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Gold/Mining/Energy : Precious and Base Metal Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hank2010 who wrote (25960)	12/25/2003 12:09:28 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39344

If you want good drill steel, call me. The best thing to do is get Monarch 1058 1 5/8 hex and cut some NRT on the ends and/or taper the ends for single steel use. Drill it for water hole and then harden to 54-58 Rockwell in a salt bath or nitride. Sounds expensive but you only have to use one steel to drill. You don't have to change steel to avoid breakage. Drill all day with one steel. I kid you not. Cannot do that with domestic steels. That is the formula for Ajax drill steel from Britain which is basically an open trade secret. The real reason Fagersta rules the roost is Noranda was the number one user of drill steel in Canada and it owned Fagersta. Therefore all Noranda operations bought Fagersta steel, and it had an enormouse cost advantage. Fagersta is inferior steel and it breaks when used continuously, not being made for shock loading well. It is not recommended to use it on a Jackleg with a helper holding the steel for starting. It could kill. Not so Ajax stuff which will drill all day on the one steel. I did some experiments with making drill steel at mines, and duplicated the Ajax durability as outlined above. Use and enjoy. I worked for a division of Noranda which used Fagersta steel. Gold mines still use compressed air a lot. Hydraulics of course are more cost effective in some instances of bulk mining and drifting. A lot of raising still uses air. Where there has been a real revolution in drilling is in diamond bit technology with the Russian industrial diamond bits. Russian diamonds last a lot longer in matrix bit. Bit life is an order of magnitude longer than it used to be in the 60's and 70's. EC<:-}