Since the drilling engine had been stripped, Jim purchased a 1950-era Oliver tractor engine that fit his specifications, but, like everything else on the rig, the engine needed some machine work. Jensen Ford Tractor in Bartlesville was willing to take on the project, along with an unusual clutch problem. Jim also converted the engine to handle propane or natural gas.
Jim built a drilling rig floor from an old redwood oil tank that the Coldrens had owned. Many of the drilling tools (i.e., bits, drill stem, rope socket) were tools his father had used on his K-type rig. He traded a drilling bit for a swivel rope socket. Fred Miller, a well puller from Nowata, gave him some babbit for the stinger in the rope socket, and provided a sinker bar and 12-inch bit. The circle-track and jack, used to tighten the rope socket onto the drill stem and the drill stem onto the bit, Jim purchased from the estate of Madison Campbell, a driller he'd known as a child. In Bartlesville, Mark and Robert Kane gave him the doghouse that had belonged to the Coldrens. (This is not a home for Fido: In drilling parlance, a doghouse is a toolhouse where the driller keeps his tools - shop hammers, screw drivers, grease gun, etc. Most doghouses also had some type of heat source so the driller could get in out of the weather. The driller also keeps a log of the well or a tally board, noting formations and their depths.).
The dump box for the drilling cuttings was made from an old boiler tube. The forge and anvil, used to sharpen the bits, were donated by his father. The guy lines to hold the mast firmly in place were fabricated from excess sand line off the rig. Jim figured that the sand line and the drill lines had to be at least 30 years old, but unlike the rest of the rig, they had been carefully preserved: They were well-oiled, and wrapped in sheets of barn tin.
Finally, in 1999, a few days before Thanksgiving, Jim tested the rig by drilling a water well for Fred W. Thompson on his Nowata farm. On that particular day, everyone on the rig floor held their breath. Any rig is a dangerous place, and one that has not run in more than 30 years is even more so. The engine started. The walking beam raised and lowered. The rope socket swiveled the stem as the bit pounded into the earth. The spudding guide kept the drill stem from swaying, and the crown sheave assembly held together. The old rig was again alive and drilling! In the end, the project had come to mean more than just a restoration of vintage equipment.
"The rig represents not only the glory days of the cable tool rig and the old drillers who risked their lives to drill for Oklahoma's black gold," Jim said, "but the spirit of cooperation that is still alive in the oilfields of eastern Oklahoma."
Linda K. Randolph has been a teacher for 29 years. Although she has extensive experience as a tool pusher on a K-type rig, she currently spends her summer holiday from the classroom as a park ranger for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Oklahoma.