Every once in awhile, we get questions about what we do with our leftover metal once we have fabricated a shiny new metal roof.

When we are making roof panels, there usually isn’t any waste. Metal for panels comes in rolls. We run those rolls through a very precise machine called a Roll Former.

As your Miami metal roof experts, we regularly custom-make pieces, too. When we are making valleys, eave strips, or flashings, there usually will be some waste from the sheet of metal that we use. This is because we fold or cut the metal ourselves, rather than running it through the rollformer.

Metal Roofing is 100% recyclable, so we make sure to take it to the scrap yard or recycle it.

As much as we think regular recycling is really important, it’s not really all that exciting. So, I looked for some fun ideas for reusing scrap metal. There is quite a variety – from insects to video games!

Edouard Martinet

Edouard Martinet made these insects for an exhibition at Sladmore Contemporary in London and he lives in Brittany, France. When he was 10 years old, his teacher introduced his class to insects and ever since then he has been fascinated with them. He later went to L’Ecole Superieure des Arts Graphiques in Paris to study design.

Now, he creates these little sculptures out of flea market and junkyard finds.

How does he make them?

Surprisingly, he doesn’t even solder or weld the creatures together. They are actually held together by screws.

It takes him about a month to create each figure. The longest it has taken him is 17 years because he was looking for a specific piece to complete the project.

Play Scrap Metal Heroes

A scrap metal video game? Really?

It’s called Scrap Metal Heroes. And it actually sounds pretty fun.

In the game, you build robots and have them battle in the Robo League. If you try it out, let us know if you like it!

Make a Gym out of Scrap Metal

Here is a YouTube video of a gym in Ukraine made out of scrap metal finds. It’s pretty impressive!

A Huge Scrap Metal Lion!

This is really awesome.

A Turkish artist named Selçuk Yilmaz created this lion out of 4,000 pieces of scrap metal. He spent 10 months working on it and it weighs 550 pounds. Each piece was hand-cut and hammered by Yilmaz. He named it “Aslan,” which means “Lion” in Turkish.

He says, “It needs patience and we have to know pain,” in reference to metal-work.

He has done a lot of art pieces and you can see them on his website.

It would be awesome to have this in our office!

We really need to find more creative ways to use our scrap metal. Recycling is great, but these art pieces are really inspiring!

~J.C.