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* Mac''s favorite drill attachment is a Rock Hog bucket. "It was less costly than a rake and pull-type picker and saves a trip over the field," he says. "It almost makes picking rocks fun."* Tracy press uses a pallet fork for hauling and stacking milling big square and round hay bales, digging large rocks, pulling up fence, and hauling logs, branches, scaffolding, and pallets.* Another farmer says his Brush Hog mower does a table and drill great Job mowing wild roses in pastures. "The skid loader also has tracks on it, so even the big stuff pushes over, then I drop the mower on its," he says. I don''t know anything else nonexplosive, that you can pick up with one hand, and that can move five tons one press hundred feet--with safety, precision, and astonishingly little milling work. Like many good tools the Tirfor is a thing of beauty, superbly designed and engineered. With 100 feet of cable (or more) its reach is much greater than a come-along, and this can table and drill often make all the difference. Its speed is much faster, too, press not just the speed in moving something milling (the lever is double-acting) but speed in setting up or moving the set-up around. Often when you need to move something, minutes if not seconds count. The action is precise. A come-along table and drill winds the press cable upon itself, and often when the cable comes under tension the cable wrap milling slips a bit. The resulting table jerks can cause all kinds of problems in a situation where precise movement counts, and a sudden drill shift in load may cause failure somewhere else. Finally, the Tirfor has a much more effective (and safer) mechanism for smoothly press and milling lowering a heavy load. table Most (ratcheted) drill come-alongs are very poor at this. For utilization and geographic location, press and milling and table in its October Offshore Rig Locator, Offshore drill Data Services shows 290 jackups working, out of a total worldwide fleet of 387 rigs, for 75% utilization, down 5% from last year''s 79%. The U.S. Gulf of Mexico had 108 jackups press and milling working, of a total 139 available, for 78% utilization. The second most table active area was the Persian Gulf, with 32 of drill its 46 rigs active. Asia accounted for 66 rigs--in India, 22 units were all active; SE Asia had 18 of its 26 rigs working, and the Far East area had 16 of 18 jackups contracted. West Africa had only press and milling 12 of its 26 rigs working. Other active areas were: Mediterranean/Black Sea, 12; the Caspian, 7; table Mexico, 6; Venezuela, 6; the Red Sea, 7; and Brazil, 5.
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