The first rule of Scrapclub is… hit stuff with sledgehammers and if it’s not, it should be.
Scrapclub, in a nutshell, is a place where people get together and smash stuff (that doesn’t work) to pieces. This could be old white goods, computers, monitors or other electronics as well as a selection of scrap metals such as car doors.
I wasn’t quite sure beforehand if I wanted to really beat the crap out of inanimate objects, both because they’ve never done anything to me and I don’t really have anger issues (unless you count not getting angry at things as an issue). Plus there seemed to be some pics of a piano getting broken up, which you would think would be fixable, and there’s something that seems a bit wrong about breaking an instrument.
However, I signed up dutifully and as soon as my name was called to go into the pit I knew I was going to get involved.
The setup is that ‘things’ are placed into an area, around 8 people come up at a time and get 10 minutes to smash stuff with a variety of tools, sledgehammers, hammers, steel pipes, golf clubs, but alas no chainsaw this time.
Once we were kitted up (hard hat, gloves) we went out among the trash to get ready to ruin it. I selected a sledgehammer as my weapon of choice and then strode out to defeat the small child’s toy car I had elected to start with.
As the bell rang I raised the hammer and brought it crashing down atop… the ground. I misjudged the distance. Not to worry another big swing and it struck! And bounced immediately off for no lasting damage. Still, I wasn’t going to be defeated and a few hefty strikes later the toy was in pieces, huzzah!
I then allowed myself to be briefly distracted by a Darth Vader helmet which I jumped up and down on until it was broken, before turning my attention to a 18″ by 12″ cast iron radiator.
This was a poor choice.
I wailed on that thing for about 7 minutes, hardly putting more than a couple of inch deep dents in it. It was the most solid object I could have picked. While everyone else was on the finishing strokes of their washing machine or cooker, I had managed to make my radiator slightly concave.
As the bell tolled announcing to stop I looked down at my sturdy radiator and then out at the pieces of fridge elsewhere and wondered if I had made the best use of my time.
Still, it was top fun and there should be another one in February. My only concern is that recycling the computers may yield precious metals more readily than mining them, so I’ll need to look that up before going back and seeing if it’s a particularly environmental thing to do.