I Spent $945 on Transformers to Scrap for COPPER

I thought it was neat watching you unload truck and noticing the rise of bumper as weight came off

30hours of hard grafting for a jaw dropping $2300 cnd is awesome am glad you felt proud driving to the scrapyard with all that #2 copper

Wow this was satisfying. $1200 is definitely worth your time. That's almost a rent payment, in only 30 hours. For something that takes almost no tools and no skill, that's not a bad side hustle. Hell it's not a bad main hustle. If this was full time, that'd be an $80,000/year job. And, that's with your beginner's methods and tools. You'd get better and faster as time went on. One thing about breaking apart the stacked E-I transformers (versus interlaced), unless you want to re-use the transformer you don't need to use an angle grinder to cut the welds. An old hatchet as a wedge and a 3 lb hammer to smash it will punch right through those welds on the first strike. Also, since you left $400 on the table by selling high-silicon iron as tin shred... that's getting close to the cost of shipping a pallet to the coast. If you're doing quantities like this regularly (you aren't, but...), it's probably worth it to call around and find out just where the closest yard is that will pay you high silicon prices. Or, I dunno, if it's Edmonton or Red Deer or somewhere in-province, it'd borderline be worth your gas money and time to trailer it. I know yards in Ontario and BC pay for high-silicon, but, I've never heard of any here in town. I'm wondering if it'd be worth it for you to have/build a small hydraulic press (that's electric or air over hydraulic, so that it's 10x as fast). So much of what you do is hammering lettuce-sized objects, this has got to wear you down and slow you down. A fast-set vice (old impact driver and socket mounted to a vice, with a foot pedal to tighten/loosen) would also be a project worth building. Nothing you couldn't easily build out of scrap, and, I'd bet a project video series like that would be quite popular. Even not as a video series, your efforts are slowed down so much by your simple lack of clamping. You're wasting 90% of your body strength by having everything floating around all loose-like and never getting to apply proper leverage. Selling yourself short. As to peeling paper, my only thought is to maybe get it at a 15 degree angle and smash it into a parallelogram with a hammer. Might sheer the windings and sheer the fiberglass/paper. Fire is another option. Get a $25 weed burner propane torch and roast 'em. Copper soaks up heat magnificently, it'll soften the enamel and glues. Few seconds with a torch then the hammer perhaps? Like anything, you'll get better at it as you do more of it, but, for something you only do a couple times a year you're never climbing over the learning curve.

Soak the thick paper coils in a bucket of cheap paint thinners, I leave them in the thinners for a week, then the paper/glue will just slide off, make sure you hose down the copper with cold water afterwards, thanks for keeping us entertained with your videos 👍

Reading some of these comments I like the ideas of soaking everything in some sort of solution or finding a yard that will pay number 2 even with the paper. Also a good idea to leave the best looking stuff on the top :P

Excellent result, simply super, it’s always a pleasure to work with copper, especially in small quantities.👍

Project shop FL is the expert on breaking transformers

Blood sweat and tears won't describe the difficulty you'll encounter the 1st time you get the copper from these. 😂

Motors are very hard work . My suggestion is to find you an old log splitter. If it's gas, do it outside. If you can swap it over to an electric motor then you can probably run the retrofit log splitter indoors in the winter.. But you will definitely have to change the anvil on the log's splitter So you can do the small motors Any type of hydraulic ram with a splitter on it would be helpful And I will encourage you to watch the project shop florida Videos, because he has a pretty good. Set up on how to get those things knocked quickly

Maybe find yourself a slab of thick steel to use as an anvil, or an old piece of rail track, easier than smacking that vice all day

I can dig it dude, just spent 2 hours pulling apart a car alternator with a 20oz estwing hammer and hand tools.loved it

Your copper skillz are MAD bro! Astounding, incredible, amazing, Randallicious, divine, i-Cream, beautiful, righteous, Bob's-your-Uncle, flash, and crafty! Glad the payout was worth your time. Thanks for sharing.

If I recall correctly project shop nfl once said he stopped cleaning them up and still got the same price. Not sure which video he mentioned it in but I often go to his channel for information on transformers.

Your doing great Thub. Keep pushing yourself and all will be well. Love all your videos 👍

That round one w plastic you passed on is awesome. I get them off Uninterruptible power supplies. 16lbs of copper

You need a shop press, you put the transformer in it diagonally corner to corner and crush it till cracks and falls apart.

Always the hardest part is cleaning the paper off the copper. Luckily for me my yard takes # 2 copper cleaned up, burnt,with paint on it or covered in paper insulation and they give the same price per kg

During most of the core disassembly I kept thinking this is a job for a log splitter. Thanks for sharing.

Buying transformers and motors to break down further is really the only way to really make money scrapping. There's a ceiling to how much raw scrap a person can collect and process. Canadian Treasure Hunter works tirelessly at it and makes like $35k a year. He's sitting on probably $100k worth of copper though.

To keep your hammer head tight keep it soaked in water. I'm a Faller and keep my axe in water once in awhile in summer. Also copper usually goes up in price in spring.