Jack And His Hammer

No Doubt You Are Wondering If This Is Another Fairy Story

It's a reasonable supposition, given that Jack got around a fair bit in his time, slaying giants - not sure if that would be allowed today as both a description and an activity - and growing enormous beanstalks (let us not go into the failure loading of a plant-based structure greater than 30 yards height), not to mention hurdling various household implements such as candlesticks.  Which would be a hazardous enterprise nowadays given the flammability of modern artificial textiles.  Art!

     Rather than March On, people marched away, and Jack was reduced to doing infomercials on TVC, wh

     ANYWAY we're here because Conrad, whilst taking his constitutional stroll into Lesser Sodom this afternoon, wondered "Who invented the pneumatic drill?", which is harder to answer than you may imagine.

     <excuse, got to go take that pizza out of the oven and check on the dough> 

     Art!

This, gentle reader, is what our less-than-couth trans-Atlantic cousins call a 'jackhammer' and which we, in more civilised climes, call a 'pneumatic drill'.  because that's what it is and does.

     No single person can claim to have solely invented this apparatus, for it evolved over time from the mid-nineteenth century as it was progressively refined and improved, and ignore the erroneous results you get from AI if asking the question.  Art!

Outside

Indoors

     Pneumatic drills were several quantum levels beyond the traditional hand-wielded pick, dispensing with the need to have space to swing and working regardless of how long the operator had been drilling.  One drawback was that they were EXCEEDINGLY NOISY and that second miner is probably stone deaf already, working without ear-protection.  The first driller is operating without any eye protection, so he'll be able to hear the rock chip travelling at 120 m.p.h. that blinds him in one eye.  Art!

     How it works.  Operator squeezes handle A, which allows compressed air to enter at B for as long as he holds the handle down.  The air flows through a one-way valve at D, pushing down the pile-driver E, which propels the drill-bit at F downwards.  When the drill-bit is at maximum extension, air flows out from the outlet at C, and the piledriver retracts again, to repeat the cycle.

     Note the use of compressed air, which could be supplied from many hundreds of yards away via hydraulic piping without losing any potential energy en route.  The sheer length of piping made the use of steam impossible because it would condense in the piping at any great distance.  Plus, steam engines were fired using flammable substances - not a good idea in any mine and especially not a coal mine, where explosive gasses might be loitering.

     We will now shift from Jack to Tommy, because why did you think I'd be giving a discourse on pneumatic plant equipment?  Art!

CAUTION!  Thomas Atkins at work

     Back to the Asiago Plateau in Italy as of the First Unpleasantness, and here we witness a couple of stout chaps wielding a pneumatic drill as they create a hole in the landscape.  Visible in the background is their pneumatic pipe from the diesel-powered air compressor and if your eyes are sharp you can see three other soldiers keeping an interested watch on the drillers.  Probably an NCO and a couple of nosey officers.  Art!

     In this still you can see how long the drill-bit is and how far they've bored into the rock; as we've informed you many a time, in the Italian mountains you needed power tools or -

     Driller and his Number Two take a deserved break as another of the onlookers fiddles about with the hole they've bored.  Whatever can he be doing, Vulnavia?  Art!

     After tamping indistinct items into the hole, wetting them down, tamping more indistinct items in, having one of the drillers RAM whatever it is home with his stick, matey here now sets a fuse burning and everyone scurried off.  Art!

     Aha.  The 'whatever' was explosives and they were blasting to make more room for buildings or artillery positions.  Which process would not be possible were it not for pneumatic drills, hoorah!

Spare Us The Cutter

But not the chopper!  Yet more potentially unsafe wood-chopping machinery for your delectation.  Art!

     This is one of the scarier cutting devices, thanks to it's sheer implacable power.  Take a look at that tree trunk, which has to be about 6" thick.  Art!

     Once again, no protective shields between the hideously efficient cutting blade and any passing operator, so heaven help you if you stumble or trip onto the chopper, because you're going to lose fingers at least.

Our Journey With Berni

Back to the fervid imaginings of Mr. Wrightson, who may well have been inspired by wood chopping, to judge from his fondness for axes in the FPG cards he created.  This time we are up to Number 30, and I'll just check to see if teh Interwebz depict it fully - 

     Well, Bern, thanks for not detailing what's going on here.  To judge for myself, we seem to have a giant, and a member of Hom. Sap. (whose name may or may not be Jack), toting a slingshot with a rock already loaded.  If you observe the Big Gee, he seems to have an impact hole between his eyes, so our slingshotter (can't tell gender, so it may be Jackie for all we know) seems to have done a bit of giant slaying.  May need to wash your breeches in cold water at the earliest opportunity, and take your shoes off before entering indoors anywhere.

By Wild Coincidence!

Okay, you've already seen Arnold playing Quaid in "Total Recall" at the top of the page, and who crops up on my news feed but Michael Ironside, a name you may not recognise but whose face you will, as he's been in everything for decades.  Art!

     Here he is as Richter, going 'hog-wild' in TR and doing his best to perforate Quaid in the World's Quickest Colander Creation Competition.  He is usually cast as the villain, so much so that his occasional ventures into the side of truth and beauty are memorable.  He played 'Ham' if I recall, in the first series of "V", and was briefly in one of those medical soap operas that South Canadian television endlessly spews forth, plus the kind-of-moral Rasczak in "Starship Troopers".  Moral enough to shoot one of his own men to - er - put him out of his misery.  Art!

     Go on, YOU argue with him about that being two rules.

Here's One I Made Earlier

Only now can the truth be told, because Your Humble Artisan made another mug cake yesteryon, that being a Lemon & Poppy Seed Drizzle cake.  Art!

With pen for scale

     It is edible, if a little peculiar in taste, which may be down to the mug greasing agent being a cheap and nasty margarine that was date expired in 2019.  I'd better get a new tub on the weekly shop.  The lemon extract smelled rather chemically, too, and I've no idea what the Best Before was on that bottle.  Making it did give me an excuse to use up those sugar lemon slices from - er - no idea when. 

     Then, for no good reason, today I got a hankering to make a wholemeal loaf.  More of this anon.

Finally -

Finished Jeff Carlson's "Plague Year" today, and have started on the sequel, "Plague War", where two maps at the front instantly blow the major plot reveal <sad face>.  There's a third volume to complete the set, "Plague Zone", which I'll wait until I get a decent price with free P & P for.

     Conrad noted that the film rights were purchased in 2008 with nothing subsequently done for the next 16 years, so neither film nor Netflix series looks likely.  O well.  Art!