Hi, I'm Chris the Wannabe Scrapper

I had never been into scrapping but we recently bought a somewhat abandoned theatre that housed the local cable company up until a couple of years ago. We are pretty broke and when I was showing a friend and mentioning that I had to gut the place and get rid of the equipment he told me that instead of giving it to the recycling centre, I could tear it down and sell it for scrap to try and help with the costs of restoring the building to where we can fully use its amazing space. I then started researching scrap and decided to start a YouTube channel to document my journey into scrapping.<br><br>We live in northern BC and don't have any scrapyards within an hour of us so I am going to try and process things as much as possible while also raiding the local share shed and appliance piles for whatever I can find. I will be focusing on ewaste but I'm definitely not going to pass up opportunities for other scrap if I come across it. I will include my first video which will show you the building and the equipment I will be scrapping. Thank you for the forum and I hope to learn from everyone here. I have tried Reddit but it doesn't seem to be a very welcoming forum for scrapping. There are very few subs for it and most don't have a lot of activity.

Oh, it seems I can't share my introduction video so if you look up Wannabe Scrapper on YouTube you should be able to find me. There are only like 4 videos so it shouldn't be hard to find if you want to.

After a quick Google search, I found at least one scrap yard in Fort Nelson, but I don't know how good or bad they are. Since you're in a remote area and gas prices are high, I suggest you to have a van or pickup truck with a long bed plus a good trailer to get the most of your mileage. Also, remember that pretty much everything that sticks to the magnet goes on the low value shred heap. If I can suggest you something, I would put my efforts to generate the most clean non-magnetic metal you can. Value is higher and volume is smaller. That way you can carry more value in the same space. A pound of number 2 copper will bring $2.50 to 3.00 while a pound of shred steel is $0.05 to $0.10. Ewaste is a good idea, but you need to find buyers. Not all scrap yards buy Ewaste and boards...There's always Ebay or shipping to the U.S. (i.e. Boardsort), but postage cost can cancel the profit at the end. Also, if you happen to travel South to larger cities such as Dawson Creek, Edmonton or Vancouver, it can be useful to call them to check prices and see if the price difference is good enough to bring your non-magnetic metals there. Smaller communities have less competition and tends to pay less. Last point, the higher volume you bring at once, the more you'll be able to negotiate a better price.

Hello and thank you for the reply. Fort Nelson is about 6 hours away but Fort St. John is only 1.25 hours away and we go there every couple of weeks usually. I am going to haul a bunch of shred and some clean aluminium and copper in this week if the snow stops. I was supposed to go today but it's been snowing for over 24 hours and not supposed to stop until tomorrow. I am planning on selling any clean stuff and use the proceeds to pay for gas and more scrapping tools. I have started using our old minivan for work and can sit in there and tear stuff apart all night when I am on shift, then I can load up the van and the little trailer and take a load in when I am going anyhow. There are two yards next to each other in Fort St. John so I am going to call ahead of time and see what the prices are so I know what I am taking to where.

The other thing I am thinking about is offereing "soap for scrap". My wife makes really nice, handmade soap and I am thinking of buying loaves of soap from her and trading it for scrap as there is seemingly nobody scrapping here, judging from the metal pile at the dump. That way there is no money changing hands but it is an incentive as everyone in town loves her soap and she rarely makes it because she works fulltime and can't get to the farmer's market to sell it. This way she could sell her soap once and people could pick it up from me.

Luckily we have a huge space to store things up in and don't have to sell if it doesn't make sense to. I see some people that run out of space and have to sell at a low price to make room for more scrap. I hope that will end up helping me out in the long run.

Hi and welcome to the forum from Las Vegas! Scrap sales from building demo won't put much of a dent in rehab costs but every little bit helps with materials costs being so high currently. A few more posts and you'll be able to post your videos. You could probably html them in now if hosted on youtube. Looking forward to following your adventures as they go along!

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Originally Posted by JJinLV

Hi and welcome to the forum from Las Vegas! Scrap sales from building demo won't put much of a dent in rehab costs but every little bit helps with materials costs being so high currently. A few more posts and you'll be able to post your videos. You could probably html them in now if hosted on youtube. Looking forward to following your adventures as they go along!

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Hi and thanks for the welcome! I'm actually scrapping the equipment from the old cable tv company that just left everything there when they shut down a couple of years ago. I'll try to html the intro video here. https://youtu.be/FkMXuIVgB-I

My next project will be the furnace and hot water tank because I found out the furnace should have been condemned in the 80s and when we are done it will be an on demand heater.

YAY! It worked.