[TheForge] Sucker rod

[David E. Smucker]

Should say  "doesn't do any sucking at all"

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David E. Smucker" <davesmucker at hotmail.com>
To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 7:30 AM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Sucker rod


> 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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>>
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>
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