A few years back I bought this tool at an auction. Why, I don’t know, ask anyone else who has bought something at an auction.
So today I dragged it out of the shed hoping to find out what exactly the thing is if anyone might know.
It has one sliding tab button that goes forward for one speed and slides back the opposite direction for a reverse. The drill is really slow. I cannot tell the revolutions per minute as I didn’t plug it in today but it is exceptional slow as I’m guessing from memory something like 60 rev a minute or that kind of neighborhood.
Anyone ever see something like this. The data plate says ‘Little Giant’ and what appears to say ‘coal driver’.
A mining tool with a 20 foot electric cord?
Replies
As we say in the big city, "That and a token will get you on the subway" :-)
Why, it's an eargenpoppenrectalprobum!
" If you kill a man, it is a tragedy. If you kill a million, it is a statistic." - Josepf Stalin, attributed.
My guess is that it was used to drive something like a large valve or jackscrew.
I am assuming that the D handle on the end rotates and can be used to manually turn the shaft and thus could be use to align it with the fitting that it connects to.
Otherwise I would say some kind of mixer or borer.
So rez, whadja pay for that beauty?
When it breaks your arm it'll be slow. You'll be able to watch it hang up and then spin slowllly around and whack you one.
Joe H
Put it on E-Bay some one will buy it, but before that drive 500 miles to the antiques road show, if that does not work I am sure Fear Factor could use it because it would scare me to plug it in.
Once watched a contractor drive in the screw anchors, about 6" diameter and 4' long, to hold down a mobile home with something that looked something like that. He had a long pipe, it had to be at least 6' long, attached to one handle and he rested that on the side of the house to counter the torque. At about one rotation per second he screwed them in like giant deck screws.
A helper gave it a try and put the long handle on the wrong side. When he turned the machine on it swung around and leveled him. The helper getting decked didn't upset the boss but the gouge it tore in the side of the trailer did. Once the helper awoke and got vertical they took turns cussing.
I wonder if it is for driving the rock bolts that are used to hold the walls and roof in place in mines; typically a hole in drilled, and then a long (5 ft; 10 ft) bolt is driven in to hold timbers or mesh.
Just a guess, but with the name, could be. Although, if it was for coal mining, you'd think it would be air driven.
That's as good a guess as any. I don't have any experience with mining but it would seem likely that a rock bolt would have a threaded end that might fit the nut on the end of this device. Slap an epoxy capsule in the hole and drive the rod with this giant drill. Then back it off, slip a plate over the end and tighten a nut on. I could see it working that way.
Just a thought but I have a friend who is looking at setting up a few trailers and he is going to need a driver something like that to twist in the anchors. I think I could make a fitting the transition from that thread to a mobile home anchor. Would you consider selling it?
Suppose Epoxy was around when that thing was new?
Joe H
that looks like something my dentist used when i wasa kidbobl Volo Non Voleo Joe's BT Forum cheat sheet
Epoxy. Hmmm. I will have to look up when it was in general use but I think it has been used, at least in some places if not mines, since the late 40s. Good point though.
That post was worth me comming here tonight . Thanks for the laugh!
LMBO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tim Mooney
OK, some sort of rotary hammer? They turn at slow speed, using combo rotary percussive action. Very effective in drilling holes in concrete, and therefore probably stone or ore too. Drill a 1" diameter hole, stick yer dynamite charge in, light and run.
Looks kinda like a bridge reamer. When erecting steel bridges you used a machine like to ream holes that didn't line up close enough to install the bolt. The long handles were to allow 2 people to hang on. Just as the reamer went through the hole it would fetch up and could throw you around pretty good if you didn't hang on tight. The only thing about this one is it's electric. Most of them I've seen have been air powered.
Dana
Salmon Falls Housewrights
That's a coal mine drill. It was used to drill holes into the coal seam for dynamite to blast the coal out, and into the ceiling for bolts to hold it in place. The bits were about 8 feet long usually. My uncle used one and it once jammed up and broke his arm and collar bone. I guess it beat the old hand powered auger most of the time though. Coal mining is the pits.
my imporession was that it was configured like a mining drill but I didn't know they used electric ones. Any mining I was familiar with - they did everything they could to avoid any possibility of sparks. Coal dust with possible methane gas plus a spark is a dadly combination!.
Excellence is its own reward!
You're right about the deadly combination of coal dust, or methane, and sparks. Many miners were blown up in explosions back in appalachian mines, especially when they used carbide lamps and had very poorly ventilated mines. Mines up untill about the 1950's were extremely unsafe, now they are just very unsafe. My grandfather died of black lung disease about the time I was born from years of breathing coal dust in the mines. He left a large family with little means of support, so my second oldest uncle continued their very small operation pretty much on his own. They used a pony to pull the coal wagon out of the mine, and hand loaded it into the truck my uncle had bought when he got back from Korea. Then the drill accident happened which put him out of work for a long time. After a while my uncle said he was getting out of there and moved north to Ohio and got a good job in the steel mill. He's still in good shape, 75 years old. He told me a few years ago that the mineral lease expired and he did not renew it. Another company mined that area and took out millions in coal.
My cousin was working a strip mine and ran a Euclid truck over some dynamite and it detonated. It blew the front wheel off and flipped the truck which rolled over several times. He had a concussion and a perforated eardrum and numerous small injuries. He said he woke up all tumbled up in the cab and his buddies were talking to him but he couldnt hear a word. He's a well driller now.
I have one cousin who still works in the deep mines. Last I heard he is a pinner, They bolt the ceiling up. They use a fairly high tech adhesive now to anchor the bolts. That is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the mines. He was close when a large section fell. It created a air blast that knocked him back a ways, but no other injuries. The problem is most of the mines are not tall enough to stand up in, so he has to crawl around or work on his knees a lot. He has had both knees replaced, but he is only in his thirties. He's still working the mines because it provides a living and he won't leave the hills of Eastern Kentucky.
Another cousin was a mine surveyor, but just all of a sudden got the willies about working underground and quit. Not sure what he does now.
So when I think I have it bad, I just think about the mine workers. What a dismal dangerous job.
Amen!.
Excellence is its own reward!
Yep, that's exactly what it is...
Got to thinking about this one a little more and just a thought, is it a portable drive to either load or unload coal by conveyor of screw. Sugar beet trucks here have a conveyor belt under them they attach a motor and plug it in. But if it is that slow I am not sure. I do agree in a coal mine you probably would not plug it in, steam or air drive.
We do have The Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology here I could give a call to them, but they deal mostly with gold or silver. May be in your area there is one that deals with the coal minig/industry.
Wally
Well, my grandfathers both mined coal in kentucky. Both started drilling in the early days using a pick to start the hole then manually drilling with a hand operated auger to place the dynamite.
My paternal grandfather had a few hundred acres of his own where he mined the easy coal for household use, my maternal grandfather didn't own anything but 2 acres and a poor shack, and had a lease on a small coal mine. Neither had electric anywhere near their properties until the 50's.
Commercial mines were pretty much all electric, in fact a lot of them sold electric from the generating plant to local communities. Of course the coal companies owned most of the towns in Southeastern Kentucky. My paternal grandfather worked in a big mine in McRoberts, but quit that after a bit because of the dangerous conditions there. My maternal grandfather worked in the commercial mines in Jenkins and near Whitesburg a bit. Both feared the electric drill. On another note, another popular way to cash in your chips in the mine was electrocution, in addition to black damp (methane), drowning, being crushed, trapped in a cave in, hypothermia, being run over by a coal car, caught up in moving equipment, asphixiation, or being burned or blown up.
Here is an article about mining which mentions the electric drill. They are no longer used, but deep mines have a lot of electric equipment in them. Jenkins was a nice company town in it's day. It's all privately owned toaday, but there is very little commerce now, so it's poverty stricken.
http://www.coaleducation.org/coalhistory/Jenkinshis.htm
Edit:
Here is another article mentioning the electric drill. http://www.coalpeople.com/old_coalpeople/june2001/in_the_hole.htm
Edited 3/27/2003 7:36:50 PM ET by markh128
It sounds like you've got the answer to your tool dilemma already but I stumbled across something in my curiosity search that might be worth looking into further.
There was an English built train called the "Little Giant" that may have been used in coal mining. I know jack squat about collectables but it's possible your discovery may have deeper "collectable" roots than just another mining tool if it is affiliated with a particular train used in coal mining.
I doubt I'm actually on to anything but here's what I found if you're interested in investigating it further:
http://www.whr.co.uk/history/gallery/
The Baldwin 590 is seen at Dinas Junction, 1923, shortly after being delivered to the railway. The England-built Little Giant shows the diminutive size of the Festiniog engines which had been imposed on them by restrictive tunnels on that line.
Kevin Halliburton
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -Elbert Hubbard-