Columnist Rich Maxwell says that "to the best of my knowledge" the HDD business has been around for about the same length of time as National Driller -- 20 years.
Our wonderful publication National Driller is celebrating, as well they should, their 20th anniversary! In the spirit of things, today I want to reflect back on the past 20 years in the horizontal directional drilling industry which is really the history of HDD as the concept is not much older than that. I don't claim to be completely historically accurate, but "to the best of my knowledge" the HDD business has been around for about the same length of time as National Driller.
The HDD industry actually began on several fronts, contractors trying to find a way to solve problems. Martin Cherrington is recognized as one of the inventors of the technology. You might remember my column around three years ago when I talked about Martin Cherrington as "the granddaddy of directional drilling."
Martin gave me a tour of his yard where I saw one of his first chain-driven "slant rigs" which pushed 10' drill pipe into the ground with a wedge-shape bit on the end. "When you rotate the drill pipe it bores straight ahead," Martin explained. "When you stop rotating and push on the drill rod it redirects the drill path according to the position of the wedge." That's how it all works.