In recent columns, we’ve gone over the wire lines of spudder rigs, namely the drilling line and the bailing line. The casing line is the third and last wire line we need to consider.
Spudders of many years ago were two-line rigs: a drill line and sand line. These rigs served well, particularly in high rock areas where not much casing gets used. In the area I have drilled, we ran casing pretty much 100% the depth of the well — not including the screen. We handled a lot of casing. If you drill a small well like a 3- or 4-inch with a spudder, and it was a two-line machine, you could handle 10 feet of casing by hand. That hand work gets pretty tough if you do a 6- or 8-inch well with the same machine. Removing the baler from the sand line and attaching a hook would make that line useable as a light duty casing line. Even the smallest spudder could probably handle one single length (21 feet) of casing with the sand line.