Newbie with a couple of questions

I am cleaning up around my dad and grandad's old farm place. There are metal items all over the place. I have taken a few loads of scrap steel so far. I have quite a bit of short iron that i am saving until I get a large load of it together. My first question is about copper tubing- I found a bucket full of copper tubing cut up into 5-7 in. pieces, and another bucket with the brass fitting/ends, this stuff was in an old garage. Will the scrap yard take cut up tubing like this or does it have to be whole? There are a lot more copper pipes under an old house on the property too. Should I cut it all up into smaller pieces?

2nd question- aluminum pieces...there are quite a few old aluminum storm doors and windows, aluminum screen frames, etc. some of it looks painted brown or green....how should I process this stuff?



Thanks in advance!

The scrap your with take all sizes of scrap metal. And most yards have a set price for painted AL

Take the screws, plastic, screens off your storm doors if possible so that they are nothing but aluminum.
Also, members here like it if you introduce yourself, tell a little about yourself. I'm just a newbie here myself, but that's what I have picked up on.

my yard take aluminum painted, dirty, greasy, corroded as the same so I would call and ask how they want it separated, or if you keep it together and they don't want it like that they will dock your whole load

Copper is the big money. Cut the pipes under the house in 3 to 4 foot lengths so they are manageable for you and the yard. They don't have to be cut super small.

I cut or bend it til it breaks into about 1' 1 1/2' pieces so I can just put them in a 5 gallon bucket. I also don't have a ton of room for big pieces since I keep it inside

Thanks so much for the replies. I've been reading the forum for a while to pick up tips on seperating the metals. There are three old tractors on the place. a Farmall B, Farmall H, and a Massey Ferguson MF85. I am already working on restoring the Farmall B, and the money from the sale of the metal is going toward funding the restoration. There is also a '73 VW Beetle that I drove some as a teen. An '84 Chrysler LeBaron. And a whole lot of vintage farm implements. Lots of tire rims, short iron, long iron, hubcaps, angle iron, frdges, stoves, lots of stuff I can't identifiy... Except for scrap steel, which I have made a couple of trips already to sell, I am collecting everything into different piles to take all at once if possible. I've been spending a lot of evenings with a magnet trying to seperate it out. This forum has been a great help! Thanks to you all!

Originally Posted by pjost

Take the screws, plastic, screens off your storm doors if possible so that they are nothing but aluminum.
Also, members here like it if you introduce yourself, tell a little about yourself. I'm just a newbie here myself, but that's what I have picked up on.

Thanks, I will do that.

Blackriver,

On the copper pipe, you should check with your yard to see what they pay for No. 1 and No. 2 copper. If they pay separately it may be worth your time to upgrade whatever you can to No. 1.

At the yard I use, No. 1 pipe is copper with no solder on it and very little paint or green corrosion. No. 2 is anything with solder, like a used fitting or heavily oxidized, etc. A zipcut disk in a side head grinder makes short work of this. Cut off any brass valves or cast brass fittings because they will downgrade your copper, too.

Check with your yard before taking my word for it!! They might have different rules!! YMMV!

My son picked up a 1939 Farmall H that he's rebuilding. Its a low serial number machine from the first year of the model. Sent a bunch of time sorting out the carb and magneto and just got it running this last weekend. Lots of fun. He wants to add an old belly mount hydraulically-operated sickle bar mower that my Dad got used from a Highways department many years ago. We can use it to cut hay in the tight areas where the swather can't go.

Good luck!
Jon.