Have’nt been on MR for sometime, I have however been building my 12’X14’ shed to house my layout, Right now while I wait for money for the bench work,I’ve started scratch building a 4’ long X 2’6 " wide X 3’ high massive BOF structure in HO. Building the BOF is the easy part…finding the stuff to make a huge scrap yard to feed the furnace is another matter.
I have all sorts of cranes,vehicles ect for the BOF ,but no idea on what to use for a large scrap yard. Perhaps mountains of pencil shavings along with ground up tyco cars ?
I’d like to have a fairly large yard devoted to the BOF and possibly the EAF too.
The yard in my head is as follows…2’ by 3’.Something in that nature. What would you make the scrap piles out of ?
I saw a scrapyard made with this method and it looked very convincing. Cut some sheets of aluminum foil. Do some weathering with it flat, mostly rust and brownish colors, on both sides. Run it through a paper shredder. Take the result and crumple it up or use a plastic cube as a form if you are using baled scrap metal. It didn’t seem to harm the paper shredder and he was able to make a lot of scrap metal both fast and cheap.
Get a few sections of flex track, pull all the ties off, and cut into 6" lenghts and pile up. Have any old brass track kicking around? There ya go.
Make “bales” of tin foil that fit into your standard gondolas.
Look for cheap locomotives on ebay that you could cut up with a dremel tool and cannibalize. Locomotoves must have alot of reusable scrap medal between the frame and bodies.
Cheap toy cars like Matchboxes could have tires removed and be placed into a vice like woodworkers use to simulate crushed cars. Crush them down into tiny flat hunks and stack a few on top of each other.
Old railroad cars could be used to take up some space. Heavily weather them and apply copius amounts of rust flake etc.
Styrene tubing, I-beams, etc, can all be had in 24-36" lenghts relatively easily. Run it through a band saw at various angles and lengths to simulate recovered strap from demolished buildings, construction sites, etc.
Buy a spool of single-stranded copper wire at your local electronics store (IE: Radio Shack), cut into small lengths and weather it down with a nice coat of grimy black, a bit of rust, and voila! You now have scrap rebar…
Well I have been in nearly every BOF in the USA and Canada and most of them do not have an immediate scrap yard attached. BOFs (or BOPs as some people call tem) need scrap in very specific ratios. I would estimate that 50% is loose scrap, 30% is #1 and #2 bundles and the remainder is crop ends from slabs and coils generated within the mill. The reason is you need surface area to melt the scrap and too much of the big stuff sometimes doesn’t allow it time to melt. I have seen heats turned down for sampling at 2800 - 3000 degrees and there is a big chunk of solid steel floating around. That really screws everything up so it is avoided. Most BOFs receive scrap from a central scrap processing area in gondolas with one type in each car. The srap bin is set on a scale and the employee loads the scrap by weight with a magnet. With a facility of that size you may be able to do a loads in empties out by running the tracks hidden on the lower level to a different part of the railroad.
Having being a melter and melt forman maybe I can give you some ideas. I have operated an EAF, induction furnace and supervised in a mill using an eaf and aod.
A blast furnace would not use scrap. Thy would use iron ore and for slag burned limestone and maybe sapr. The bof pasic purpose was to reduce the carbon in the pig iron down to steel grade, that is from 4.5% carbon down to about 20 points. They may use car bodies but not sure never worked there.
The eaf, induction and aof is different. I have used from 50% scrap to 100% scrap. When I worked at the Blaw-Knox, Co., National Allow Div. we made alloy and only used steel to balance the heat, some of the metals we made had no fe at all in them. We also had induction furnaces and we would use up to 100% scrap. We did have a large scrap yard mostly because we would buy back the different castings we orginally made and had to be cut up for the furnaces. The largest persentage of the scrap were tubes (pipe) that you could use spures for scrap. Also different shapes of other items. When I worked where we made steel castings we used 100% scrap. One mill was fairly large and we had bins along side to hold the scrap. There was about a months supply of scrap. They had an overhead crane with a magnet on to load up the charging boxes. The smaller mill would have about weeks supply of scrap and it was kept inside to keep it dry. Note: We did not use any metal from vechiles. They were contaminated with lead, copper and what else and would ruin the heat.
If you want a large scrap yard then it would take a lot of room. I remember one on the Conemaugh Division, PRR located is Sharpsburgh, Pa. and at the transistion period it was loaded with steam engines to be cut up for scrap. You may be able to find some pictures of those large scrap yards but they were not part of the mill.
You could build one close to the furnaces but not a rea
I have a scrapyard on my layout and found the stuff at www.johnnysjunkheap.com to be great. It is made of scraps of plastic that he paints to look like rusty metal. When you get to his home page, click on “Larry’s Foundry” at the bottom. I’ve also added scraps from various white metal kits to the scrapyard. In fact, the scrap keeps accummulating, if you know what I mean. Adding to it over time makes it seem more realistic.
The eaf, induction and aof is different. I have used from 50% scrap to 100% scrap.
Agreed the electric arc furnace, induction furnace and argon oxygen decarb furnaces can use all scrap as well as an open hearth. However the question is about the Basic Oxygen furnace which can not operate without hot metal from a blast furnace. That is what allows the oxygen to spark ignition and start the heat.
The above suggestions are great. I would like to add that a large heap does not have to be solid scrap. After all we only see the surface. Make the basic shape out of foam or wire or whatever and cover with a thin layer of actual scrap. You probably already planned on this [:)]
Thank you all for all the help as well as the suggestions. Years ago,I worked for Alcan rolled products in Oswego ,NY. Although not a steel mill,it did light the fire to build one.Huge machines,roller stands,slab shears,overhead cranes ,stiff leg crane for the soaking pits and the list goes on.
I learned a lot about heavy industry and can always learn more. Thank you all again…I knew I could count on you guys.
As for the BOF build. The massive shell of the building is almost done.Standing more than 2 1/2’ high by 4’ long by 2’ 6" wide.The only real pain is covering the entire outside of the structure in sheet metal siding.Alas…it has started, and turning out pretty darn good.
I’m thinking of making kits of this structure,for those of you that model steel mills. This structure won’t fit in a space smaller than 4’X5’ . I suppose you could cut it down ,but it might look kinda funny.If I do decide to make the basic shell of the structure for sale…the sheet metal siding will not be included.
Should have something to share with you guys soon.This is of coarse,if I can keep my wife at bay long enough to sneak out to the shed to finnish it.
I hope you are doing smooth sides. I can’t think of any offhand that have corrugated siding. It is more like vertical steel paneling about 12-18" wide.
I have the siding to pull this build off. It came in the form of projection screen TV covering. A few years ago,while out on my route, I came across a projection screen TV. Before I unleashed my trucks grapple jaws to load it. I took a few minutes to check it out. Low & behold the screen covering looked like HO scale sheet metal. I’ve been saving every piece I found.
I’m scribing lines across the covering just for the height of your mentioned. Works very well. I quess it pays sometime to be a public works guy…lol.
I was a public works guy fro 25 yrs. The scrounging rights were excellent. Sorta made up for the crap we had to do and the critiscm from the GP. Sorry this comment had nothing to do with trains but ndbprr’s comment got me to thinkin.