What to do with steel

I bought some steel turnings while I was at a scrap metal supplier, thinking they would be cheap mild steel I could use to make iron compounds.
I put some in cold, concentrated HCl and it gave a very faint purple colour(CrCl3?) and in HNO3+HCl (initially there was no reaction but I threw in some Al turnings to heat things up) it gave a brown/yellow liquid ([NiCl4]2-?) which formed a green solid (NiCl2?) when I dumped in a bunch of bicarb to neutralize the acids.
So it turns out I've got stainless steel with chromium and nickel I think(among other things), is there anything useful I can do with the turnings? Making some Cr and Ni salts would be good but I don't know how I'd go about doing it.
Thanks