I have a place that appears to be the dumping ground for about 75 years. I found what looks like a large brake rotor (18-24" in diameter), it's cast with cast webs in it. I'll get a picture up if I need to. It has Wheelabrator cast on it and it's heavy, maybe 80-100lbs? Have any idea what it is? Just when I thought I had found every kind of junk on this place, yep you guessed it, I found the kitchen sink yesterday, literally. Thanks.

Brake disc off a power line tension, wire puller. They have a large disc brake for pulling tension in power lines.

Wheelabrator made a shot blaster. Factory I worked at had large one.

Wheelabrator? Now there's a name that I haven't heard in years. When I was a little kid, used to hear it mentioned nightly in the local news economic reports. Never knew what they did, but you prompted me to do quick search.

Mark
Short Wheelabrator History

(quoted from post at 16:38:25 04/23/12) Wheelabrator made a shot blaster. Factory I worked at had large one.

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We've got one too. Use it every day.

I think that Wheelabrator was involved in the Spokane Area Waste to Energy project 20 to 25 years ago. My understanding was they planned to build a business park around the incinerator complex that could get very low cost heat from the burning garbage. The system also was supposed to generate a bunch of low cost electricity and inexpensively get rid of the area garbage.

Every few years the local newspaper does a series on how poorly the scheme actually worked. I have never read about cheap heat for a business park or vast greenhouses. They also don"t say much about how much electricity is generated and actually sold to utilities. And our "tipping fees" are sky high at the garbage transfer stations, which is the only LEGAL way to get rid of most garbage. I don"t know if they do any recycling of components of the garbage at the facility, but I have read that the ash that comes from what they burn is considered hazardous waste, which is hauled to a special landfill in another state, maybe Oregon.

It sure sounds like Wheelabrator and/or Waste Management sold our area a real bill of goods, which we will continue to have to pay for, probably until the plant wears out.

Wheelabrator is not a good topic in the Spokane area!

I used to work in a factory that built water towers and bridge girders. Pittsburgh-Des Moines steel co. They had a large shot blaster. The brand name was wheelabrator.

We used a couple of Wheelabrator brand shot blasters in the production of springs for many years. They were made in Indiana, but moved somewhere else in later years, and may be out of business now. A very good reliable machine. Without a picture I can't be sure, but you may have found an impellor that threw the shot towards the part to be blasted. They were made of a special steel to withstand the impact of hardened steel shot.

We had one of those at work. It also used lead
and when we used used snow tires during the Winter we had them mounted on extra rims. If the old rims were rusty that wheelabrator would knock off the rust and paint. It was 1951 when I used it for the first time.Hal

I worked at a wheelabrator in a factory too. I am sure Rayloc (Napa) took it with them to Mexico but hadn't read or heard the name in years. They had four, the one I worked on was loaded with walnut shells. I cleaned alternator staters and rotors.

Dave

I would say you're 100% correct. We still use Wheelabrator shot blasters and the impellers minus the vanes look a lot like a brake drum and are cast with the wheelabrator name