also.

It appears everyone said what I was thinking. Its crazy how they would just throw their slag in the river and hope it would just vanish into thin air. I mean i guess its kinda like when they had the single razor blades people shaved with and you would just throw it in a hole in your wall and forget they were even there till the wall came down. I moved a few of the ones that were more steel than concrete and easier to reach when I had my dually. but now they are in areas where it would be like a 2-3 mile hike with the wheel barrow to get to most of em. and the last time I tried the hammer wouldn't do anything. now they have been sitting a few more years its possible that the rust and environment has broken them up a bit but I don't suspect that they will be much easier than the last couple. I will get them before I die. maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but I will get them. so long as the yards keep accepting them.

Slag. All the impurities in the steel making operation are "offed". Some may be magnetic as why the mag sticks, some not.

My opinion is this slag probably doesn't have a value to it as Bethlehem would have sold it.. Not sure. Technology has changed.

Steel is made to a "recipe". Additives separate out the impurities and what's undesirable is discarded.

The sky used to glow orange here when Bethlehem dumped slag. Probably did in Pittsburgh too.

Maybe try busting some up to see what's below surface.

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Originally Posted by ScrapmanIndustries

It appears everyone said what I was thinking. Its crazy how they would just throw their slag in the river and hope it would just vanish into thin air.

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You gotta remember, it was all about profits with the steel and not worrying about anything else. They didn’t want to modernize and that’s why the steel closed. Pretty cool living close to the site.

Imagine all all of the waste accumulating with Martin Tower coming down! Such a waste of a building, especially all the porcelainized steel.

See my thread, here: https://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scra...pit-scrap.html

It's probably not worth the effort...

Slag pouring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIL2Uv29zAM

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Originally Posted by Ditchdigger

It's probably not worth the effort...

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Yes although I would probably agree with you on most of them, I sorta formed my scrap metal business based upon everyone else's conclusion of the same. Pretty much everything I get is because someone else had already declared something not worth the effort to deal with. I take that and run with it. Whether it be the stove I just pulled out of a dumpster to the truck someone drove into the woods to die 30 years ago to the copper I pulled out of someones trash can everything I get is because someone somewhere said something isn't worth it. I step up and say challenge accepted and somehow make it worth it. I may not always be making hella bucks like them big site excavation bosses but somehow even with prices that may not be what they were I still seem to make more money picking up discarded metal than I do working for places.

Not trying to sound mean or angry or anything. I just get really passionate about picking things up that others say isn't worth the effort. Thats how it all started for me and that's what keeps me going pretty much.

Although I will agree, I'm sure at least 50% of the slag rocks I found are not going to make me anything even if I do get the equipment to move them.

as for the guy that said try to break them up and see what they look like, I hit one with the splitting maul a dozen times and got nowhere fast. the steel parts seem to be pretty much solid steel and the concrete looking parts break off when I do manage to strike them. I'm pretty sure the rail cars would dump them straight into a river so maybe that had something to do with the way they formed more like steel than when they get dumped on sand down a hill in open air? If i didn't sell my tractor these things would be gone already.

The local yard is going to be ... unhappy ... if they find large slag clinkers in your load.

The mills dumped them because there wasn't enough iron to be worth remelting.

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I may not always be making hella bucks like them big site excavation bosses

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Yeah. Me neither.

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Yes although I would probably agree with you on most of them, I sorta formed my scrap metal business based upon everyone else's conclusion of the same. Pretty much everything I get is because someone else had already declared something not worth the effort to deal with.

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Couldn't agree more, although my scrapping is more of a hobby than a business.

All I'm saying is that, as someone who has actually dealt with what you're looking at there, my *expectation* is that you're going to find that nobody is going to pay you enough for that material to make it a profitable exercise. The two yards closest to me don't want it at all. The only one I've found that would pay for it is close to where I dug it up, and that's about an hour from here.

I probably have a thousand ponds of it out behind my garage. If you want to come over here to Beaver County I'll help you load it...