Scrapping an Electric Cooker

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

The asbestos mentioned may well be glass. It was pretty commonly used for sleeving. I have worked in a company that used a lot of asbestos. You might say that the elderly needn't worry to much about it providing they aren't mining it or breathing in rather a lot of it. It tends to kill slowly and the blue stuff is by far the worst.

I have seen one useful item that it might be possible to make from part of an electric stove.

It starts with a pole say 30" long. One end can be clamped to a bench. The other end has a platform plus insulation, then a space, then a heating element, more insulation and then a cowl.

The heating element glowed orange much like electric cooker ones can. It was used to forge the end of some 3/8" square punch steel into a pretty hefty screw driver blade. It could also be used to harden it. Tempering too I assume if the end was left out. I think one of the idea was that it would take things to a nice cherry red and not overheat the steel. The unit might have taken stuff up to about 1" square. Plugged in so can't have had that much power. Probably 110v so 15 amps at that max.

Rather old idea of an engineers screwdriver. Used when slotted headed screws were often used for fixings. Even on tools such as a toolmaker might be involved with. Press tools and all sorts. Square shaft so that a spanner could be used on it. However as that part wasn't heat treated I have seen some that rounded over.

John

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[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by Breva on 02/01/2017 14:57:58:

Hi Silly Old Duffer,

I'm coming 67 soon and to prove it have two small sheds lined with "might be useful" bits in boxes salvaged from dumped or broken items. Like yourself I'm an incorrigible fixer..but… I can honestly say that over the years only 2%, if that,

 

.

 

As much as 2% ?

 

After having cleared endless workshop up after someone has died i have seen all the glass jars full of rusty screws.

Brake shoes off some unknown obscure car on the rivets.

Boxes and boxes of assorted stuff that even defies being put into a category like bolts or screws as they contain bolts, screws off cuts of metal rusty brake pipe fittings, worn out fan belts. Ball races either rusty, worn out or seized.

 

Next time something modern breaks and is due for a replacement, just do everyone a favour, even if it is only yourself in 10 years time when you have less energy than you have now and dump it.

Edited By John Stevenson on 02/01/2017 15:46:31

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Breva on 02/01/2017 14:57:58:

…

My new Year resolution is to tackle the clutter. Ask me in Dec. how I got on.

Me too, as of this today.

I wasted an hour this afternoon tidying up before I could start work and it's still a mess. For a man with limited space, I own far too much junk. I'm annoyed with myself.

Will I really sort out the clutter this time? Don't bet on it!

I hope you have more will-power than me Breva.

Cheers,

Dave

[Nigel McBurney 1Participant @nigelmcburney1]

A friend came round a couple of weeks ago looking for some 3/4 whit bolts for his traction engine,sods law a few days previous I had a small tidy up and chucked out a tin of old big bolts which I never used and the binman came that week.If you keep useful junk a lot is never used ,throw away some near useless stuff and its wanted next week , I am 75,will have to move smaller home soon and there is an awful lot to sort through,the scrap pile in the yard is growing though not fast enough for my wife.I must admit that nowadays I throw out most modern failures i.e. boilers,cookers washing machines,tvs etc not worth the effort to strip and save anything,its all metric anyhow.

[Carl Wilson 4Participant @carlwilson4]

If you have a cooker to get rid of and live near a flooded quarry, just chuck it in there.

Apparently that happened a lot during the 1970s. At least if The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water was to be believed.

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

Posted by Carl Wilson 4 on 02/01/2017 21:13:15:
If you have a cooker to get rid of and live near a flooded quarry, just chuck it in there.

Would make a nice little cavern for the fishies to live in too.

Michael W

[larry PhelanParticipant @larryphelan54019]

Hi Dave,

All this talking about cookers got me thinking. For the record,my Mother bought a gas cooker in 1937 [She still had the receipt about 40 years later when we changed to natural gas not sure when that happened,but the cooker was still working,just could not get jets for it,or so they said ! That cooker did serious work in it,s time. The replacement cooker was made from recycled bean cans and packed up in no time flat,no more than ten years.

My Mother,s comments were not to be printed ! When she bought the first cooker,she also bought a water heater,known as a "Geaser" [no sure about the spelling here ]. These were an electric water intended to be fitted over your bath,if you had one [we did not ] or over a sink. This thing held about 15 gallons and were fitted with a very small heating element,so they took ages to heat up. This unit was made by Semments [wrong spelling,I know],before the last war. That heater was still working up to the time I had to move out of my house [that,s another story ] in 2006. I could not take it with me,so it ended up in a skip,a sad end to such a wonderful product.

As an aside,my last job was building transformers,from 3kva to 5 mva and along the line,we came across some old transformers which had been built by the same German firm which had made our heater. All that was wrong with them was that the E,S,B had not bothered to to maintain the paintwork on the tanks,so they rusted. I was there when the transformers were taken from their tanks and the workmanship on them was something else. All the busbars were chromed and all the connections were perfect ! This was in the mid 1970,s These units were installed in the late 1920,s or early 1930,s. As far as I know,they were just returned to service and are still in use.

These days it seems that you should not expect more than two or three years from anything, I can hear my Mother turning in her grave !

It seems that the idea is that you use it once,then scrap it.

Dave,you might get a few washers and self tapping screws from it,but not much else.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Carl Wilson 4 on 02/01/2017 21:13:15:

 

. At least if The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water was to be believed.

That sends a chill down the spines of those of a certain age!

Neil

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonely_Water

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 19/08/2017 20:18:49

[norman valentineParticipant @normanvalentine78682]

A few years ago the door on my oven shattered a fortnight before Christmas. I tried to order a new one from Electrolux but there were none in stock. Instead Electrolux delivered me a replacement oven, free of charge, on Christmas eve. There is a Santa!

Currently, my microwave has died, I understand that there is over a kilo of copper in it, I need some copper so I will be dismantling it.

[vintagengineerParticipant @vintagengineer]

The oven shelves are made of a high tensile steel. If they were made from mild steel they would sag due to the heat cycling.

[the artfull-codgerParticipant @theartfull-codger]

Norman, my microwave "Died" so I stripped the panel off it & it had an internal fuse which had blown, don't know why so I replaced it & it's been fine ever since,worth checking. Detest the "throw away" society

Graham.T

[norman valentineParticipant @normanvalentine78682]

Thanks for the suggestion Graham, I've already had it apart and it is not the fuse unfortunately.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Norman
unless the microwave is a good few years old I suspect you will be disappointed as modern ovens use a switched mode power supply and I doubt if the transformer has more than 50g of wire in it – if however you have an older one having a transformer power supply then this can form the basis of a spot welder by cutting out the very high voltage secondary and replacing it with a couple of turns of welding cable or doubled up 6mm cable

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

On a previous fan oven, the cooling fan (outside the oven) of the fan motor cut through the motor's live wire. This welded the motors ball bearings together. A new motor was obtained from one of the online suppliers and fitted with little difficulty. The damaged wire was repaired and strapped down so it couldn't flap about.

Curiously, the current oven had its fan motor stop a couple of weeks ago, taking the fuse out as it did. I made do by taking the back plate off the inside of the oven and using it as a non-fan one. Works perfectly well in that mode! The fan motor still rotates freely. I probably ought to have a look and see if it's recoverable without money, since I've got a lump of silverside and some King Edward's waiting for dinnertime tomorrow .

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by larry Phelan on 19/08/2017 18:55:19:

…

Dave,you might get a few washers and self tapping screws from it,but not much else.

Gosh Larry, amazed to see this one come back to life. I took said cooker apart to make it easier to take to the tip recycling facility. You're 100% correct: all I got from it was a few washers and some self-tapping screws!

The replacement is pretty flimsy too. Not sure how long it will last. In the meantime it works very well, fingers crossed. My oldest domestic appliance is a microwave bought 29 years ago to warm baby milk for my son. It's in better nick than I am.

Dave

[norman valentineParticipant @normanvalentine78682]

Frances, the transformer contained 300g of copper far less than the youtube video, that I had watched, suggested. That's pretty much what I had expected, these days I only believe what I have experienced for myself.

What makes it worse is that I am not experienced in electronic stuff and did not recognise the second fuse holder and found, after I had cut some wires. that there was a quick blow fuse that had indeed blown. Maybe it had blown because of some uneconomic fault. I will never know, now I have to keep looking for some scrap copper. (and buy a new microwave!)

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

If the oven is stove enamelled, even the side sheets are useless for re-use as when bending/cutting the enamel comes off as little shards of glass.

Just dump it – and that's advice from someone who tries never to dump anything.

Replace with a gas oven/hob if possible & choose one that'll work when the power is down too. The electricity is more likely to fail than gas, so in a winter power cut you can brew some tea & heat a meal. And put a bit of heat into the house. We have a 'Parker Cowen' that fits that requirement & I'll be very hard to convince to replace it.

Regards

Richard.

 

Edited to correct an android predictive text stupidity.

Edited By richardandtracy on 20/08/2017 17:56:46

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, well talking of oldest domestic appliances, mine is a 500W Mutsui of 31 years and costing almost £40.00 at the time and still woks today as good as it did when I bought it. It may well be getting to the end of days though, but not because it doesn't work properly, moreover, that the casing is starting to go rusty.

The little bit of rust that can be seen on the perforation on the front left hand side, occasionally gives a little spark, but that's about it, however, the rust marks at the bottom where the door closes onto, are from the door itself. So it may well be the door that closes its fate (pun intended) but hay, I doubt that there's even been a years worth of days when it hasn't been used.

Ironically, when I first bought it, the sales person tried hard to sell me extra cover for it, as it would be expensive to repair after the guarantee had run out. The price for the extra cover! about £37.00 PA. I told him politely, no I don't think so.

Regards Nick.

[norman valentineParticipant @normanvalentine78682]

It gets worse for me. I thought that the two coils of "copper" that I harvested from the transformer appeared to be a little light in weight so I tried the application of a gas torch with it and a length of wire that I knew was copper. Guess what, the coils from the microwave are aluminium! Are well, into the skip it goes and the search for real copper continues.

I'll save the fan and motor, that might come in handy one day.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

norman, you'll find a couple of magnets in the Magnetron, toriodal shape about 2" diameter by 1/2 thick. The sheet metal can be of use.

Ian S C

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

So you've already made a spot welder with your last microwave?

[Ray LyonsParticipant @raylyons29267]

Scrapped a built-in double oven last week. Not much to recover,,only a couple of galvanised panels. Took the doors off and then used the angle grinder to bring the main body down into small chunks to fit into the car for dumping. I did end up with a lot of self tapping screws which may come in handy one day.

[larry PhelanParticipant @larryphelan54019]

I too have boxes and tubs full of stuff which I,m sure will come in handy some time,question is,will I still be around to use it ?

One day,when I am gone to the Great Workshop above or below [the jury are still out on that one ] someone will come to clear out all my "useful" junk and ask themselves "What the Hell did he keep this for,or what is it?"

Not only that,but I have jigs,made for jobs long forgotten, so long in fact that even I have no idea how to use them,and that,s a fact ! Can,t even remember what they were for,but I kept them in case they "might come in handy some time " I also used to raid skips,this helped to add to the collection.You would not believe some of the items I found this way,some did come in handy,most did not,not yet anyway.

Will we ever change? I doubt it at this stage,since I,ve been doing it since I was about 18 and I,m now 78 [and a bit ]

When the time comes,the skip outside my place should be worth raiding,if there are any true raiders left. We are a dying breed,but hoarders will never die ! I must have about 5000 self tapping screws,but never enough of the right ones for any job,wrong head,length,type. Washers? loads of them,all sizes,types. Springs ? yes,what type would you like? I have stuff that everyone wants, I even have stuff that no body wants ! However,I,m glad to see that I am not alone,so I say "Keep it up boys,dont mind what the others say "

[the artfull-codgerParticipant @theartfull-codger]

Larry, I thought I was reading my lifestory!! allthough I'm 10 yrs younger than you, I just can't resist a bargain or a freebie from a skip or a neighbour, & can't for the life of me bear to throw things out, I've seen me have a sort out in the workshop then on bin day bring back some of it into the workshop, & I'm allways repairing things, & of course "Graham the old man down the village can fix anything!!" allways mending something for someone, & folk put stuff out on the roadside for the scrapmen who are allways round the village,but I'm up early out on the bike & if I see something tasty it's mine,makes me feel good beating the scrapmen as I got £2000 worth of foundry flasks & lathe chucks nicked by them a few yrs ago I detest them,I go to autojumbles & come back with stuff bacause it's so cheap! Fortunately my sons an engineer & so the missus won't be cleaned out when I pop it!! .

[john fletcher 1Participant @johnfletcher1]

Small micro wave cabinets make an ideal cabinet for a home brewed converter 240 single phase in 3 phase around 440 out or a large power supply. cabinet. Make a sheet steel front panel in place of the door and a sheet steel chassis to mount the components on, never known to throw a micro wave out. The main fuse is an expensive one so keep them for possible future use, the diode and capacitor are also useful. The wire in cookers is heat resistant and very flexible,, useful for meter leads and the amount of asbestos found in domestic appliance is minimal. People go one about asbestos and rightly so, but not many consider brake lining dust and dust on the road side when walking along a main road, which I'm reliably told is very much more harmful. John

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