all right all right we are long overdue on this boots on the ground I want to introduce you to JT Cunningham how you doing sir I’m doing good sir he’s with the company drill Pro we’re gonna do a quick tour of his shop we’re also going to do a sit down version to really dive into what they do because I don’t think a lot of people know that this is going on right here in Caldwell Idaho JT’s wood drill Pro like I said you want to give us a tour yep okay let’s go through so so what do you guys what do you guys make what do you guys do our industry and our main industry that we’re in is in surface pit mining equipment so okay uh we build a lot of drill and blast uh the drills anything that goes from the top of the head of the drill to the deck of the drill okay and other miscellaneous Parts as well for like water well drilling Industries we do a lot of drill Steels Subs bushings deck bushings uh stabilizers these are for people drilling water wells uh so the drill

pipe that we’re building right now is for gold for gold yeah the gold industry that’s awesome and where’s that where’s this going to go what state um this is going to California so they’re gonna the Gold Rush still exists so of course all the rush will never stop yeah yeah so I I thought you did mainly coal you do coal we do cool so we do a lot of work with the Canadian mine so they use out a really good metallurgical because you know stuff that goes into like all the different sorts of types of metals uh some computer chips and okay process it uh you can eat and sell it a lot to you know the Indian country India China okay it goes all around the world goes all around the world the world economy yes and that’s with uh Canoa McColl right now we do a lot of work with uh The Wolverine mine the willow mine and a few of the other different mines up there so so those computer chips that all the vehicles are missing because Taiwan can’t get them to us that gold could possibly be sourced by

utilizing one of your products wow yeah I mean if it’s a long way around a long way around yeah yeah so whatever they’re cool yeah whatever our drill Steels go down and they’re you know drill Steels will uh like for the coal industry you know a lot of their benches are 60 foot benches on average there are some 30-foot benches and then I think they do some 90 foot benches in the coal industry they do do quite a bit of different lengths down there for the Drone blast so this goes down the hole they they yeah so drilled or they dug so this so this is a carousel steel so usually on a carousel steel they’re sitting up in the Carousel of the drill Mass they have a starter starter steel or they also call them like rat rat pipes and then um basically uh the starter steel is connected to whether they have a bit sub or a connected to the tricone or a hammer bed itself usually on a ham on a hammer they do have a hammer bit sub and then that starter pipe goes down the starter pipe is

a heavier wall pipe and basically the starter pipe is like an anchor it’s just like a heavy piece of collar to make sure that thing’s going straight unless they’re direct directional drilling yeah and then a carousel come in and just finish out the length that they want to go to so if a starter steel wants to do like a say a 25 foot bench and they want to go and start running like 40 foot benches or something they’ll connect the carousel to that starter steel yeah that’s awesome man so from here what we do on this machine is obviously we load up the the drill pipe in there we shave off about an eighth of an inch of the ID flip it around to the other end we beveled the ends so we kind of do the old school method of sweating drill pipe okay there is a new method of inertia welding where basically you have a huge multi-million dollar machine you shove it in there you spin it real fast you have your join in that comes in as it’s spinning real fast one way this will Spin Real Fast the

other way they inertia welding together but we’re a little more old school so yeah there’s nothing wrong with that still works right I know right A lot of times a lot of the new stuff it takes a while to get the Kinks out of that system oh yeah so sometimes the old way s yeah we believe that there’s more strength and exactly sweating stuff and a lot of the minds they still use do a lot of the miners believe that too um wow yeah they don’t really know about the strength of drill Steels but from our our experience sweating them in uh works out real great for them so gotcha want to show us the rest of it yep so this is uh here’s the man the founder the founder the founder so right now we’re working on a for the cat for the cat girls we’re working okay my brother bushing right now so that’s the inside of a roller bushing um that’s a piece of 41 uh 40 QT HD machine that down put some grooves in there for the ball bearings okay and then uh that has an outer and then

once we get the outer done we test fitted on that and make sure that it spins and that centralizes the drill Steels that go inside the deck of the drill rig and make sure that they’re spinning and doing their job without having a huge wobble inside their deck how long is that going to be in there for him oh uh that probably only has about so this run time on this piece is an hour with our cncs okay um but it’s probably only got like another I don’t know five minutes oh okay yeah oh man yeah this is uh these are the joint ends for the drill steels and uh these are going up to Fairbanks Alaska for tech line services and they sell with a pair of Banks and uh what are they mining up there gold gold okay yeah so I’d say probably about 75 percent of our industry is everything that we build for the gold mines okay that’s awesome we work with everybody from uh Newmont to Barrack uh silver standard the Ken Ross mines and we work at almost every major mine uh obviously uh Newmont and Barrick had

a the huge merger over this last couple years so the Nevada gold mines we do build quite a bit of parts for them and uh that’s putting Cortez Carlin Gold Strike uh Twin Creeks and silver standard Marigold mine the Bald Mountain mine Ken Ross we’ve done some work for Brown Mountain mine we used to do a lot of their work so just almost every mind in the battle we’ve gone South before so that’s awesome yeah and these are API threads that I pick one up yeah barely they’re heavy and it’s insane it’s insane how heavy that is I’m really glad I was able to pick that up on camera and that would have been embarrassing right yeah drop it drop it on here so are you guys starting this from scratch so yeah you got a big long pipe so we buy uh all of our tree pan from North American Metals down in Houston Texas yeah uh we have a great working relationship been working with them for 20 plus years they’re awesome to work with they provide some of the best metals that’s usually come from nuclear or temkin well they’re right

on the gulf too so they can import a lot of it if they need to right they do most of uh domestic it’s mostly domestic campaign National tube that we use a lot okay they uh they they import a lot from so I mean we get some Chinese pipe uh some Italian uh some Italian pipe pipe from a lot of different places and stuff but you have to make sure it has the the specs that your customers oh yeah yeah they all come with a strike standard and we get the spec sheets make sure that it’s it’s up to date and up to code and there yeah so they send that over have you ever had an issue where you have got something that sent to you and it wasn’t the right stuff we have to send it back oh I’m sure all right we’ve we got a a so back in the 90s we got a piece of uh Chinese pipe that uh they use a coil on and they were putting it down in a hole I think at the marigold mine in uh then the pipe I won’t say it was

solvent to us but uh it came uncoiled and sprung out of the hole oh man oh yeah so that’s how important to the crap out of it that’s how important it is for you to get the to Source the right material oh yeah and you got to trust the people you’re buying it from oh yeah well especially at the mines because the mines you know it’s they use the OSHA and they have their own damn Shaw stuff and uh safety is everything to a mine and yeah if a danger happens especially like a product of ours like it is not made the standard and that comes back on us and that’s not good nobody wants to have any injuries whatsoever from their own products or from anybody’s products yeah so we are very uh specific about what we do and how we go about doing it we don’t make mistakes and uh obviously there’s occasional bad part but we try to believe in that 999 rule out of a thousand so yeah we don’t want any bad parts so well great man yep right here you got a little bit bigger pipe right here

oh yeah so um what this is doing right here is basically it’s it’s just a stabilizer for the part that we are running in there we’re running spindle Subs in there right now and so it just makes sure that the thread on this end is running true to the thread that is being bored out because on these threads or is that where the drill head’s going you know where that’s going okay yeah so on a drill you have your your top head or your bowl head yeah and so what connects from there is usually either a top sub or they have a shock sub and I’ll show you some Shock Subs outside and then from there you’ll run basically a shock sub adapter sub and then you run your your starter steel or your Carousel and then your starter steel and then your bit sub or maybe you might have a makeup sub or a pop sub which is usually like a pen to pen sub and then you have your uh your trichon or you have your uh uh hammer okay that goes into there and the Hammers I mean hammers basically for

Hard Rock ground so great about that they’re just pounding and trying to break through and then once they get through that track down is for kind of a soft muddy ground and they’re just Drilling and so they’ll use the same setup though they’ll pull it up and then switch the head yep okay yep that’s awesome Yep you got another machine over here I saw you yeah so we have a so we buy all of our machines from King machinery out of Meridian Idaho uh awesome Brian King and uh I forgot Brad’s last name but Brad and uh you know we try to buy most of all of our stuff through as much local and try to give local businesses as much as we can yeah we start searching out sometimes you have to search out farther but if you can keep it local that’s what we like to do right so he’s working on the uh outside of the roller bushing that was into that first yeah that first place so he’s working on drilling out the holes for the ball bearings so this is the next step yep that’s yeah so once he

gets the holes drawn out here uh and this is Dan Schmidt he’s our head programmer and uh so once he gets that he’s going to grab it out over there test fit it make sure that the balls fit in and Spins perfectly smooth and do all that so but how long has Dan been here Dan’s been with us about I think this would be his ninth year how long have you been here your whole life uh well Bill started the business in 1988 and I was born in 1986 so 1988. okay that’s awesome all right you just put a little playpen right by his office sweet my mom was the accountant for the long time yeah and uh or the bookkeeper and well we got a similar they had to have a place for me yeah United Metals I mean that’s how Brett kind of grew up you know he grew up in the business you know yep so so I mean and his mom you know books and dad you know would do like the operations you know and that’s how they did it until they could just keep growing higher the crap

out of people and then they don’t have to do anything and find some good people you know yeah is this oh occasionally what we work on projects building fence building yeah building a ranch right Ranch yeah some panels yep I’m gonna go this way yeah we can go this way so another thing that we do do here pretty often for the like especially the water well drillers is we break hammers apart uh this is our Hammer breakout bench has 80 000 tons of pressure on it okay what we’re breaking is hammers like these because they get stuck yeah yeah so they can’t break it themselves God so they’ll bring them here and they need their Chucks broke so they or they’re back are you able to salvage oh yeah sorry yeah so the guy’s bringing me their hammers I’ll break them apart we inspect them see what they need if they might need some new uh basically like O-rings or wear bands or so what kind of trucks what kind of head is this that’s a that’s a eight inch or yeah that’s an eight inch bit head right now so we bought

a are these carbide yep okay I assume they were oh yeah that’s got to be I wish I had I wish everybody left me their whole junky bits their carbide yeah I’d have a nice little Bend for you oh yeah that stuff’s worth some money um is that for the harder ground or like a little softer so these are for the water well drillers right now so they they’re going through everything from Rock clay mud sand because they’re probably getting busy to do they what’s the water well drillers around here are you dealing with the local guys then so are they drilling year round or they usually wait for the water well in the last two years because of the explosion of mountains oh because of the people yeah those damn Californians moving in like don’t say that we’re gonna just clip that piece by itself I like it what’s this for dude so this is a 15 inch hole opener so okay we cut uh the trichomes up we got from American mining services but they have some good treat uh trichomes that we did we cut them up uh I took a

piece of collar put a box on there put a pin on there and then make that so that’s going down opening up holes for the 15 inch and just tears up the ground and awesome make that uh those a really nice A little water wells for everybody out here you got your your Boneyard you can come get the right wow you should have saw it before you guys brought your uh your Hallmark trailer yeah today I cleared out I don’t probably somewhere around 30 to four I would say 30 to 40 000 pounds got some weight in that trailer oh yeah some bad so with the mines so they sent us a lot of steals like these to get repaired okay so they that’s yeah was it originally yours or is it well most of it is and then you’re able to repair your old product yeah so essentially we’re about one of the probably only one of three companies in America that I know that does this especially on the west coast side so we’ll build this stuff out of that pipe over there okay and then originally we put our ends on

and then we’ll weld them up send them out they’ll use them until they feel like they need to be repaired they call us up we’ll bring in a trailer come grab them bring them back inspect them see if they’re up to size that they can reuse them and do that if they’re not and then chop them up and send them on to you guys and move on so that’s where the scrap comes like from the little bit of the Machining oh yeah but the when you’re doing those big cleanups it’s from the old stuff that can’t get repaired you know gotcha how much do you have any idea how much one of those weighs you probably haven’t yeah so if these are 30 Footers with 30 Footers way we’re right around 2 000 pounds okay the 25s are pretty common for the seven inch those weigh about 18.50 and the 35s weigh about 25 000. they’re heavy they’re heavy they’re really heavy or not twenty five thousand twenty five hundred twenty five hundred yeah 2500. yep much the same the rest of it yep so we we buy uh sometimes we’ll get good

deals on pre-made drill seals and okay uh most of the time we’re just chopping ends up and putting on the right ends so that’s essentially we’re just buying the pipe so sometimes you get a good deal on this oh yeah if I can ever find anybody who wants to pre-made drill Steels but that’s very rare because it’s usually so specialized yeah right so then you have to but if yeah it’s mine yeah so like on this size not very many mines run full holes and this stuff was probably from a mine where I don’t know in Oklahoma or a drilling company out of Oklahoma that had them so they auctioned them off and have you been to a lot of Mines to like check out what they’re doing have you got the opportunity to do that well that’s got to be pretty cool I’ve been probably dude 20 mines that’s awesome because the amount of equipment and I see this on build wit it’s a page on LinkedIn he’s always posting mining stuff that Matt their equipment just makes our equipment in the scrap metal recycling world looks so small their size

of their equipment oh yeah oh yeah so the hall rigs yeah those Hall all rigs yeah I mean that tires like you’re not even they’re probably like a third of that tire size oh I know I’ve never seen one in person all right but I’ve always wanted to so we’ve seen I think one of the biggest my dad took us uh to Canada and we stopped out I think they had the thing parked it was one of the largest haul rigs there and I can’t remember how big it was but man it was probably 20 feet tall oh yeah it looks at least it looked that way when I was like 10 but I believe it I’ve seen some of those photos and it is like insane the equipment that size even exists well and it’s kind of scary too so like at the Marigold mind and this happened I can’t remember if it was the last year or just six months ago but one of those Hall rigs they’re so tall that you can’t even see vehicles that are like 10 feet in front of you you have to be about 30 40

feet away from that thing oh yeah because uh this guy the uh at the mine they are having a you know they were taking new employees around and the guy parked their truck there and then this was a uh you like parked it there right yeah he was given a tour yeah he was uh too close to the rig and the rig ended up running over the the truck and there was people in there and they ended up dying so it’s very dangerous oh like the size of their equipment yeah they had like two I think like two or three people died in that truck and that’s probably why they’re so regimented on like all the safety oh yeah because the stuff’s so big if one thing’s wrong it could really hurt a lot of people or unfortunately kill some people yep and that’s how we are here too it’s like safety really does come before everything else so like yeah especially those machines like if you aren’t careful your life could be over in a day so like when we have pipes sticking out always make sure that we uh put the cones

on especially if they’re running so we put orange cones out and make sure to try to do it I’ve seen you guys like move that pipe out of here in an area like you guys you guys take it serious you guys have a system and it’s yeah because that stuff’s heavy like one wrong move could relate to someone that’s a nice looking trailer right there yeah he’s crushing my uh gravel I know we’re gonna get it out of here tomorrow well will you sit down with me next week yeah talk a little more I want to hear kind of the history from Bill’s reaction in there I don’t think we could get him on a podcast no and he wouldn’t say much other than just scream at us like why you guys are paying them enough for his crap yeah so we’ll talk to you and give us a little bit of History man yeah no I appreciate it thanks for stopping