lhursday,august 26,2003
jayplay.15
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IS ANOTHER'S LAMP
creative transformation, if you know what to look for.
LEFT: Les Guenther, a co-owner of the scrapyard, continues to run the family scrapyard which has been operating since the 1940s. TOP RIGHT: Chris Baker, Kansas City, Mo., senior, removes a rear view mirror from a pickup truck. The mirror was made into a make-up mirror. BOTTOM RIGHT: Baker examines his find. The day at the scrapyard netted materials for three projects.
John Nowak/Kansan
axle on cars and trucks. He says the leaf springs are interesting because they are stacked on top of each other and gradually increase in length. When searching for "good" junk, look for shapes you see everyday. The leaf springs could be used as the legs of a chair
But how much is a little work? You'll need to be willing to get your hands dirty, but you may learn something in the process, such as welding. See our sidebar on the art of fusing metal to metal for more information.
or sofa with a little work.
We found a stack of metal harrow disks, the same type Gore used to make his light fixtures. Eureka! Guenther says the disks are a popular item and he knew of one woman who made them into birdbaths. We liked them because they were round, slightly
dish-shaped and rusty. We used the disk and some supplies from Target, 3201 Iowa St., and Home Depot, 1910 W. 31st St., to create a hanging lamp. See the sidebar for instructions on how to build one of your own.
We came across two unbroken
car-door windows. Gore mentioned a group at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., that used the windows to cover the side of a building. "It looked like fish scales," Gore says.
A star-shaped piece of rusty metal, it looked like the impeller from a water pump, an odd piece of aluminum that vaguely resembled a colander and a chrome mirror from a Chevy pickup truck, rounded out our finds for the morning. We turned the first two into candle holders. You could use the truck mirror as a shaving or vanity mirror. We threw our items on Guenther's scale, scrapyards usually charge by weight, but he looked over our items and charged us $5.
Guenther says the scrap market is depressed. Steel mills are closing around the country because imported steel is cheap He wanted the Highway 59 expansion to come through his yard so he could sell it, but the highway is going around the scrapyard.
He faces another problem which college-age males can relate to: high insurance. Guenther says his insurance company is reviewing his policy. It asked if he had a fence and a gate to keep people, presumably us, out. He doesn't; he depends on his country location to keep trespassers away. Guenther says his yard is one of a few yards where customers can walk in the yard.
If you would like to make an interesting piece of art or furniture from scrap, we recommend getting out to a scrapyard before these wells of junk dry up.