I'll admit, I know nothing about oil wells, but this is all fascinating stuff, and reminds me of the kind of television documentaries we used to see in the 1960s. It's a view into someone else' world, and the work they do. Thank you for taking the time to make this great and interesting content.
No oil up here in SE Nebraska, but fascinated with your videos. Making a living farming with old wore out iron doesn’t seem all that much different than the headaches you face daily. Thanks for sharing!
Wow, another awesome video, Zach!! Enjoyed seeing you work with the babbitt, very interesting, so neat to see. You are fantastic at wrenching those rods, wow! Your experience in the oil field is very evident. It's so great to see your enthusiasm and enjoyment in what you do. I see pulling and swabbing units all around my neck of the woods, practically every day. I love living in an oil producing area here in SW Indiana and SE Illinois. It is addictive being around this kind of work and getting to observe it first hand. Keep these oil field videos coming, can't get enough of 'em.
I came across one of your videos when I was researching how an oil field pump works. I learned more from your videos then any others. Really amazed by the RV build series.
We call that spelter socket joint..spelter being an ancient term for zinc. Used a bunch offshore. Dipping the frayed end in zinc chloride flux greatly improves the bond with preheating socket and wire before pouring. Sealing with clay works great. Just any mud hole with fine clay works. Hot dipped galvanized wire rope doesn't need fluxing as long as you don't burn the zinc.
You bring back a lot of memories. I grew up in a lease house in the Mexia, Tx oil field. My Daddy was a life long oil field worker and did all the things you are doing. Great videos. Thanks. Chris V.
Thanks for all that you do. Some of us love all the stuff related to oil fields,just seeing and hearing the noises from the oil pumps and seeing them moving is relaxing and you bring it to us while we enjoy our coffee. “Gracias amigo”🙏🏻Stay safe .
In the steel industry overhead crane service, we did the same procedure on the drum ends of the cable deadends. The only difference was we put flux on the stranded end of the cable after heating and cleaning it and packed conduit duct seal in the cable thimble gap. I never saw one ever pullout.
Brings back memories for me, too. When I was a teenager (many moons ago), my Grandfather had a small lease with several shallow (for oil wells) "stripper" wells in Pleasants County WV. I cannot remember their depths. They were in a formation called the Cow Run Sand. My job when he was pulling a well was tailing the rods. Great fun! LOL
Awesome video! Love watching the smaller little rod service rigs workover the little wells like these and how you can just get after her with no safety bullshit and dramas.
I wish there was oil drilling close to home here. Id love to do what you do everyday. Its honest work and independent. We seem to value depending on others in our society far too much.
@@edc1569 Solar is retarded and also worse for the environment in the long run that fossil fuels. Now if I could run a nuclear plant in my backyard I would.
There are several wells in my area and in pastures I've rented, the process has always intrigued me, thanks for explaining everything, I always thought I'd like to pump wells if I didn't farm and run cattle.
Zach, just found your channel. I drive a lot through IL on I-70 and see the small wells pumping. Read a little and it's fascinating. Then I discover your channel. You could not be more clear and detailed. Well done Sir.
I grew up and kermit Texas and I truly loved all feel my dad had Clary well servicing they’re in Kermit. One of the proudest things I can say that was in my life was my dad‘s business. I was very much that I could have gotten seven or Tim wells like you’re showing their and had myself a good old pole unit lot do you want do you have really would’ve been a good Life
I see you found your gloves, another good video. Thanks. I just watched a video from Africa where they were drilling well and they didn’t even wear shoes.
Wish we had you around when we lost an extremely expensive geophys probe down a test-shaft. BTW, the phrase Couldn't give a dam referred to the tinkers who would patch holey cooking-pots with molten tin. They chewed an old piece of bread and used that to make a dam around the hole.
I do bridle replacements on location with the cable bells you use on a bed truck tail chain. If you got the carrier bar free off the jack, then some machine shops will babbitt them. Oil companies here in Alberta are extremely concerned with downtime, so we're typically repairing everything on site, or swapping parts if it is more economical.
What gets me is that all these little parts and techniques were developed over a century or more of doing this. And so much of it is in the heads of guys like Zach and his cohorts in this video. I'll think of you guys next time I gas up.
The only thing that I learned different from how you poured your rope socket is I was taught to tap it when you pour your babit it helps spread it out a bit better. And yes either burn the cosmoline off or take brake clean to it and clean it that way, if not the babit won't "stick" to the line. At least that's how always done drill lines and haven't had any pull out yet. Edit* the cheater pipe in the wheel to "lockout" the pumping unit made me laugh
Lol, babbit. I saw a bar of that stuff at Eagle Supply "If it's difficult, try us!" oilfield supply. I was thinking people were still using babbit bearings in the oil field, did not know it was used up front, near the horses head.
A lot of old mining equipment uses babbit bearings, generally cast in place. For that matter, modern engines still use babbit on the crank, cam, and rod bearings.
I was a little surprised when he beautified the cable protruding from the Babbitt. Just seemed like an extra step he usually doesn’t do. Then I realized he had a couple of guys that were gonna lay eyes on his work…😂
First paying oilpatch job I had was tailing rods on a single pole. I was fifteen years old. A lot of parafin in those old wells, pretty nasty job. Hit 'em with the rod wrenches, globs of that crap falling everywhere. Scrape it off my clothes with my knife and throw them in a bucket of diesel. Decided roughnecking was marginally cleaner and definitely paid better lol. First drilling rig I worked on was made from the remnants of a twin pole cable tool. Six cylinder Waukesha on propane, floor was about 6ft high. Drill about 2300ft max. Had a rotary table but no chain, spun it up with chain tongs going in the hole. Latches were half shot on the big tongs, had to watch yourself with those. They'd sometimes pop open and could knock you winding. It was a real peach lol. In truth the old rig worked surprisingly well, punched a pretty straight hole.
Love the content i run a cooper single pole service rig i can relate to pouring babbit on rope sockets and sticking myself with wires lol, also don't pour it in the rain learned the hard way years ago
It would kinda be like headed straight down towards 6....but it got fubard some where between 4 an 5:45 ....makes sense why the rods are bow legged...👍👍👍👍
Great video Zach. Rotation of the tubing will lengthen the time before a rod cut, but will that risk a tubing separation? 1550 feet of tubing isn't that heavy, but I didn't hear you say how deep the rod cut was happening, 1000'? I'm certain you have already thought about this. Look forward to seeing the next video. Keep them going.
Thanks. I don't really expect for it to be a problem. The tubing leaks are always in the last 10-12 joints. I suspect there might me several different problem spots form 1000' and down.
I'm pretty sure you make the right decision with this one. Rod guides/Wear bars/scrapers do break off occasionally and cause pump problems and find there way into places that they don't belong. But pulling the tubing once to replace worn sections is cheaper than pulling the pump four times to clean garbage out of it.
hes getting 10% oil 90% water, its pretty much worthless (still has some value though) from what i seen hes got a 3 tank setup with 350bbl each so in a month he'll produce about 200bbls ? maybe 200x 98$ barely covers the cost of running em. dunno who buys it i just know they come in a vaccuum truck and suck that shit up every so often (very vague since i dont know exactly what this guy is running )
That hammer union on the tubing is genius haha never have thought of that. How’s that working for you? Also if you ever need to track down old docs and wells files give me a holler. Great stuff as always Zach!
loving watching these oil well vids. Thanks :-) if i had a gripe, it would be the end-cards cut right over everything we were supposed to see. add 20 seconds of blank vid so the end cards dont overlay the video. :)
That was great. Mittens? I remember on another video you talked about rotating to help eliminate wear. Homemade Babbitt cooker. No sign of the Pete in the background. What are we going to do tomorrow? See ya soon. Kc
I learned a trick pouring babbit,, instead of tying wet rope around the bottom of the rope socket, squeeze in playdough around the bottom of socket, when you pour the babbit it stays in the rope socket with no dangerous popping an splatter..
I recall running pipe (as a floorman) on a double stand well drilling for gas in Alberta. Great fun. Not! Big heavy pipe and bits........ Hope your well produces for another 100 years!
For those interested in how older oil fields are kept producing, you do very good videos. My father was foreman on a what he called a pulling unit(workover rig) for many decades. He mentioned pulling the tubing and rods. I had not known why these had problems, but this video offered a good explanation. The field he worked in dates from around 1930. He also mentioned casing issues and fishing for parted rods. I became interested in electronics, so went a different way. One question: Do you have any underground or "Reda" pumps in your leases? The oil well that gives me a small royalty check is pumped using one of these.
@@TheZachLife The the one I get my check from makes a little more than 5 barrels per day. About 15 years ago, there was another well active with it and the two together made 15 barrels per day.
Zach - in some of your other videos you talk about what happens when you get some junk or trash or schmutz in your wells. Can you describe or go over that well cleaning / clearing process in detail? How to ‘recover’ a well? The video I’m thinking of had you spending a bunch of money in hydrochloric acid and like 3 or 4 pumps and a whole lot of service rig time.
Note to noobs! When Zach preheats that cable he's also getting rid of any MOISTURE. Never, ever pour molten metal on anything wet because it will flash boil any water into steam and you probably do not want to wear molten metal. (Eye protection is a rather good idea depending on how many eyeballs you have to spare.)
I love the channel. Not being a namby-pamby, but get yourself a face shield to to that stuff (especially if you are using HCL on on a well. I lost an eye and partial sight in the other doing industrial type work. You only have one set of eyes, mine were 20/10 before the accident, now I cannot see crap if I saw it. Take care of those peepers…no doctor can give you another set, and (from experience) you do not want the doctors to try. I live in daily pain from a screwy accident from something I had done 1,000 times without incident.
Hi Zack My first time to watch your videos and Ive 3 watch so far. Que: Why is it worth maintaining a well that only pumps 1 or 2 barrels a day and it's not even the kind of oil that pays the top price?
Another informative, well explained video Zach! Your hammer union under the pumping tee is a good idea. About how long does it take for you to cut a hole in your tubing before you started rotating the entire string? In theory this method should buy you close to 3 or 4 times the production time before having to call the pulling unit again
Just a thought about turning the tubing - you would be better off spinning it more if possible. If the well has a good amount of spiral to it, you could get a full rotation of tubing at surface before it moves at all at 1000-1500' tvd. There's a lot of trapped Torque in there. My experience is with drill pipe but the physics should be close to the same. We can put 3 full rotations into 5" drill pipe before there is any change in toolfaces at 9500'. Glad I found your channel. I've been working directional for 12ish years now but have always been curious about completion and production side.
But the bottom of the string isn’t stuck/doesnt have weight on it, it’s just hanging from the wellhead slips, so there shouldn’t be anything down there holding the pipe to allow it to torque.
I've heard you can use plumbers putty for babbitt damning material. It's reusable too. Thanks for sharing these videos, very interesting! Do you have any videos on your horizontal mill? Looks like a converted line shaft machine.
Okay I'm gonna say it- The off side of the rig [away from the operator] is the only place that we ever laid down rods. we always racked Tubing on the operator's side. I don't know.. everybody does things a little different. Even during the '80's $8 Bbl oil, when my dad would often run a rig by himself, he had slide troughs for single rods and always racked them on that side. If not and you end up having to pull tubing, You're gonna be laying pipe down over your power tongs and stiff arm and fighting the sand line? Oh snap!Y'all must not be using tongs. Are you using Crummies and breaking tubing out with a rope and cat head? Now that I wanna see!
Southern Illinois...I remember seeing oil wells everywhere...more like stripper wells...not pumping much oil. Maybe fracking idea might work tho these wells have been really worked over for the past 80 or so years.
@@TheZachLife back in the day …. (Mid 70s) I worked for Dowell on cement and later on stimulation crews. I always though the frac/stimulation work was fascinating. I remember working on few wells in East Texas, Miss and Alabama that had work over rigs on them. I believe we were doing stimulation work to clear the crud in the production zone. Always very interesting what was going on at the bottom!
So what I see the rigging guys to for ferule ends is just stuff a couple small nails in the end of the rope, usually only one for a swaged block, but I could see one in each strand for a babbit end. be a little quicker maybe?
If the cable size & hole its in are closer in size, that'd work great. This is just a bigger version of motorcycle cables I did as a kid in the 60's. Also, a little soldering flux to make sure it really sticks? Also, also, heating red hot might lose the cables temper/hardening?
well, if the taper and the cable are correct for each other, there shouldn't be a whole lot of room, a couple of finishing nails would swell the end enough that it would be rather difficult to pull out on its own, let alone after being filled with Babbitt, babbit also never seems to need any flux, its not really a lead or copper based alloy. it sorta does its thing regardless.
