The Best Source of Scrap

[goldsilverpro]

O how I miss living in California:

Rocketdyne Corp
TRW Componants
Teledyne Corp
Jet Populsion Laboraties
Boeing Aerospace
Grumman-Northrop Aerospace

the MANY subdivisions and contractors supporting these MAJOR government contractors, all with shops centrally located around the major player's industrial campuses...

All wrapped up nicely - literally ducks in a line - on land surrounding LAX.

Anyone here ever see what the electronics boards look like for missle guidance systems? Fighter jet H.U.D. systems? Actual satellite systems?

The trash dumpsters of these facilities - back around 1995 - were free and clear targets for escrappers... 8)

For 4 or 5 years, I worked directly across the street from Rocketdyne in Chatsworth. The company I worked for was the world's largest seller of PM plating solutions. When Rocketdyne was first working on the space shuttle, the plan was to coat the entire thing with thick plated layers of various PMs, with the outer layer being gold, due to it's high infra-red reflectivity. I spent a lot of time in meetings at Rocketdyne. Of course, they went with the cheaper tiles, which worked great when they didn't fall off.

This same company I worked for was also, at the time, the largest refiner W of the Mississippi. I spent much time in most of the companies you listed. Don't forget ITT Cannon.

 

[gbaldwin75]

wow, where can i find this? i live in mentor, ohio and i wouldnt even know what to look for. i rarely ever find towers that people want to get rid of here.

 

[eesakiwi]

The last time I was at the scrapmetal yard I noticed they were putting some scrapped brass/copper tube boilers into the containers.

They had cut thru the outer layer & then thru each end of the boilers inner tubes to break it up.
What I could see was, a brass end plate of the boiler, it was about 3 feet diameter & 2 inches thick with over 300 x 7/8 holes in it.
Theres about 300 peices of 7/8 dia copper tube welded into those holes, they were all cut short, about 6 inchs say,(by the cutting end of the cranes they have there).
To weld all of the tubes in there they must have used some sort of silver/copper solder/brazing filler rod.
Normally its 30% silver or more.
But, this brazing rod layer was about 3/8 inch thick over a 3 foot dia plate, actually two of them! (each end)

I don't know if they put all of that stuff in the same container & sell it as brass/copper with silver welding filler metal or not.
I think it'd go as 'Brass'.

Anybody ever scrapped something like that? Its a huge peice of metal to process & I wonder how much Gold is in that silver?
Since most old silver still contains a little gold.

 

[Harold_V]

Since most old silver still contains a little gold.

I'm not sure I agree. They've been parting silver electrolytically for a long time. Gold has always been valuable---they weren't about to leave any behind.

If you have a source of information, I'd be interested in reading *anything* (that has credibility) that supports the notion that old silver contains gold.

Harold

 

[DarkspARCS]

Harold is spot on... silver's purity, at least that which has been a product fom developed nations, has been refined to .999 purity for hundreds of years now. There, however, exists under developed nations who have produced aloidial silvers (such as Pahkistani and t.o.c. Mexican silvers) that contain values of other pm like gold and palladium. There's other silvers produced as such out there derived from dental alloys as well, lol... which contain mercury and lead.

They get out there past the refiner because they were crafted by individual hobbyists who's objects d' art became a sought after commodity. I even created a ring a long time ago that contained gold fillings, .925 silver, and platnum foil in an alloidial mix using the lost wax casting technique. The jeweler who I hired to set the center blue topaz, and two blue saphires and two diamonds asked me what was in my gold because it was the hardest he'd ever worked with. I told him platinum, he then grunted lol.

 

[grimm123]

man oh man do i feel terrible now, i used to work at a hobby industry company and i remember tossing out about 4-5 lbs of gold plated connector pins :shock:
if i had known there were ways to process it out, i would have taken it all home
they were rather large pins too, 2mm thick, 5mm wide and 15mm long!
they had come from the factory that makes them and failed our QC checks so the maker was replacing them at no cost to us so we tossed all the reject pins and housings....that sucks thinking back that it could have been recovered.

 

[mlgdave]

ok, dumb question perhaps? I have access to a used mining supply yard, they literally have tons of equipment from ball mills to pumps, old crucibles, furnaces, leaching columns, carbon filters etc.

I know about ball mills already but I have only dealt with ball mills containing free milling gold and not sulphide type ores, what else should I hunt down in their yard? I would likely not buy any of the equipment only offer to clean it. I had a deal in place 2 years ago to clean the ball mills but now will look further into what im missing?

mlgdave

 

[dtectr]

if you find nearly workable ball/rod/? mills at killer prices - let us know!

 

[mlgdave]

I built myself a small ball mill/amalgum barrel for 120 bucks and have used it over and over and over with no problems!
I bought a metal drum cement mixer, welded the seam from the inside and voila!

I can take pictures after I pick it up later today (been lugging it around for 4 years, didnt know why until this week)

mlgdave

 

[Barren Realms 007]

I built myself a small ball mill/amalgum barrel for 120 bucks and have used it over and over and over with no problems!
I bought a metal drum cement mixer, welded the seam from the inside and voila!

I can take pictures after I pick it up later today (been lugging it around for 4 years, didnt know why until this week)

mlgdave

Pictures always help they can give some ideas on what one can do.