Well (drilling)

“ Special power apparatus is necessary for constructing an artesian or drilled well. The drilling costs from $3 per foot up, depending upon the nature of the subsoil and whether rock is encountered. Unless such a well has been drilled in the immediate vicinity it is not possible to hazard even a guess as to when water will be struck. ”

“ Wells, Oil and Gas Wells, drilled by contract to any depth, from 50 to 3000 feet. We also manufacture and furnish everything required to drill and complete same. Portable Horse Power and Mounted Steam Drilling Machines for 100 to 600 ft. Send 6 cents for illustrated catalogue. Pierce Well Excavator Co. New York. ”

“ In the absence of distinctive outcrops, as well as when outcrops are found, drilling is a widely used method of underground exploration in advance of the sinking of shafts or the driving of tunnels. Drilling is more useful in the locating and proving of mineral deposits of large bulk, like deposits of coal, iron, and oil, than mineral deposits of small bulk and high value, like gold and silver deposits. ”

“ It is the essence of speed in drilling, for, unlike the necessary principles to be adopted in the percussion methods of drilling, the rotary drill does not have to be lifted from the hole for the purposes of clearing. The pulverized strata are continuously washed from the hole by a stream of water reaching the bottom of the drill. Very frequently, a pressure-fed mud is used, and this serves a double purpose, for in its return to the surface it tends to plaster the walls of the well. ”

“ The operation of drilling is frequently interrupted by the occurrence of an accident, which necessitates the use of fishing tools. If the fishing operation is unsuccessful the well has to be abandoned, often after months of labour, unless it is found possible to drill past the tools which have been lost. In readiness for a fracture of the drilling tools or of the cable, special appliances known as fishing tools are provided. ”

“ DRILLING MACHINES
Everybody knows that oil wells and derricks go together. The tall derrick towers are needed to hoist drilling equipment in and out of the hole.
When men start to drill a well, they fasten a cutting tool, called a bit, to a piece of pipe which hangs upright{70} in the derrick. Machinery turns the whole thing round and round, so that the bit grinds down into the earth. When one length of pipe, called a joint, has almost disappeared into the hole, men screw another joint onto the top of it. Now the engine turns the double-length pipe, and the bit digs down deeper. ”

“ For reasons peculiar to the oil industry, a cable drilling crew then undertakes with cable tools to 'bring in' the well or else demonstrate that it is a dry hole. Respondents were employed by petitioner as members of its rotary drilling crew and worked on approximately thirty-two wells in the Panhandle Oil Field of Texas; thirty-one of those wells produced oil, and the other one produced gas. ”

“ The steel wedge enters the recess and the tools are carried to the top of the stroke, where, by a quick forward jerk, the wedge is thrown clear of the recess, and the tools drop freely, the momentum of the string of tools driving the drilling bit deeper into the hole. After several feet of the hole are drilled, the tools have to be withdrawn in order to allow the pulverized mass of debris to be cleared away, while, owing to the caving nature of the strata, it is necessary to case the well as drilling proceeds. ”

“ The duty of a skilled white man, single-handed, in rock such as is usually met below the zone of oxidation, is from 5 to 7 feet per shift, depending on the rock and the man. Two men hand-drilling will therefore do from 1/4 to 2/3 of the same footage of holes that can be done by two men with a heavy machine-drill, and two men hand-drilling will do from 1/5 to 1/2 the footage of two men with two light drills. ”

“ The boom of the drilling rig as it raises and drops the drill provides the necessary impact. With the core method, as its name implies, a hollow boring drill cuts its way aided by steel shot and a flow of water forced through the pipe that rotates the cutting tool.
With either method the results are the same. Sooner or later the drill will reach an underground water course of sufficient size to give an ample flow. As such drilling is done on a charge of three to five dollars a foot, the owner, of course, hopes for sooner. ”

“ When working with rock drills, a shaft can be sunk 10 to 20 feet a month, against 7 to 8 feet by hand, and a level may on the average be driven 45 to 50 feet a month by rock drills against 10 or 12 feet by hand. When, however, a large surface for operating on is exposed, hand-drilling may be profitably employed. This is interesting as illustrating the fact that where labour is cheap machines seldom pay, and this is particularly worth mentioning for the benefit of those who have thought that it would be useful to introduce agricultural machinery into India. ”

“ Machine vs. Hand-Drilling.—The advantages of hand-drilling over machine-drilling lie, first, in the total saving of power, the absence of capital cost, repairs, depreciation, etc., on power, compresser Page 150 and drill plant; second, the time required for setting up machine-drills does not warrant frequent blasts, so that a number of holes on one radius are a necessity, and therefore machine-holes generally cannot be pointed to such advantage as hand-holes. Hand-holes can be set to any angle, and by thus frequent blasting yield greater tonnage per foot of hole. ”

“ Such wells may affect or rob each other, and it is usually best to spread them out on a line across what is known to be the underground flow. Some finely creviced or tight rock formations have a strong head with but little capacity, and wells in such formations, if pumped hard, yield but little additional water. They should be scattered and pumped moderately, maintaining a low and economical lift. In other cases, one well in a group will give as much water as all together, and more territory must be drawn on. ”

“ The deeper holes are made only in surface excavation of rock, the shallower, to a maximum depth of say 12 ft., being suitable for tunnelling and mining operations.
Hand Drilling.—The work is either “single-hand” or “double-hand.” In single-hand drilling, the miner wields the hammer with one hand, and with the other holds the drill or “bit,” rotating it slightly after every blow in order to keep the hole round and prevent the drill from sticking fast; in double-hand work, one man strikes, while the other holds and rotates the drill. ”

“ Orde and his men now returned to the jam where, on the pile-driver, the tugs, and the booms, they set methodically to strengthening the defences as well as they were able.
“She's holding strong and dandy,” said Orde to Tom North, examining critically the clumps of piles. “That channel helps a lot in more ways than one. It takes an awful lot of water out of the river. As long as those fellows keep the logs moving, I really believe we're all right.” ”

“ The large charges in deep holes break the walls very irregularly; misfires cause more delay; timbering is more difficult in the face of heavy blasting charges; and the larger amount of spoil broken at one time delays renewed drilling, and altogether the advantages seem to lie with hand-drilling in shafts of large horizontal section.
The rapid development of special drills for particular conditions has eliminated the advantage of hand-work in many situations during the past ten years, and the invention of the hammer type of drill bids fair to render hand-drilling a thing of the past. ”

“ The pressure of water is always in proportion to its height or head, without reference to the extent of surface. The pressure, then, of the water against the cemented wall, would be equal to the pressure of a full mill-pond against its perpendicular dam of six or eight feet height! No sane man would think of tightening a dam, with seven feet head of water, by plastering a little cement on the down-stream side of it, which might as well be done, as to exclude water from a cellar by the process, and under the conditions, stated. ”

“ The sail, which they are only able to use with a free wind, is square, narrow, and rather high, and is nowadays always made of drilling. Dark blue drilling appeared to be the most popular sort at the time of our visit. ”

“ Power Drilling.—In power drilling the drill is driven by a reciprocating machine which either strikes and turns the drill in the hole, or lifts and turns it as in churn drilling, or the drill may be driven by a rotary machine which is revolved by compressed air, steam, or electricity. ”

“ Sinking down, deeper down, Oh, we're going deeper down Though the shaft is always caving, and the tubes are always jamming, Yet we'll fight our way to water while the stubborn drill is ramming — While the stubborn drill is ramming deeper down. ”

“ The pipe vise belongs on a separate bench, which may be a plank bracketed against the side of the room.
Drill-Press.—The most satisfactory drill-press for use on a farm is the upright drill that bolts to a post. There is usually a self feed which may be regulated according to the work. The heavy flywheel keeps the motion steady, and because there is no bench in the way, wagon tires may be suspended from the drill block, so they will hang free and true for drilling. Often long pieces of straight iron are drilled with holes spaced certain distances apart. ”

“ One would go far to find so splendid a supply as feeds the industries of this place. Here and there wells are sunk in the valleys and water is found at a depth of forty feet more or less, but often drilling goes much deeper without finding any. ”

“ The wells in the Petrolia field have a depth of 480 ft., the contract price, including the cost of 100 ft. of wooden conductor, being 175 dols. (£35) , and the time occupied in drilling being from six to twelve days. Pole tools are used in drilling, the poles being of white ash, 37 ft. in length. The derrick is about 48 ft. in height. An auger some 4 ft. in length, and about a foot in diameter, is used to bore through the earth to the bed rock, the auger being rotated by horse power. ”

“ The water will rise in the bore at a height according to circumstances, if the gravel at each side of the bore rises to higher ground, a jet of water will be forced out, if not so high, the well will only partly fill, and so on. Artesian wells are sunk or bored by means of instruments screwing on to the end of a set of iron rods each screwing into the end of the other as shown in fig. ”

“ The usual method of tightening spaces or cracks between cribs is by throwing in earth or alternate layers of straw, hay, grass, earth, or sacks of clay. A continuous construction, as shown in the illustration, may be employed. The ends of the dam must be carried well into the solid earth to prevent the water from cutting around them. ”

“ Logs jam the upper river, where the booms catch them for the sawmills, and subterranean channels conduct the water in various directions to the mills, and discharge their foaming streams below. There is no romance in the rumble of flour-rollers and the buzz of saws, but they mean a great deal of profitable business. The force exerted by the falls at low water is estimated at one hundred and thirty-five thousand horse-power. ”

“ To discourage the sinking of wells on land immediately adjoining productive territory, it has been usual to drill along the borders of the land as far as practicable, in order to first obtain the oil which might otherwise be raised by others, and on account of the small area often controlled by the operator, the number of wells drilled has frequently been far in excess of the number which might reasonably be sunk Experience has proved that in some of the oil fields of the United States one well to five acres is as close as they should be drilled. ”

“ Drain opened by hand where pipes enter the ground. a to e. Pipes under ground. e to f. Pipes above ground. g. Windlass or capstan, worked by horses. h. Wire rope attached to plow, and wound round the windlass. i. Pulley round which the rope runs to keep the plow in the line of the ditch. DRAINING-PLOWS AND DITCH-DIGGERS. [247]
The man who can invent and construct a machine that shall be capable of cutting four-foot ditches for pipe-drains, with facility, will deserve well of his country.
It is not essential that the drain be cut to its full depth at one operation. ”

“ But forty men, all busily at work, soon had the river full. Orde detailed some six or eight to drop below in order that the river might run clear to the next section, where the next crew would take up the task. These men, quite simply, walked to the edges of the rollway, rolled a log apiece into the water, stepped aboard, leaned against their peavies, and were swept away by the swift current. The logs on which they stood whirled in the eddies, caromed against other timbers, slackened speed, shot away; never did the riders alter their poses of easy equilibrium. ”

“ The whole success of the drill husbandry is owing, in a great measure, to its enabling you to stir up the soil well during the progress of your crop; which stirring up is of no value beyond its effects in more minutely pulverizing the soil, increasing, as far as possible, the size and number of the interstitial canals. ”

“ The perils of "stream-driving" on a bad river have been dwelt upon, I suppose, by every writer who has occupied his pen at all with the life of the lumber-camps. But to the daring backwoodsman there seldom falls a task more hazardous than that of cutting loose a brow of logs when the logs have been piled in the form of what is called a "rough-and-tumble landing." Such a landing is constructed by driving long timbers into the mud at the water's edge, below a steep piece of bank. ”