Destruction For Forty Cents A Pound

It's been a while since I had a "Destruction" post.  The original intent of this blog was for me to write about destruction for fun and profit.  This particular post actually fits both.  Let me explain.

We had an old john boat in the backyard that hadn't been used in almost two decades.  It was aluminum and a lot of the pop rivets had come loose.  The boat also had scrapes and cuts that made it unseaworthy.  So I was given the greenlight to cut up the boat and recycle it for scrap aluminum.  It sounds a lot easier than it is.

So this is the boat:

I ended up destroying two grinders cutting up this boat.  Not grinding wheels, actual angle grinders.

I found out the best tool for this job, besides a grinder, was a sledgehammer.

I made sure to wear gloves with all this sharp aluminum, but the one time I didn't...

I found out what look the longest was removing anything that wasn't aluminum.  That ended up being Styrofoam and steel bolts.  On a side note, when recycling you don't want to mix metals.  The scrap metal recyclers want the metals as pure as possible when they melt it down.

It's hard to believe that the Styrofoam was in as good a condition as it was after forty years.

After burning up the two angle grinders, Dad came up with an idea that he had heard about.  I won't post it here since it's not exactly OSHA approved or safe in any way.  But with the use of multiple tools I managed to cut the boat in half.

I used the sledgehammer to knock out the seats.  It was actually the easiest way to do it.

I spent most of my time going around the boat smashing off bits that contained steel.  There were bolts that gave extra strength to the back of the boat where the motor sat.  I had to take every one of them out.  There were rings used to tie the ship to the dock.  All of those had to go.  But in the end I managed to free it of any other metals.

Oh, the reason I cut the boat up into pieces to begin with?  So it would fit in the back of my short-bed truck.

Don't worry, I made sure to strap it down.

When it was all said and done, I received forty cents a pound for the boat.  I ended up with 120 pounds of scrap aluminum from it.  That, along with all the aluminum cans I turned in netted me a grand total of $52.05.  Hmm, I guess no one said that destruction pays well?