Since a few people on another board that I frequent seem to think I am full of crap about what we are paying for scrap steel for our build, here is this week's update on the 500 gal RF smoker.
We started off this morning going to the scrapyard looking for metal. We needed two full sheets of 4'x8' 1/4" steel and 3 sheets of 4'x8' expanded metal. I wasn't very hopeful as the last few trips to the scrapyard have been slim pickings. But today was very much a good day.
When we first got there we stumbled across some 1/4" and 1/8" plate. Unfortunately only one of the pieces of 1/4" plate was big enough for what we needed. So we loaded that into Dennis' truck and then started grabbing some of the 1/8" thinking we could drill some holes and plug weld a couple sheets together. 1/4" around here is going for roughly $150 for a 4'x8' sheet new and none of us wanted to pay for that. While Dennis and I were getting the sheets loaded, Jesse stumbled across a motherload of 3/8". So Dennis ran up to the office to get a price on it while Jesse and I unloaded the stuff we had already found.
Dennis came back and told us the price was 30 cents/lbs. We were guessing what we needed was about 300 - 400 lbs so we should be ok money-wise. One of the scrapyard employees came down with a front end loader to pull off the stuff that was on top of the 4' x 16' piece that we wanted.
Check out the pile of 3/8" that our piece and the square tube had been hiding.
Here is our piece being taken to the scales.
And then something interesting happened. The guy who was helping us could not fit the entire piece on the scales closest to us because of the concrete poles erected around the scale prevented it from fitting. Knowing the piece was 198" I told him we needed two pieces cut to 65" and then the remainder of it would fit for the last piece. So he cut it into 3 pieces where we marked it, picked those pieces back and went to the scales again. He came back about 5 minutes later and asked us how much we thought it weighed. I told him 300 - 400 lbs. He looked away for a minute and then looked back at me and said he was sorry but it was 780 lbs.
My heart sank instantly. The rough math I did in my head told me it would be about $250 before tax and that would only save us about $50 over new steel. But $50 is $50 so I told him to set it aside for us so we could run to the ATM and get the cash. We left the yard, emptied some money from my checking account, and came back to collect our tarnished prize.
When we got back I went into the yard sales office to find the foreman who negotiated the prices for scrap. While I did that, the guy who had pulled, cut, and weighed the steel for us picked it up with the front end loaded and loaded it into Dennis' truck without us even asking him to. The foreman came out, asked the loader dude how much it weighed and then went back into the yard office to run the weight through a calculator.
He ran 780 x .3 and shook his head. He then ran it through as 700 x .3 and shook his head again. Then he looked up at me and said "How about $100?" I told him I appreciated it and then whipped out my cell phone to show him some pics of what we were doing with all the steel we have been pulling out of his yard lately. I told him we would bring him some food once we had the build finished but he seemed unimpressed. I hope it was just the heat getting to him. lol
So, we got our steel and headed back. After unloading it we decided it was way too hot to work on the smoker and decided to call it a day. This will probably be the last update for a few weeks due to vacations and getaways that are planned. More to come...
Oh, and for those that don't believe:
We started off this morning going to the scrapyard looking for metal. We needed two full sheets of 4'x8' 1/4" steel and 3 sheets of 4'x8' expanded metal. I wasn't very hopeful as the last few trips to the scrapyard have been slim pickings. But today was very much a good day.
When we first got there we stumbled across some 1/4" and 1/8" plate. Unfortunately only one of the pieces of 1/4" plate was big enough for what we needed. So we loaded that into Dennis' truck and then started grabbing some of the 1/8" thinking we could drill some holes and plug weld a couple sheets together. 1/4" around here is going for roughly $150 for a 4'x8' sheet new and none of us wanted to pay for that. While Dennis and I were getting the sheets loaded, Jesse stumbled across a motherload of 3/8". So Dennis ran up to the office to get a price on it while Jesse and I unloaded the stuff we had already found.
Dennis came back and told us the price was 30 cents/lbs. We were guessing what we needed was about 300 - 400 lbs so we should be ok money-wise. One of the scrapyard employees came down with a front end loader to pull off the stuff that was on top of the 4' x 16' piece that we wanted.
Check out the pile of 3/8" that our piece and the square tube had been hiding.
Here is our piece being taken to the scales.
And then something interesting happened. The guy who was helping us could not fit the entire piece on the scales closest to us because of the concrete poles erected around the scale prevented it from fitting. Knowing the piece was 198" I told him we needed two pieces cut to 65" and then the remainder of it would fit for the last piece. So he cut it into 3 pieces where we marked it, picked those pieces back and went to the scales again. He came back about 5 minutes later and asked us how much we thought it weighed. I told him 300 - 400 lbs. He looked away for a minute and then looked back at me and said he was sorry but it was 780 lbs.
My heart sank instantly. The rough math I did in my head told me it would be about $250 before tax and that would only save us about $50 over new steel. But $50 is $50 so I told him to set it aside for us so we could run to the ATM and get the cash. We left the yard, emptied some money from my checking account, and came back to collect our tarnished prize.
When we got back I went into the yard sales office to find the foreman who negotiated the prices for scrap. While I did that, the guy who had pulled, cut, and weighed the steel for us picked it up with the front end loaded and loaded it into Dennis' truck without us even asking him to. The foreman came out, asked the loader dude how much it weighed and then went back into the yard office to run the weight through a calculator.
He ran 780 x .3 and shook his head. He then ran it through as 700 x .3 and shook his head again. Then he looked up at me and said "How about $100?" I told him I appreciated it and then whipped out my cell phone to show him some pics of what we were doing with all the steel we have been pulling out of his yard lately. I told him we would bring him some food once we had the build finished but he seemed unimpressed. I hope it was just the heat getting to him. lol
So, we got our steel and headed back. After unloading it we decided it was way too hot to work on the smoker and decided to call it a day. This will probably be the last update for a few weeks due to vacations and getaways that are planned. More to come...
Oh, and for those that don't believe:
