Cable Tool Drilling - Dressing Bits Part 1

This is our forge for dressing bits. It is fueled by diesel fuel from a gravity fed tank. The blower is a shop-vac. I'm using wood and diesel fuel to start the fire, before placing a 10" bit in the forge. The end of the bit is then covered with fire brick and cooked for two hours on the first heat. Once the forge is hot, the bits can be heated from cold to white hot in less in an hour for 8 and 10", 45 minutes for 7 and 6", and a half hour or less for 5". We have a jib crane with a chain hoist for moving the bits. The bits have to be trimmed with a torch before they are dressed. In the oil field, every spudder had a forge for dressing bits on the rig floor. The bits were dressed as they wore out. You may get only fifteen feet in abrasive materials like sand, or up to forty feet or more in soft shales and clay before a bit has to be forged. Fewer and fewer spudders are used for oil field work. We drill water wells, so this is set up outside our shop. We dress our entire stock of bits (40+) and this lasts us for several years. Instead of dressing them when they wear down, we use borium rod applied with a torch. This extends bit life to hundreds of feet before needing forged again, and you don't have to change a bit every time it wears down.