Monday, July 26, 2010   Today's picture was taken in 1944, and
shows roughnecks "making a connection" on a rotary drilling rig
in Southwest Oklahoma. Notice that two of the roughnecks are not
wearing hard hats. The pipe coming out the rig floor is the
drill stem. Each stem is about 30 feet long. So, after drilling
each 30 feet, they have to lift the entire drill string, and put
another section of pipe on. The large implements connected to
the drill stem are the tongs. They are like enormous pipe
wrenches. The end of the tongs are connected by chains to a
motor. The "driller" operates the motor to pull the chains. The
roughnecks keep the tongs on the drill stem. The driller and
roughneck work the tongs together to either loosen or tighten
the drill stem. It takes about 30 minutes to drill 30 feet, and
so this operation has to be done a couple times an hour. When
making a connection, there are lots of heavy objects moving
around under a lot of force, and the roughnecks are right in the
middle of it. As you can