Copyright © 2009 Boart Longyear. All rights reserved.

CASE STUDY
Salt Lake City, Utah

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V-Wall™ Coring Rod

Featuring Our New Light Weight,
“...that just shows Variable-Wall Technology
how strong the RQ ® BOART LONGYEAR’S DRILLING SERVICES CREW
thread design is” COMPLETES A COMPLEX WEDGED-HOLE PROJECT
USING ONLY V-WALL CORING RODS.
- Robert Jex
BL Drilling Services Our drilling services group has been operating at a large Utah copper mine for
more than 25 years and, over time, has worked in nearly every corner of the
mine. The team was tasked with drilling three holes. The first hole was to go
to a depth of 6817 ft (2078 m) and return to a depth of 3320 ft (1012 m) before
drilling two wedged holes at 17° and 20° off the vertical hole.

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Patent #5,788,401; other patents pending

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 CASE STUDY
Salt Lake City, Utah

SITE DETAILS
CLIENT: BOART LONGYEAR DRILLING SERVICES
TYPE OF DRILLING: SURFACE N SIZE
EQUIPMENT: LONGYEAR HD602 TOP DRIVE
PULL BACK: 120000 lbs (54431 kg)
PRODUCT: NRQ V-WALL™ ROD

PHD V-Wall
BACKGROUND
1322 ft (403 m) Our drilling services group has been operating at a large Utah copper mine
for more than 25 years and, over time, has worked in nearly every corner of
the mine. The trust that has developed between the mine owner and Boart
Longyear is based soundly on our ability to meet exploration requirements with
HRQ V-Wall precision and efficiency.
6120 ft (1865 m)

TASK
The team was tasked with drilling three holes. The first hole was to go to a
depth of 6817 ft (2078 m) and return to a depth of 3320 ft (1012 m) before
NRQ V-Wall 20º
drilling two wedged holes at 17° and 20° off the vertical hole.
4140 ft (1262 m)

17º RESULT
Our drilling services team successfully completed the project using three
NRQ V-Wall NRQ V-Wall different sizes of V-Wall to complete this project. PHD V-Wall was used to a
4971 ft (1515 m) 6817 ft (2078 m)
depth of 1322 ft (403 m) to case the hole. The crew switched to HRQ V-Wall
which they took to a depth of 6120 ft (1865 m). NRQ V-Wall was then used to
drill to a total depth of 6817 ft (2078 m). Once the first hole was at depth, the
crew pulled back to a depth of 3320 ft (1012 m) where the first wedged hole
was drilled at 17° to a total depth of 4971 ft (1515 m) using our NRQ V-Wall.
After completing the first wedged hole, they pulled back to 3280 ft (1000 m)
where the final wedged hole was taken to a total depth of 4140 ft (1262 m).

BOART LONGYEAR IS A During the project, the crew faced a few challenging situations that required
LEADING PROVIDER OF: their rig to pull-back on the rod string using its full 120000 lb (54431 kg)
capacity. The rig operator applied the maximum pullback and, while the rods
stretched up to 12 ft, the RQ ® threads never failed.
GLOBAL DRILLING SERVICES

EXPLORATION TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT
ROCK DRILLING TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT
GEOTECHNICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT
CONSTRUCTION AND STONE
TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT
Field Supervisor, Robert Jex, noted that the rods performed exceptionally
in three ways. Superior strength for wedging off from vertical, lighter weight
allowing his rig to drill deeper, and finally the RQ ® thread has amazing strength
over the standard Q ® thread. The safety advantage to V-Wall also revealed
itself on this project. When tripping rods on the 6817 ft
(2078 m) hole, the crew handled 29920 lbs (13571 kg) of V-Wall rod throughout
the job. In contrast, the crew would have had to manage a total of nearly
35000 lbs (15876 kg) using a straight-wall rod string.
V-Wall rods were created with our customer’s productivity and safety in mind
but, while this single project demonstrates several incredible features of the
V-Wall rod, the true success is the fact that more and more of our customers
make the switch to V-Wall every day. The design is stronger, lighter and more
flexible than any rod on the market today and is quickly becoming the standard
for coring rod around the world.

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