[TheForge] Sucker rod

[David E. Smucker]

And the interesting thing is that it does do any sucking at all, only 
pumping.  In oil wells sucker rods can go down 1000's of feet.  They have to 
be strong enough to support their own weight plus the weight of column of 
oil that they are lifting.  That is why they are made of high strength 
engineering alloys such as 4140 and 4340.

When a senior in college I worked a summer job in the engineering office of 
an oil company in west Texas.  I shared an office with a new graduate 
engineer from U of T El Paso and he thought that you could suck the oil out 
of the ground.  You just put the pump 50 feet down in the well or so and it 
would suck.  I tried to explain to him that you couldn't "suck" more than 
about 30 feet because of the vapor pressure of the oil. (same for water). 
Never could get him to understand. He kept saying "they call them sucker 
rods".   I went back to school in the fall -- and he is still down there in 
Texas sucking oil.

Dave

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Woolley" <wjec at verizon.net>
To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 10:43 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Sucker rod


>I have never heard the term "sucker rod " before.  Where does it come from?
>
>
>
>
> David E. Smucker wrote:
>> Bob, It been more than 40 years since I was a young engineer working in 
>> the oil patch but back then we had a series of different alloys to use in 
>> different wells depending on the type of corrosion problem we might have 
>> in a given well producing from a given formation.  In fact we had a 
>> series of very short sucker rods -- we call them pony rods -- 
>> about 2 foot in length that we could put down a well to test which type 
>> of rod gave the best life under real world conditions.
>>
>> All of that said, our most common rod material was 4140 or 4340 or some 
>> similar alloy.  My starting point in making tooling from sucker rod would 
>> be to assume that it is 4140 and make a test piece.  Both 4140 and 4340 
>> are oil quenching.  I happen to have some 7/8 dia 4340 that I obtained 
>> through a local scrap dealer and it makes great tooling, tongs etc.  You 
>> should have good luck with your sucker rod.  Oil companies pay good money 
>> to have high performance out of sucker rods.  It gets expensive to have 
>> to do down hole repair work because you have failed sucker rods.
>>
>> Dave Smucker
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Ehrenberger" 
>> <eforge at centurytel.net>
>> To: "theforge" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
>> Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 9:48 AM
>> Subject: [TheForge] Sucker rod
>>
>>
>>> I picked up some sucker rod last week and was told that it was good for
>>> making hand tools. Do any of you know what steel it is? or the 
>>> composition
>>> of alloys in it?
>>>
>>> Robert Ehrenberger
>>> Shelbyville, Mo.
>>> eforge at centurytel.net
>>>
>>>
>>>
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