Ball point pens provide different shaped pieces and the tubes can be cut up to represent scrap pipe.
Good point and one which I missed, despite spending almost 40 years in a fully integrated plant.
Wayne
I've waited for awhile to see if anyone else would comment about your fully integrated mini mill. There is no such thing. there are fully integrated mills (the big boys) that convert iron ore and or taconite into iron and then refine the iron into steel procucts. That is what fully inegrated means. Or there are minimills that use scrap steel as their source and remelt it usually in an electric fiunace making usually lesser quality products.
We all four pretty much do the same thing in regards to deconstructing objects for MR use. Got some really great ideas from the four of you. Thank you.
Patrick
Fear an Ignorant Man more than a Lion- Turkish proverb
Modeling an ficticious HO scale intergrated Scrap Yard & Steel Mill Melt Shop.
Southland Industrial Railway or S.I.R for short. Enterchanging with Norfolk Southern.
dknelsonFor oddly industrial looking yet generic sources for steel scrap, consider the packing of items in your medicine cabinet that would otherwise go into the recycle bin.
Along those lines I might add that I never get rid of any kind of electronic device or appliance without de-constructing it to see what I can salvage.
IMG_7186_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
This is also a good source for odd fasteners, wire, gears, rubber (silicone) bushings and the like. Handy for M-R projects and flat car loads.
Many of the washer-head type screws that I need for attaching trucks to bolsters have come from these scrounged parts.
Cheers! Ed
For oddly industrial looking yet generic sources for steel scrap, consider the packing of items in your medicine cabinet that would otherwise go into the recycle bin. Dental floss containers and their interior pieces are a wonderful source of interesting shapes and patterns. Stick deoderant containers ditto. The packaging for razor blades and other shaving supplies ditto. The stuff can be cut into various shapes and sizes. It is made of a plastic that does not take certain paints readily so you may have to experiment. Also many products have labels on them that you do not readily see at first, but can be peeled off.
Dave Nelson
Even though you want it to appear as ferrous scrap, you don't necessarily need to use ferrous metal, or at least use a great deal of it.The partial load, below, contains some steel, but most of it is brass or phosphor bronze, possibly mixed with some aluminum and maybe some styrene bits, too....
I usually save all of my metal scrap, including turnings, grindings, and filing residue and dump it in the bubble of plastic from the card on which Krazy Glue is sold. Lots of brass cut-offs, too, along with broken small drill bits.Once I have a reasonable amount accumulated, I dump in enough A-West Blacken-It (HobbyBlack or Gun Blue work well, too) to cover all of the material, and let it sit for a couple of days.
Any remaining liquid is then poured off into another sealable container (don't return it to the bottle in which it came, as it will degrade the new stuff, making it weaker - when you make your next batch of scrap, dump in the "used" stuff, then top-up with as much fresh blackener as is needed to cover the pile). The rusted material is then dumped out onto some newpaper, spread out and left to dry.
The chemical reaction rusts the ferrous metal, but seems to also deposit rust on the other material, making it all look pretty-much the same.
This is a load of mostly axles, both steel and brass...
You can also paint aluminum foil with rust coloured paint, then form the material into the compressed bales that are often seen as gondola loads. I'd suggest making a form from sheet styrene, then simply stuff it with the painted foil.
I remember an article in one of the mags, could have been M-R, where the author made baled scrap using measured squares of aluminum foil, rolling it into a ball then "squaring" it up by pressing it in the parallel jaws of slip-joint pliers.
For non-ferrous scrap, paint the foil first or use multi-colored candy wrappers. Yogurt cover foil works, too.
After painting they looked pretty convincing. If you are modeling a "modern-era" processing plant (mini-mill) a lot of the scrap will be baled.
https://tinyurl.com/yaw8cqkf
Dr. Wayne may pop in here. He has many scrap loads made from lots of left-over pieces of sprue and just about any kind of left-over chunk of material.
dragonriversteelDo you have any ideas of interesting shaped everyday objects found around most homes to be cut up for scrap piles ?
I stumbled across these decorative gears that the crafters use. They can be cut up and maybe some shafting thrown in to look like scrap machinery parts:
https://tinyurl.com/y7a9glfd
The "steampunk" crafters have a pretty neat collection of junk that modelers can use.
Hope that helps, Ed
I have thought about raiding my friends who have lathes. One is a professional machinist and I'm know he also machines brass and aluminum, which would make interesting loads. Well maybe not brass for a steel mill. Tin snips could chop any long curly cues into small pieces. Steel could be rusted with paint, a little acid or even vinegar and a week outside.
Don't have friends who are machinists? Have you ever had your brake rotors turned? There is a lathe there somewhere in your neighborhood and what you want, the chips and the turnings, has no value to those guys.
Machinists use lots of oil. You are going to want to degrease it with mineral spirits followed by some simple green.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
So I'm the process of modeling a fully intergrated steel mini mill . Which requires vast amounts of incoming scrap both processed & not.
I've been cutting all my scratch building ends up along with most everything else found laying around. From PE clam shell packaging,card stock pieces,card board,paper,old toys,styrene soda drink lids and the list goes on. This will be incoming scrap to be processed through the shredder.
As for already processed scrap. Wood saw dust and wood shavings painted a rusty color. Works great.
Do you have any ideas of interesting shaped everyday objects found around most homes to be cut up for scrap piles ?