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Chapter 6

The Langham, Saskatchewan Adventure

The standard cable tool rig was invented at least 2,000 years ago, by the Chinese. They used it for drilling for salt water, to be evaporated to supply table salt. The chief changes made in the ancient contraption by the latter-day American drillers, was replacing the wooden tripod with a wooden derrick 40 feet high, (the height of the derrick was later doubled so that two lengths of 30-foot pipe could be handled at a time instead of one, and coolie labour was replaced by steam, (although early American and Canadian drillers for many years utilized manpower to “kick down” wells with spring pole tool outfits).

The cable tool outfit consisted of a derrick from which a long, chiselnosed bit was suspended on a manilla rope line. The bit was a long heavy bar with its lower end dressed to a cutting edge. This was used to pound out a hole, as its weight broke or cut the stone where it struck. At each blow the bit was turned a little, making a round hole whose diameter is just the width of the cutting edge. It differed from hand drilling in a quarry, in that the drilling bar was not struck by any kind of a hammer. The drill, suspended from the end of the rope, was lifted for each stroke. The process was one of drilling, not one of boring, as it was sometimes called.

Steam power was used to raise the bit. After the drill had been working a while, the chips of rocks or drilling began to fill the hole and break the blow upon the solid rock. At intervals the driller was forced to pull his bit to clean the hole.

In some cases a sand trap could be used to clean out the rock and earth. However, the usual process was to pour in water and lift the fluid mud out with a long narrow baler with a valve at the lower end. These operations are alternated, first, drilling ahead five feet, then cleaning out the fine mud, drilling again and so on day and night till the desired depth has been reached. In the early days, each five feet of drilling was called a “screw.”

Attached to the top of the bit were several kinds of weights and jars. The whole was called a “string of tools.” Some of the strings later on were 60 feet long, as different attachments were added.

When the bit became dull, it was removed and another put in its place. The dull bit was heated red hot, the point reshaped with a 10-pound sledge and finally tempered by a tool dresser.

The cable rig has largely been superseded by the faster, bigger, more expensive rotary drill rigs.

Using rotary drills a well is bored into the earth by rotating a sharp hollow circular bit fastened to a string of connected drill pipe, which is revolved by a rotary table in the derrick floor. The draw works turns the table by a chain drive and can rotate more than 300 tons of drilling pipe, at the rate of up to 200 revolutions a minute.

The long string of drill pipe is hollow through its entire length, to permit the pumping through of chemically treated “mud,” to flush out the cuttings of rock, lubricate the bit and contain the oil, gas and water pressures that are encountered. In a continous circuit from the mud tanks to the slush pumps to the fleixible hose, which introduces the mud into the pipe, the mud is pumped under high pressure through the bit, up through the space between the outside of the drill pipe and the wall of the hole and back to the tanks.

To facilitate coupling and uncoupling, since the drill string must be pulled out of the well many times to change bits or to insert a tubular lining of steel casing, the pipe is threaded together, usually in 30-foot lengths, which are added singly as the well deepens. The drill pipe is pulled out in sections and a section may range from one length to five lengths. It is the length of sections, by which pipe will be pulled out, that determines the height of the derrick. The tallest derricks are more than 200 feet high, as tall as a 15-storey building.

The drilling pipe actually “hangs” from the top of the derrick. The nerve centre of the rig is the draw works. This is essentially a powerful winch, with a huge drum on which the hoisting cable is spooled. From it the cable is strung through the sheaves of a crown block, at the top of the derrick and the suspended travelling block.

In the biggest derricks, the travelling blocks weigh seven tons, the hook four tons and the derrick’s frame of prefabricated steel 40 tons. The derrick is built strong enough so it will hoist and control 40 tons.

An explanation about one of the dangers of gas drilling, especially in Alberta, from Tiny Phillips’ scribbler:

“In the early days, the drillers often had inadequate tools to cope with high gas pressures. Control was necessary to prevent fires.

“When I would shut a gate on a well and see the pressure run up to 3,000 pounds per square inch — a pressure so high I couldn’t open it by hand — I was about ready to run.

“At times the expansion pressure on the pipes would be so great that within the space of a minute they would become coated with ice.”

When Tiny and Frosty left for Langham, Tiny’s scribbler showed: “I had never heard of Saskatchewan and Alberta before — until Coste showed us the location on a map. He made an agreement to buy our drill rig and pay our expenses, from the time we left Findlay until we returned. The ironic part of this deal is we never returned to Findlay permanently.

“We took our wives but the only place for them in this small Prairie town, was a big boarding house which provided overnight accommodation for cow punchers and travellers. When the weather was still warm, they could live in a tent in the field but when it got cold, they had to move back to Langham.

“This big-sky country and its possibilities intrigued us. The people did, too. The most unique we ran into were the Doukhobors who were brought in from Russia by Interior Minister Clifford Sifton to colonize the West.

“But they would take off on religious pilgrimages, leaving their livestock to run loose. The radical Sons of Freedom sect were always protesting something or other. And the way they attracted attention to the cause, was to strip naked and terrorize people by setting fire to their homes.

“One husky Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant told me, one has never done a real day’s work until he has tried to wrestle a naked 300-pound Doukhobor woman onto a CPR train to send the protesters home.”

Tiny and Frosty worked on the well until the summer of 1906. Delays had been experienced in rail delivery of pipe. But when they reached the 1,358-foot depth and hadn’t brought in oil, Coste closed down the job.