Dirty stainless steel. You find it, you see it, you sell it. Pretty simple, right? You probably see some of the smaller contaminants on it and think to yourself that there won’t be a large cut in price for small amounts of material, but you never know.
How Do You Scrap Dirty Stainless Steel?
Then you get to the scrap yard to sell your material, and look at that, the price is SO LOW! Why is this? Scrap yards have difficulty processing stainless steel for many reasons, so the prices will be very low.
The easiest (and really the only way) to process stainless steel is with a plasma cutter. Plasma cutters are excellent tools, but very few scrap yards have them because of their high costs and having a skilled man on hand to ensure they can use them correctly.
Suggested Reading: Secret To Scrapping Stainless Steel
To have stainless clean sometimes is nearly impossible, and unless you have tried cleaning stainless before, you won’t know what we mean.
50 AMP,FLARING 110V 220V 4/5" Max Cutting CUT50 Plasma Cutting Machine 1/2" Clean Cut IGBT High Frequency Inverter Touch ARC Machine with Plasma Cutting Consumable Set-White
Another Easy Place for Stainless Steel
Here is another piece of stainless that you may try to sell as clean, but it never is…sinks. Sinks from residential homes almost always have glue or a rubber coating, and unless you sit there with a razorblade (please NEVER) do this and take every piece of glue off, you will never be able to sell that sink as a clean stainless.
Suggested Reading: 6 Places To Find Stainless Steel
So, scrappers, the next time you want to clean your stainless, ask someone in our Facebook Group or at your local scrap yard for their advice. It is very hard to do and very easy to screw up.
