Evening star., 1942-09-13
Scrap Professor Is Vital Cog
In War Armuments Machine
Equipment for One D. c. Yord Costs $50, ,000
Steps From Junk to Steel Described

What happens to metal scrap be-
tween the time it is hauled from
your home, business or farm and
tossed into a steel furnace?
In peacetime this question was of
interest only to the junk trade, but
in war it has become household
topic-the ultimate difference be-
tween Americas winning or losing
q war.
To begin with, you have scrap In
the attic, basement, yard or ga
rage. 1t could be tin, iron or steel
metal, rags, paper or other ma
terial. You want to get rid of it.
and that's where the junk peddler
snters the picture. Since collect
ing junk is his business, he names
his price and hauls the stuff to a
retail junk dealer. In some cases
the peddler will take material di-
rect to processing plant, known
as the wholesale scrap merchant.
The licensed junk dealer is the
middleman. He sells direct to the
processing plant. Both the peddler
and junk dealer sort the various
kinds of scrap. 1t is primarily
manual labor job. with no ma
chinery required. The junk dealer
has space, indoors and outdoors.
for sorting his material The junk
dealer and the automobile wreck
ing firms constitute the principal
sources Of material for the proc
essing plant.
Professor Is Necessary.
Where the peddler and junk deal
er do a job of sorting scrap. the
processing plant alone is equipped
to separate the ferrous and nom
ferrous metals, metals which cor
rode, such as iron, and metals which
do not corrode, such as aluminium,
chromium, etc Without the proc
essor, the steel mill could not use
scrap. Always a necessary figure
today, the professor is treated most
cordially by steel makers. He is as
necessary TO the steel mill as ham
is to ham and eggs.
Because Joseph Smith & Sons,
3619 Benning road NE, has the
largest processing plant in the Dis
trict, a Star reporter visited that
establishment to learn the process
sor S job in the scrap-to-war arma-
ments program.
AT first sight the place looked like
Just another large Junk yard. Ex-
animation showed it to be big busi-
ness. One piece of equipment alone
costs $4,000.
knowing nothing about the proc
ess, the reporter started at the be-
ginning. He wanted to learn the
story, step by step.
Load Is Weighed.
Two large trucks came into the
yard heavily laden with iron scrap
The load was weighed and the paw
load was found to be 9,12O pounds
Inc material came largely from an
automobile graveyard and included
axles, chassis, rear ends, pipe, small
beams and channel iron.
The trucks were unloaded bv a
heavy crane equipped with 45-inch
electro-magnet. That magnet can
perform wonders, such as lifting
10000 pound ball. The magnet
would come in contact with a heavy
piece OF iron, and a second later it
was being swung by the crane and
dropped on a pile.
Heavy scrap is run through a
shearing mill which cuts an article
INTO small pieces. BY thus reducing
the total weights of each piece,
much of it can be lifted by trained
workers. Other heavy bits are sliced
by acetylene torches. The total
metal can then be placed in freight
cars ready for shipment to mills.
Cars Are BaIed.
Entirely different handling is used
when light scrap is brought into
the plant. If wrecked car is
brought in it must be burned to
destroy the wood, glass and up
holstery, leaving only the metal.
linen comes the baling job. A
crane grapples the body of an au-
tomobile and lowers it into a COM
pressor chamber or pit. This cham
Der has solid steel walls which act
as crusher. One minute you saw
an automobile body. The next min
ute 1T was transformed into a solid
cube weighing from 300 to 1900
pounds.
The hydraulic baling machine,
when it begins its crushing tactics,
has 100000 pounds of pressure be-
hind 1t. The machinery includes an
hydraulic pump, air compressor,
breaker stand and operating stand.
The finished bale or cube Is lifted
by crane to pile built up near a
freight car.
How does the professor know how
much scrap he has put on a freight
car, without measuring each COM
pleted cube? Well, both he and the
steel mill know the weight of the
freight car, which is subtracted
from the total load weight.
Cast Iron Is Broken.
"You don't cut cast iron such as
an automobile cylinder head" ex-
planned Philip Smith. a son OF the