Wichita Material Recovery LLC

Fun Find Friday!

Check out this a full set of steel letter punches (2mm / 5/64”) that came in for scrap this week. They are ready to stamp names, initials, or ID marks. Before lasers and label makers, these tough little punches were the go-to tool for permanently marking steel, aluminum, brass, leather, or even wood.

Each hardened steel rod has a letter engraved on the end - line it up, give it a solid hammer strike, and you’ve got an impression that lasts as long as the metal itself. These were staples in machine shops, scrap yards, and tool benches everywhere.

They may be small, but they pack a punch (literally)! Perfect for adding an old-school personal touch to metalwork, or just a neat reminder of how craftsmen left their mark.

Fun Find Friday!
Six Humboldt Brass Sieves just landed in the scrap pile—and they’re gleaming like gold! These precision tools are used in labs and construction to separate sand, soil, gravel, and other media by size.
Sieving has been around since ancient Egypt, and even though Humboldt wasn’t around back then, they have been around for over a century and Humboldt is still one of the biggest names in testing equipment today.

A reminder that treasure comes in all shapes, sizes… and meshes!

Fun Find Friday
This week, we had a real Texas-sized treasure roll through the yard, The Pan Handler.

It’s not just any pan, it’s a Texas-shaped baking pan made by the Texas Metal Casting Co. of Lufkin, TX. That’s right, everything really is bigger in Texas, even the bakeware!

A few fun facts for ya:
⭐ Texas-shaped pans like this were sold as novelty bakeware, perfect for cornbread, casseroles, or anything you wanted to give a Lone Star twist.
⭐ Lufkin, TX, where this was made, has a long history in metal casting and manufacturing - this pan is a piece of that legacy.
⭐ Collectors love unique regional cookware like this, and “The Pan Handler” has become a bit of a cult classic in cast aluminum kitchenware.

Whether you’d use it for brownies, biscuits, or a Texas-sized cookie, this pan screams southern hospitality with a cast-metal backbone.