Exploring EnErgy nEws, August 2016, Page 5

Catch “Remember When” Wednesdays on Exploring Energy, sponsored by Big Chief Plant Services.

CLASSIFIEDSRemembeR WhenA look back at the nation’s oil & gas industry.The nation’s, as well as Oklahoma’s, oil and gas industry is rich in history. As part of a new partnership with the American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS), Exploring Energy will bring you energy stories from the past in each publication. Also catch “Remember When Wednesday” each fourth Wednesday of the month with AOGHS Executive Director Bruce Wells joining the discussion on KECO 96.5’s Exploring Energy show from 8 to 9 a.m. and on 102.3 KWDQ, sponsored by Big Chief Plant Services. For more articles, photos and features, or to support AOGHS, visit www.aoghs.org.

Rock Creek Environmental looking for CDL-A Drivers with Haz-mat and Tankers endorsement please call David 580-323-3200 or 830-480-9944. Class A CDL driver for re-gional/local hauling, ap-ply at C & C Salvage LLC, South Hwy 6, Elk City, OK, or mail resume to C & C Salvage LLC, P.O. Box 1928 Elk City, Ok 73648. Wanted roustabout fore-man and hand, Apply @ Bruce Burdick Welding & Roustabout Service, 604 N Loomis Rd, Weatherford, OK.

Super Heaters, LLC, wa-ter transport division is currently hiring class a cdl drivers with tanker endorsement, experi-ence preferred, competi-tive wages and benefits included, if interested please call 580-225-3196.

Help Wanted

BY BRUCE WELLSAmerican Oil and Gas

Historical Society Director

Oil/Minerals 342 Frac tanks, also pumping units, pipe, and hot oil units, tank batteries, vacuum trailers. Buy/Sell. Call Rick, 316-461-6413 tfc

HARBOR ENERGY Do you have mineral rights

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405-217-2715 Cash Paid for

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Walters Properties, Wayne Walters

580-243-7746, day472-3320, after hours

401 W. 3rd -- Elk City

TexOkLand Co.Mineral Broker

Oil & Gas Leases580-225-5129806-334-0370

The Rock Eater

Tough Times Trucking LLC.

We haul farm tractors,

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Winch truck also available.

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“Fishtail” drill bits became obsolete in 1909 when Howard Hughes Sr. patented the dual-cone roller bit.

By pulverizing hard rock, a bit with two rotating cones brought faster and deeper rotary drilling – transforming the petroleum in-dustry worldwide.

History notes many men who were trying to improve bit tech-nologies at the time, but Hughes and business partner Walter B. Sharp made it happen. Just months before being awarded the patent on August 10, 1909, they established Sharp-Hughes Tool Company in Houston.

After several years of ex-periments, Hughes and Sharp introduced the novel drill bit suited for deep boring through medium and hard rock, accord-ing to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

“Until then, the rudimentary ‘fishtail’ bit limited drillers to reservoirs near the surface,” noted ASME. Traditional rotary bits were also useless for pen-etrating hard rock.

“Instead of scraping the rock, as does the fishtail bit, the Hughes bit, with its two coni-cal cutters, took a different en-gineering approach,” explained ASME in August 2009 - when designating it as an Historic Mechanical Engineering Land-mark.

“By chipping, crushing, and powdering hard rock formations, the Hughes two-cone drill bit could reach vast amounts of oil in reservoirs thousands of feet below the surface,” ASME said.

Biographers note that about the time Sharp and Hughes were developing their bit, Hughes had a chance meeting in Louisiana with another inventor trying to improve drilling technology.

Hughes ran into Granville A. Humason in a Shreveport bar one evening in 1908. Huma-son had tried unsuccessfully to sell his bit design to drillers. He showed Hughes a wooden mod-el made with spools.

Humason, who said his idea came to him one morning when grinding coffee, described meet-ing Hughes during a 1951 inter-view now in the collection of the University of Texas Briscoe Center for American History.

In the center’s oral history re-cording, Humason says Hughes “bought my idea and paid me $150 for the idea, and I stood in the bar with the oil boys, and I spent about $50 in the bar.”

While waiting for approval of the patent in 1909, Hughes and Sharp had a machine shop man-ufacture a prototype bit to test in the field. Their secret drilling ex-periment took place near Hous-ton. In June the partners loaded their newly cast steel bit on a horse-drawn wagon and took it to the Goose Creek oilfield, according to historian Donald Barlett.

After stopping at an oil well that had defied conven-tional drills, the men ordered field hands away and secret-ly brought out the bit and attached it to the rotary rig’s pipe stem. For the next 11 hours, the bit bored through 14 feet of solid rock, “a feat so miraculous for the time that drillers dubbed the mysterious device the “rock eater.”

Production models of the Sharp-Hughes Tool Com-pany coned bit became a crucial (and exclusively pat-ented) tool for drilling deep-

er wells, beginning in Texas and then around the world.

The foundations of the Hughes fortune had been laid, noted Barlett in a 1979 book. “Exactly what role, if any, Humanson’s spools may have played in the final de-sign of the rock bit is impos-sible to determine today.”

When Walter Sharp died in 1912, Hughes bought the rest of the company, changing the name to Hughes Tool Com-pany. Hughes died in 1924 at age 54 of a heart attack in his company’s Houston offices.

With the money earned

from the drill bit patent, 19-year-old Howard Hughes Jr. further expanded the oilfield fortune while mak-ing movies, setting aviation records and helping build much of Las Vegas. Hughes Tool engineers invent the tri-cone bit in 1933.

Drill bits today rely on the design principles intro-duced by the 1909 Hughes patent - one of the greatest inventions of the petroleum industry.

Please give to the Ameri-can Oil & Gas Historical So-ciety. Visit www.aoghs.org.

Sharp-Hughes Tool Company manufactured its new drill bits in Houston. Circa 1915 photo courtesy Houston Public Library.

The rotating cone bits drilled faster and deeper than “fishtail” rotary bits. Photo courtesy U.S. Patent

and Trademark Office.

Revolving cones drilled “by chipping, crushing and powdering hard rock formations.” Photo courtesy

American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

RENTAL & SALES

HEAVY EQUIPMENT MECHANIC

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* Must Have Own Tools* Pay Based on Experience

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Email: tjonesequip@itlnet.net