My ears sound like...burning...

Adaptation of a Ralph Wiggum quote. Simpsons rule. Anyway, I'm finally back in the office...almost for good. The tour of the Stabeco plant was pretty sweet today. They make square motors for our drill strings. For the laid person, they make a really stiff pipe that we ram in holes in search of treasure. Capiche? They took us out for lunch after too. Yeah it's free and all but I'm starting to see the value in attending these functions. In the last week I've increased my knowledge of the mechanical side of drilling a hole about 50 times. I know cementing, coiled tubing, blow out prevention, fishing, and mud motors. I kind of knew how all these worked before but it's different now. I can participate in decisions. Cool.

Ready for your lesson? I took some sweet pictures yesterday at the fishing demo in Blackie, Alberta. Fishing tools often use explosives to separate pipe and casing. They also had some charges used in mining.



The Blast Room just East of Blackie, Alberta

This is where most of the tests take place. This huge metal room is buried underground, the metal is 1" thick. You feel like you're walking into a tomb.



Perforating guns are used to blow holes in casing so that gas from the ground can flow into your well and out the top. To see how powerful these charges are they piled up stacks of 1" thick aluminum and steel squares, blew the charge, and counted how many pieces the hole made it through.



I managed to get one of the aluminum pieces near the top of the explosion. They also set one of these charges on a telephone book to demonstrate the compression effect of the blast.





At the top you can see the beginning of the hole, it's still kind of small. In the second picture Andrew is holding up the book so you can see the back end where the compression wave has completely ripped the book apart. This wasn't a very big charge either.



The also shot one of these charges (only 6 grams) through the side of a drill collar. That cylinder with the wires going into it hold the charge and it set in the super thick steel drill collar. Pull the trigger and...



It's hard to see but that's a small 1/8" hole through the drill collar and it goes all the way through. I guess you have to see it to really appreciate this one but I couldn't believe that small charge blew all the way through with such a perfect hole. Guess these guys aren't stupid pyros.





They also taped some of their primer cord to a plate of aluminum and blew it up. The plate flew about 50 feet in the air before sailing back down. It was pretty mangled and you could see places where the pattern of the nylon thread that wrapped around the primer cord was indented into the aluminum. Guess these guys are stupid pyros.

Just to make sure we realized the danger of all of this they inserted a 1/2 gram detonation charge into a piece of steak (from our earlier barbecue) to show what happens when one of these goes in your hand.



You don't have to tell me twice. That's STEAK?? So it was a pretty awesome afternoon. They have enough explosives on this site to level the whole city of Calgary. Part of me was not sad at all that I had to drive away. I got pretty burned out there too. A nice farmer's tan but not as bad as Kendra, one of the other students. She's a red head...don't need to say more.

Okay, work time. I have so much to catch up on after being gone for so long. I have some pictures from Victor's wedding to put up but I'll do that at a later time. I think this can keep you satisfied for now. Peace.