11. Water Drilling Rig

This Jumbo-J model Forth Worth spudder was a heavy duty rig of the early 1940's. and has a wooden frame that was braced by steel rods. The mast, dual walking beam, pitman, post, etc., were also made of wood.

  It had a drilling depth capacity of 6000 feet.  These rigs were developed for heavy use to meet oil demands in WW II.  The power plant was either a ground-mounted steam engine or a skid or trailer-mounted internal combustion engine.

Cable tool drilling machines are commonly called spudders, although that term is somewhat misleading unless you have some understanding of the machine’s early use. That name developed in the early days when in order to start a well, a guide pipe was set in the ground to keep the drill bit vertically oriented at the beginning of the drilling process. In the very earliest times putting that pipe in place was accomplished by digging a cellar and setting the guide pipe in by hand. Later that labor-intensive process was abandoned in favor of using the drilling machine itself to actually pound the guide pipe into the ground. The bit used to drive that guide pipe was a blunt-ended drilling device called a spud bit. Because of that process, those drilling machines came to be called “spudders”