Scrap Around the House: Garage/Basement/Workshop

Scrap Around the House, part 3

The final part in my short yet hopefully useful guide to looking for scrap metal around your house. The last section will cover looking the work area(s) of the house. Let's get to it then.

Looking around your garage/basement/workshop we may see...

• Tools: Tools that most people probably have in their house are screw drivers, hammers and pliers. Tools eventually rust to near uselessness(sooner rather than later if not taken care of) but fear not. Most consist of high quality steel or other materials that will help take the sting out of having to replace them. 

-If you are more serious about tools, power tools are also another great source of materials. The wiring and motors are heavy and real quality pieces can hold valuable scrap. Don't destroy working tools(duh) but broken ones you have or your friends/family have can be broken down and scrapped. Most of the components taken from power tools can be treated as e-scrap. 

• "Leftover" materials: Bits of wood with nails in it and other leftovers from working on your projects will give you small amounts of metal. You can pull the nails or screws out as one way to retrieve them but let's get creative.  Take your wood materials(pallets, tack strips, any other miscellaneous wood) and have a bonfire. Collect the metal leftovers with a magnet the next day. A fun and tremendously easier way to deal with your wood/metal mixes.*

*Only burn wood that is clean with no paints or chemical treatments applied to it.  

• Scrap: Any other bits of wiring or rusted out and broken pieces left over from working on the car or truck or from fixing a broken outlet will create bits of near useless material. Useless doesn't mean worthless, however. All of this is "obvious" but I've said it before, the obvious stuff can be easily missed. 

This concludes the mini-series giving brief but hopefully a useful guide to scrap metal around the house.