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Born and raised in Madisonville, Kentucky, Cliff Nance grew up in the tungsten trade — learning the business from the plant floor up to the CEO’s chair. As a second-generation...
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Born and raised in Madisonville, Kentucky, Cliff Nance grew up in the tungsten trade — learning the business from the plant floor up to the CEO’s chair. As a second-generation “scrapie” with a global perspective, Cliff brings curiosity, candor, and decades of experience in tungsten reclamation and recycling to every conversation.
On Cliff’s Notes, Cliff sits down with innovators, industry leaders, and thinkers from around the world to talk about the forces shaping manufacturing, metals, and modern business. From technology and sustainability to leadership and legacy, every episode explores what it means to build something that lasts.
Whether it’s a deep dive into the recycling industry or a story about grit, family, and the future — Cliff’s Notes is where real conversations happen with the people moving the world forward.
Theme song written and performed by Adam Howell.
show less
On Cliff’s Notes, Cliff sits down with innovators, industry leaders, and thinkers from around the world to talk about the forces shaping manufacturing, metals, and modern business. From technology and sustainability to leadership and legacy, every episode explores what it means to build something that lasts.
Whether it’s a deep dive into the recycling industry or a story about grit, family, and the future — Cliff’s Notes is where real conversations happen with the people moving the world forward.
Theme song written and performed by Adam Howell.
Episodes & Posts
Episodes
Posts
Transcribed
29 JUL 2026 · Cliff sits down with the man who started it all — his father, Steve Nance, founder of Tungco. It's one of the most personal and wide-ranging conversations on the podcast: the story of how Steve met his wife Nan at Tungco's trade show booth in 2005 (a wine glass full of tungsten pellets, a borrowed business card, and a fished-out entry), the early days of building Tungco from nothing, and a frank look at what decades of experience in the tungsten industry says about where the critical metals race between the US and China is really headed. Plus: an F1 car in the booth, a tire-changing competition, and a closing that'll make you reach for the phone to call your own dad. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
22 JUL 2026 · Cliff sits down with Phil Rafle of 21st Century Programming — makers of ROM, the Recycling Operations Manager software that Tungco has relied on for over 20 years. Phil has been with the company for 22 of its 26 years, and this episode is equal parts software deep-dive and long-term partnership retrospective.
They cover how Tungco went from running on Excel to a full ROM implementation signed nervously at an ISRI convention, what ROM Infinite brings to the next generation of scrap operations, how GPS geofencing and AI are already changing how recyclers run their yards, and why the honest answer about AI grading material is: it only sees the top of the pile. Plus a very raspy Phil who sounds, as Cliff puts it, soft and buttery. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
15 JUL 2026 · 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.
Two Kentuckians, 19 years of shared history, and a Derby invitation at the close. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
8 JUL 2026 · 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. APT — explained without a PhD. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
1 JUL 2026 · 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 family tear up, and decades of buying scrap the old-fashioned way — driving I-95 from Maine to Miami, ripping pages out of the Yellow Pages, and building relationships that still define how he does business today.
Plus: ICD's niche, high-dollar world of nickel, cobalt, tungsten, molybdenum, and titanium alloys for aerospace. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
17 JUN 2026 · 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 COVID-era near-miss in China that came down to one last commercial flight out of Beijing. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
10 JUN 2026 · 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 passenger seat. Plus: the Hayabusa racing habit that paid for a career in asphalt. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
3 JUN 2026 · 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 Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
27 MAY 2026 · 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. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Transcribed
20 MAY 2026 · 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 only concrete — and how that rebuilt Plant 7 is now one of the best in Pella. Hosted by Cliff Nance of Tungco — where hard work meets honest talk about leadership, innovation, and what it takes to build something that lasts.
Born and raised in Madisonville, Kentucky, Cliff Nance grew up in the tungsten trade — learning the business from the plant floor up to the CEO’s chair. As a second-generation...
show more
Born and raised in Madisonville, Kentucky, Cliff Nance grew up in the tungsten trade — learning the business from the plant floor up to the CEO’s chair. As a second-generation “scrapie” with a global perspective, Cliff brings curiosity, candor, and decades of experience in tungsten reclamation and recycling to every conversation.
On Cliff’s Notes, Cliff sits down with innovators, industry leaders, and thinkers from around the world to talk about the forces shaping manufacturing, metals, and modern business. From technology and sustainability to leadership and legacy, every episode explores what it means to build something that lasts.
Whether it’s a deep dive into the recycling industry or a story about grit, family, and the future — Cliff’s Notes is where real conversations happen with the people moving the world forward.
Theme song written and performed by Adam Howell.
show less
On Cliff’s Notes, Cliff sits down with innovators, industry leaders, and thinkers from around the world to talk about the forces shaping manufacturing, metals, and modern business. From technology and sustainability to leadership and legacy, every episode explores what it means to build something that lasts.
Whether it’s a deep dive into the recycling industry or a story about grit, family, and the future — Cliff’s Notes is where real conversations happen with the people moving the world forward.
Theme song written and performed by Adam Howell.
Information
| Author | Tungco |
| Organization | Tungco, Inc |
| Categories | Business , Entrepreneurship , Management |
| Website | www.tungco.com |
| ahowell@tungco.com |
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