The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-09-21
THE OIL-wELL SHOOTER.
And the Extremely Dangerous q
acter OF His Work.
New York Evening Post.

New York Evening Post.
The duties of a shooter are not multi
tudinous. but they are exacting. and for
reasons well known to oil country folk ne
draws pay for all his waking hours. AS a
matter of fact, a shooter may be said to
be working hardest when he is going to
work, and, strange as this sounds, Ii is
easily understood when one realizes that
this important oil country character rides
to work in a vehicle in which is slowed
anywhere from fifty to 500 quarts of enc
or the most powerful and by long odds
the most unreliable and freakish explo-
sives that man has yet compounded. Some
times nitroglycerin acts as patiently as a
twenty-ive-year-old farm horse 1t can
be jolted. upset and even kicked without
showing a sign of life. Again it explodes
when an autumn leaf chances to blow
against the can in which it is kept. and
the explosion never fails to alter very ma
terially the appearance of the immediate
landscape.
Dynamite rarely explodes accidentally.
where ordinary care is taken. and IL is
little wonder that men accustomed TO
handling 1t sometimes treat Ii with great
carelessness. Dynamite exists principally
because nitroglycerin is so dangerous:
Nltroglycerin Is used in the sections OF the
country where oil is found. almost exclu-
sively. For ordinary blasting work it is
never employed. 1t is never transported by
rail. and factories where ii is made are
never found in the vicinity OF other build
ings.
When a man puts down an oil well he
drills until he reaches the stratum which
he wishes to tap, and then sends for a
shooter. This individual appears or the
scene riding always on a blackboard wagon,
on which he carries from fifty TO 500 quarts
of nitroglycerin. The explosive is kept in
square tin cans, packed in a box under and
back OF the drivers seat. Along the side OF
the blackboard are strapped long tin tubes
closed at one end, which bear great resem-
blarice to lengths of rain spouting. The tin
tubes are filled with nitroglycerin, lowered
to the bottom of the we'll and there ex-
ploded. The force of the explosion breaks
up the rock at the bottom of the well SO
that the oil drains in its direction, and also
makes a hole in which the oil collects and
from which 1t can be pumped TO the sur
| face.
Since nitroglycerin cannot be shipped by
railroad, factories for its manufacture are
scattered all around the oil country. The
factories, always hidden somewhere out in
the woods, are never anything more than
board shanties, and when one of them goes
up In the air, there is never much loss from
a financial standpoint. Inside them there
Is little apparatus or machinery-only a
few mixing troughS and q tank of water
into which the troughs can be slipped when
there is danger of an explosion.
The mixing OF the acids with the glycerir
is done always with the bulb of a Their
mometer I'm the trough; and should the
temperature of the mixture begin to rise
rapidly, as 1t sometimes does, the trough
with its contents, is slid into the water
tank. after which all hands set out TO gair
shelter in the woods. If there is no explo-
sion In a few minutes, they make their way
back to the factory, rescue the mixing
trough from its bath, and without unneces-
Sary delay begin to court death again. Fac
tories of this kind are not very frequently
the scenes of accidents, but when there is
one the death list is only limited by the
number or persons around the place.