The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 43, October 9, 2005, Article 18

REMELTING CENT SCRAP

Last week, Dick Johnson mentioned that the skeleton scrap
generated from the U.S. cent blanking operation could easily
be melted and reformulated into brass.

Tom DeLorey writes: "The webbing, or skeleton scrap as you
call it, left over from the punching out of cent blanks can simply
be remelted into new strip and need not be recycled into brass
(though it could be). The strip itself is not copper plated, or
otherwise the edges of the cents would show the zinc core. The
blanks themselves are copper plated after being punched out
of the strip.

Even if the strip were plated, it could still be melted down into
new strip. The specifications for the copper-plated zinc cent
introduced in 1982 specifically calls for a trace amount of copper
in the zinc core, to allow for spoiled blanks, planchets and cents
to be melted down into new strip without the need to refine out
the copper which had already been applied to them. They did it
logically."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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