From my experiences, I totally agree with 4metals in every respect. His 1st paragraph tells you how it really is. The last sentence tells you how to end up with the most money you will be able to get - hire a competent "witness" for your material.4metals said:
I'm sure that 4metals has much more experience in working with "witnesses" than I do. I only worked with them about 6 times and the last time was about 30 years ago. For what it's worth, here's what I think I know about how it works. Please correct me, 4metals, if I screw up.
What is a "witness"? A witness (we always called them reps but witness is better) witnesses your material being processed in a refinery until a point is reached where the material is homogeneous enough to take meaningful samples. At that point, he pulls professional quality samples and distributes them to the interested parties.
Where do you find a good witness? There are several big, mostly old, extremely honest and reliable companies, that specialize in this sort of thing. All of my 6 dealings involved ASARCO, as the processor, and Ledoux as the witness/sampler/assayer. At one ASARCO plant, in E. Helena, MT, a Ledoux guy had a permanent office. However, since integrity, honesty, reputation, and accuracy are the only things that keep these companies afloat, any hanky-panky would be extremely rare, if it exists at all. Even rumors could bring down the company.
http://www.ledoux.com/
About the only other company I know anything about is Alfred H. Knight, which seems to have locations all over the map. 4metals, I believe, has mentioned several other good ones. There are also small witness companies but, were it me, I would stick with the big, old, expensive ones with the flawless reputations. You can also witness the lot yourself but I can tell you horror stories about this approach from some of the dishonest refiner's I worked for. The refiner is smarter than you and a good experienced witness is smarter than the refiner, when it comes to your bottom line.
http://www.ahkgroup.com/
Since both of these companies are involved in a myriad of other things, similar but, yet, very different, I wasn't able to find what I wanted on the websites. I would strongly suggest calling them (or, whoever) on the phone and explaining your exact situation.
You can deal with a witness company in several different ways.
(1) You can pay them to just witness and sample. You can then send the samples out or run them yourself. I would think, though, that the refiner would put more credence in assays run by, say, Ledoux, than from Joe Blow, Assayer. Refiners and buyers always try to expand the "gray area" of doubt as to the actual value of material, always in the negative direction. Assays from an obscure assayer can give them an excuse to attempt this ploy.
(2) You can do your own witnessing and sampling and then have a witness company do the assays. Ledoux, e.g., will provide you with perfect assays but an assay only tells you what's in the sample bag. To determine real values, sampling is everything. Large thick books have been written on the science/art/techniques/theories of sampling. It takes years to master it (if anyone ever does). The only sample that is 100% accurate is when the entire lot is the sample. Otherwise, for every group of samples from a lot, there will be a gray area. Let the pros do it. They know how to keep the gray area to a minimum and do it with accuracy.
(3) You can pay them to do everything - advise, witness, sample, assay. That's how I would do it if I had 10,000# of boards per month.
OR,
(4) You can just do everything yourself. For the sake of your bottom line, that's usually a very bad idea.
When you obtain prices from the big guys for these services, I guarantee you will be shocked. The prices seem outlandish but, with large enough lots of material of adequate value, you will invariably end up with more money in the long run. You have to do the math.
How should you prepare the material? This could depend on the refinery you use and advise from the witness company. At a minimum, I would remove the bulky iron and aluminum. If the refiner incinerates the boards, it would be a waste of money to shred them. To me, shredding is best used in a buy/sell situation. In the 80s, there were lots of Taiwanese that traveled around the U.S., buying electronic scrap from scrap metal yards. They told me they then had it shredded, sampled, and assayed and then they sold it to processors in Asia. Probably, when the processor got the material, he sampled the material himself and then negotiated the advance to the seller based on the assays. The remainder was likely paid on completion of the processing.
Good luck!
