Recycling Strings

singemonkey

It only just occurred to me how perverse it is for me to throw my guitar strings away when they're done, after the sweat, toil, environmental destruction, and cost of bringing that metal to the surface to be made into strings.

Does anyone recycle guitar strings? How do you go about it? Scrap dealer?

Gearhead

Yeah save the environment by driving down to a scrap dealer (or better yet, have one of their skip trucks come pick it up) and recycling your 10 grams. You will of course spend a couple of litres of fuel but okay. ?
Scrap price these days is somewhere between R1600-R2100 per tonne (1000kg) so you know what you are throwing away. In fact, that is for a higher grade of scrap than they will rate your strings - too many trace elements to F up the melt. ?

singemonkey

So the nickel should end up in a landfill, where it's really useful? :-\

You can keep the old strings in a box until you have a sufficient stock. It's no different to any other kind of recycling. You wouldn't drive to a scrap place with a coke can, and yet cans are profitably recycled in bulk.

I don't suppose music companies have deals with the string manufacturers. I suppose it's difficult if they're based in another country/city though.

Svenddw

Could you imagine sticking you hand into a box of old strings. it would be like getto acupunture. ? surely though the wash or treat the scrap to remove all foriegn matter. dont guys recycle man-hole covers(ilegally). i mean they not exactly clean :-\

Gearhead

Svenddw wrote: surely though the wash or treat the scrap to remove all foriegn matter.

You're no metallurgist, that's for sure - I was referring to alloying elements. Strings aren't all steel you know. Or all phosphor bronze. Or ...

Bob-Dubery

first separate the strings from the packaging.

I take mine down to our local Pikitup dump - they have hoppers for recycling plastic, tins, glass, paper and cardboard and also will take old engine oil.

I don't know, actually, if they want the strings, but given that most people don't even rinse the tins out I doubt it makes a major difference.

But what about Elixir strings with that layer of goretex on them.... Mind you, they last longer so you dump less of them.

Heath

My wife cleans them up , sometimes even boils them , then lightly sands them with water paper and then uses them in her bead work ........

Renesongs

Boiling strings especially wound ones causes them to deteriorate even further soak them for a few hours in an ice cream container filled with mentholated spirits - an old bassist trick ?

AlanRatcliffe

Mentholated spirits? LOL! ?

Bob-Dubery

Somwhere out on the interweb there's a service that allows musicians to make bangles out of their used strings and sell them to fans with proceeds going to a charity that the musician stipulates.

Of course, you do have to have fans...

Heath

I have a ceiling fan ..... Does that count

Bob-Dubery

Tailon. wrote: I have a ceiling fan ..... Does that count

Does it go to your gigs?

Heath

Nah , its a bit hung up

singemonkey

Tailon. wrote: Nah , its a bit hung up

Nicely played. I must try the meths trick. And then collect the discards and take them to the recycling place which, I'm guessing from what Bob says, will probably take them.

TomCat

Tailon. wrote: Nah , its a bit hung up

Although I believe it's very attached....... :-\

Wizard

Although I believe it's very attached....... :-\

No ... there are no strings attached ?

vic

All you ever wanted to know about strings but were too afraid to ask, can be found here
?
http://www.professorstring.com/archives.htm

may be very useful indeed....

Careful of Nickel......It was voted Allergen of the Year in 2008 by the American Contact Dermatitis Society (Wiki) .......do you sometimes have itchy fingers...? ?