Cliff's Notes

Cliff sits down with Niki Spies of Stainless Steel Midwest — a longtime industry friend and 19-year veteran of the stainless and nickel alloys space — for a conversation that puts two very different metals businesses side by side.

SSM moves about 16,000 tons of bulk steel a month. The entire global tungsten industry produces about 140,000 to 150,000 tons a year. Niki breaks down how stainless grades work, why nickel pricing affects everything from aerospace to your kitchen refrigerator, how tariffs are hitting the scrap business (or not), and what ReMA has meant for keeping operators informed in a fast-moving policy environment.

Cliff sits down with Tungco's COO Debbie West for an inside look at what it means to step into one of the most demanding seats in a nearly 60-year-old business.

Debbie has almost three decades in the tungsten industry and she breaks down the difference between being a director of operations and being a COO, why Project 74 has gone from concept to reality, what the zinc reclaim process actually looks like, and why standing up an APT plant is not as simple as the internet would have you believe.

Plus: the chemistry behind sodium tungstate vs...

Cliff sits down with a longtime friend and one of the most respected names in the scrap recycling industry — Phil Rosenberg, Senior Executive and commercial director of the metals and alloy division at ICD Group.

Phil is fifth generation in a family scrap business that traces back to the late 1800s, when his great-great-grandfather arrived in Chicago with nothing and started a rags business that grew into one of the city's largest non-ferrous scrapyards.

Phil opens up about his son Jason joining the industry as the sixth generation, the LLC name that made an entire room of...

Cliff sits down with Cody Mecham, cutting edge product manager at Vermeer Corporation, for a deep look at what it means to engineer tungsten into ground-engaging tools when the price of that tungsten is hitting levels nobody planned for. Cody oversees all of Vermeer's cutting and digging tooling across HDD, surface mining, wood waste recycling, and vacuum excavation — and he's frank about the tension between using more tungsten and using smarter tungsten.

The difference between a tool that looks like it's from a gladiator movie and a tool that actually performs is exactly where his team lives. Plus: a...

Cliff sits down with Andrew Patterson, milling department manager for Villager Asphalt, to get into the weeds — literally — on how tungsten carbide performs in one of its most demanding real-world applications: asphalt milling.

Andrew runs a massive milling operation across the Southeast, consuming boxes of tungsten-tipped teeth every single day, and he breaks down the full picture: how the drum works, why rotation is the real key to tooth longevity, what happens when you hit a buried manhole, the evolution from hand cranks to digital grade controls, and why his wife can now spot a worn tooth from the...

Cliff turns the mic on one of his own — Josh McKnight (Lineage Metallurgical and Cuda Grit). They've shoveled gravel together, worked every corner of the Tungco operation, and now Josh is navigating what might be the strangest sales environment in the company's history: tungsten prices going straight to the stratosphere, quotes that expire in three days, customers starting to explore alternatives, and a thermal spray and grit product line that's pulling from every direction at once.

Equal parts business conversation, Kentucky roots, and two guys who know exactly where each other came from. 

Hosted by Cliff Nan...

Cliff sits down with Bryan Mills of CP Carbide — a California-based, three-generation family business that has been privately sourcing and supplying tungsten carbide wear parts since 1995.

Bryan breaks down how his dad's 1988 trip to China started it all, why CP Carbide's private-label model means their name almost never appears on the product, and what it's like to watch tungsten prices hit levels that haven't been seen since World War Two.

Plus: the honest conversation about polycrystalline diamond as a rising alternative, Trump's critical minerals vault, and what happens when quotes go stale in less than 24 hours.

Cliff sits down with Matt Keske, commodity manager for Wear Tools at Vermeer Corporation — one of the most diversified heavy equipment manufacturers in the world — to talk tungsten, supply chain strategy, and what 30 years inside a company that's a mile long actually looks like.

Matt breaks down how AI infrastructure and data center build-outs are quietly driving underground drilling demand, why strategic partnerships matter more than spot pricing when metals markets get chaotic, and what it means to be a wear tools buyer navigating today's commodity headwinds.

Plus: the tornado that leveled a steel building and left...

Cliff sits down with Ashley Hunsaker, co-founder and CEO of HTS Coatings, for one of the most candid conversations about building a business from scratch — eight months pregnant, living in an 800-square-foot house, and saying yes when everyone else was saying no.

Ashley breaks down what thermal spray coatings actually do (hint: they're inside the landing gear on the plane you flew here on), how HTS developed a proprietary chrome alternative with near-zero porosity, and why the tungsten price environment is forcing the whole industry to ask hard questions.

A family business story that's equal parts gr...

Cliff sits down with one of Tungco's own — procurement specialist Chris Capps — to talk tungsten markets, trust in volatile times, and what 16-plus years inside a carbide recycling operation actually teaches you.

From sorting bits to strategic buying, Chris breaks down why the current tungsten pricing environment is unlike anything the industry has ever seen, and why trust might be the most valuable commodity of all. Plus: boats, baby milestones, and a Rolex with a story behind it.

Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes...

Cliff sits down with Austin Hargett of weld.com to swap stories, talk high-pressure pipe welding for power plants and refineries, and revisit a legendary night on the Sunset Strip that ended at Whisky a Go Go.

Austin breaks down what makes weld.com a go-to resource for welders working in the most demanding industrial environments.

Equal parts industry insight and "great friend hands you the last drink" energy.

#CliffsNotes #Welding #weldDOTcom #AustinHargett #CONEXPO #IndustrialPodcast #SunsetStripSettings:Episode number: 201Season: 2Episode type: Full Explicit: Yes - discusses alcoholCover art: Custom episode artwork, or it'll inherit t...

Recorded live on the floor at ReMA 2026 in Las Vegas, this special edition of Cliff's Notes officially announces Project 74 — Tungco's Urban Mining Initiative and a landmark partnership with Victor Fox of the Chem-Met Company and Furkhat Faizulla of Syram Corporation, built on one powerful premise: converting domestic tungsten scrap into sodium tungstate, the critical intermediate chemical that nearly 100% of all tungsten products must pass through before becoming a finished part, and keeping those strategic units inside the United States.

Cliff, Victor, and Furkhat break down why tungsten has surged 5x in price over the last eight months, ho...