The Kingdom of the Emerald Hills

This is kind of tertiary to amtgard since it's technically a mining project, however I'm using some metalworking techniques so I figured I'd write about it here since you guys frequently work metal for the armor. I should note I've bashed metal armor in the past, however after working with metal a bit I can say it's pretty strong stuff compared to most other common materials, and working it imparts quite a bit of impressive experiences into the smith.

I intend to drill a very deep hole, as deep as possible, on my limited budget, and hopefully this time without standing directly under multiple tons of earth.

To this effect I plan on purchasing some 3-foot long 1/2" diameter rebar metal rods, or possibly some other metal rod. I can then cut a drill bit and grooves into each rebar rod with my small metal electric cutting wheel, a 4.5 inch diameter angle grinder with a very thin (around .06 inches thick, or around 12 gauge) grinding wheel attached to grind/cut the patterns into the rebar, which I will clamp to some cinderblocks, or alternatively just crush between two cinderblocks to hold it in place good enough.

After cutting the rebar into a drill shape, I will spin the rebar into the dirt in the backyard, drilling a .5 inch hole in the ground. The first few feet should be pretty easy, so I can spin the rebar by hand, and when it sinks pretty low I can use my torch to weld another pre-cut rebar piece to the old one to form a longer piece of rebar. Hopefully my welds will not fail while the rebar is in the hole!

I'm still pretty novice with the torch, although I've been watching videos on youtube about oxy-acetylene welding as well as the less common oxy-mapp welding, which is the one I'm doing. I'm having wind problems so I plan on digging out an approximately 3 foot deep hole that is about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide as a wind shelter to torch in, and also for blast and projectile containment. I will start drilling at the base of this hole, and the welding will take place in the hole with my $70 oxy-mapp torch, and some flux and fill rods.

As the rebar gets longer it may be necessary to attach a lever/bar clamp to it to help spin it harder, or alternatively try and rig up some sort of electric or other motor to spin the rod much harder and faster, such as a ~1500w old vaccume motor from a yard sale or something. I could attach the motor to the top rebar via welding or even epoxying a gear to the motor, then looping a rigid or metal belt/wire/gearing doohickey over the motor gear and around the top piece of rebar, possibly with some sort of clamping or attaching system.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them. I assume this system will allow me to drill core samples at potential depths of wildly guessing 150 feet, over 10x deeper than my previous attempt, with very little mess or hazard, and not much noise either except possibly the aforementioned motor, and the torch makes a bit of noise but not much. Also if I wanted to make a thicker/deeper hole, I could potentially use this technique with larger cylinders/tubes instead of rods.

Just curious here, but, why?

I can picture what you're trying to do and I am very curious to see how it comes out or if I can provide any help. Don't know that I'll be able to but I do have experience with welding, mining*, and torch work.

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"Bottom line... you're just another example of why the gene pool should have lifeguards."

I think this is a fantastic idea and you should definitely keep it up.

What happens if you hit a rock, though? You may need a bigger motor to enable you to drill through a rock.

Yeah, rocks are pretty much guaranteed. I was thinking I could just hit the back of the rebar with a sledge, or just try and spin through the rock, but yeah hand spinning through a rock probably wouldn't be very efficient. There's small rocks near the 10 foot mark, lots of them, I should be able to punch through those pretty easy, but the deeper rocks appear to get much larger...I might be able to sledge through them, especially since the load won't be right on the welds and will be in the "strong" vertical "stab" direction, although yeah getting through the rocks is probably going to be a serious issue. Some random impractical solutions include extracting the drill bit and pressing explosives down into the hole with a long fuse, or alternatively firing a gun at the rock. At more than 30 feet the gun probably wouldn't work...not sure where to get some TNT, but I bet that's a great use for it, I could also potentially improvise some explosives out of gunpowder or gasoline...although I can probably just hammer the spike through most rocks with a sledge, since the drill shaft should be reasonably heavy and aligned...unless it's a really big, hard rock...I'll probably be drilling along, and it'll randomly seize and get stuck and maybe shear a few times, and figuring out how to drill it deeper is probably pretty tricky, yet may yield good insight into surprisingly random topics.

welds are gonna be a problem when you start sledging...as will bending

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Duke, Squire Docsi HardAnvil
aka the Mad Dwarf
GMR of Dreadmoor
Squire to Sir Logan T. Black
Clan Chieftain of the Turtle Clan
Ship's Surgeon, HMS "Turtle's Revenge"
Gaslight Sky Pirate

"Dwarves and mountains have one thing in common: It takes an almighty hammer and a tremendous amount of persistence to overcome them."

I'm hoping the earth/dirt will keep the rebar from bending, since it will be 'channeling' it in hopefully a vertical tube, which should be the path of least resistance on average for a spinning rod. Note that I will need to displace and lift the dirt from the hole, and not just hammer it in, because hammering in without removing dirt will compress the dirt around the drill shaft, wedging it in and making it impossible to remove or to push very deep. Removing the dirt should make a friction-free hole, as will wiggling the rod or bending it from the top. I should also note that if the shaft is vertically aligned and the hole is reasonably tight, the welds will take around zero force when the back end is struck with a sledge. This is easy to conceptualize if you think of the shaft as a series of 3 foot pieces that are not welded, but are stacked vertically in solid clay and higher-than-topsoil density earth matter. If you hit the back of the stack, they will all stay in place and move forward, even with no welds. Note that the welds are required for lifting and spinning, and also that welds can theoretically be as strong as the metal material, assuming a halfway decent welder. The technique is to cut an angle in one of the rebar pieces to make a gap, so that the weld and flame can make contact with all of both surfaces, then the welder fills in the gap with metal from a "fill rod", which is a piece of around 12 gauge wire covered with flux. This can potentially result in a full strength weld. I probably won't manage that, and will probably overbore the hole so I can get past any pieces that detach, and maybe even extract them, although that might be tricky.

I thought of another drill design, with a metal tube instead of rebar. Just weld the tubes together, and then have a pyramid/cone/triangle shaped end piece with some holes cut in it, like a kitchen grater. Holes with little blades that push the dirt into the triangle when the entire shaft is spun, then the force of the spinning pushes the dirt up through the center shaft. This design might have some friction issues, so maybe it would work better if the shaft was flooded with water or lubricant.

Another idea involves making/buying a drill tip, maybe 2" in diameter, and then welding uncut rebar to the back in series and then spinning it into the hole by hand, spinning it past some dirt, then lifting the whole mechanism back up vertically along with another 1-2 feet of dirt. If it gets heavy I could use a pulley mechanism, or alternatively I've been thinking of tunneling straight down with a hole maybe 1.5-2 feet in diameter, lining the walls with quick-dry cement and torching that with the propane torch to quick dry it super fast (before the water from the outside floods it, I think the torch can win that and dry the cement), then I hammer some rebar into the cement/clay/dirt walls and bend it around to make a ladder. If I need some workspace I could potentially hollow out a sphere or other shape horizontally from the vertical primary shaft.

Even doing a straight-line dig will, possibly, result in a bent tube. The rebar is a good idea as you retain rigidity but you're still only dealing with a core sample 1/2" wide.

I've been trying to think of a hollow "drill" material that would allow you to put as much force in the rotational sense as well as allowing immense vertical force. This would give you little problem with actual sampling but would allow you to get past the, previously mentioned, rocks.

You're assuming a depth of 150'. You'll need to find another way to get past rocks at that depth as just the strength from your arms won't be enough to carry past the friction of the earth around the "drill". You could use a modified counter weight system, like a guillotine, only with a blunt edge to drive the "drill" past any obstructions.

These are the ideas I've come up with thus far. If I am confused on how you're obtaining core samples with 1/2" rebar; please let me know.

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"Bottom line... you're just another example of why the gene pool should have lifeguards."

are we really feeding PAG ideas now?

i'll assume that's like asking if you're feeding ME ideas? O.o?

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"Bottom line... you're just another example of why the gene pool should have lifeguards."

Just a random side note on chainmaile making, I notice that the weakest part of the "standard" amtgard chain mail is the joints were the bent wire rings meet. Riveting or welding these joints probably adds about 400% work to the project, so I was thinking of solutions to making woven chain armor more durable, especially for rolling and falling. The easiest solution I thought of was using a glue/putty like lock-tite or even caulk or epoxy, some sort of gap-filling metal-bonding high strength glue, which could be applied to each link as the armor is woven. Using caulk or lock-tite, I'd squirt out a little pile near the work area, and as I closed each link with the double pliers I'd sculpt-on a little putty/locktite to each link, resulting in a very durable shirt when dry and maybe 30% more work? Other options include using more expensive metals with higher rigidity and tensile strength, reducing the diameter of the rings, increasing the diameter of the wire, and minimizing total number of bends and distance of bends, especially on the more impure metals. Another option might be to make the small 'sheets' of chain like normal, then put the sheet (about 3"x2" of linked links) in a forge of some sort, heat the entire thing, then push the links together. This could also be done with a oxy-fuel torch potentially, although welding each link with a small torch flame might double or triple the time required....although if you were good at torching, it might only add 50%?

I should note that if you use the lock-tite method, your armor with have a bunch of little white spots on each link. It may be advisable to coat the metal with something, possibly exterior house paint or whatever, maybe a nice high-gloss metallic paint or you could just dunk the whole suit in a vat of fresh blood for a medieval battle look. I think fresh blood stains metal pretty good?