Hammerhead

Bosch Hammer Drill Dis-assembly

Here's a test...that little copper coated item is the ass end of a Lightning Grounding Rod. These are planted 10 ft deep and a Lightning Grounding Cable is attached with an acorn nut. It grounds the frame of generators and cabinets the same way a water clamp grounds the electrical system of a house. In case a bolt of lightning hits the $10,000 cabinet the theory is that the electricity might disperse into the LGC instead of frying everything. I think it will all fry because really how often is something like this tested?


So Oggy drilled and drilled from a ladder until he reached shale and almost started his own oil well head. So he tries to pull the hammer off the rod and what has happened is the soft metal rod has expanded into the grooves of the chuck. Oh, man. It's not like this is marketed as a lightning grounding rod drill. No, it's supposed to drill bits into concrete but we're creative out here in the oil field where the closest Home Depot is 400 miles away in Mexico.

Well, I insisted to everyone that I could fix this because I am part Vietnamese slave laborer and know these machines intimately. But they said things like, "No, you are an idiot because you didn't stop and make sure that the rod would come out and kept going and now we are going to lose time and productivity...etc."
So two days go by and it became like the sword of Excalibur as everyone tries to get it out. Finally someone thinks they will cut off the protruding part to make it easier to drill it out. This finally ruins any chance of my initial attempt to hammer it out using a vise. Now I know it must be totally disassembled. But they only let me take it to my trailer today and I ran out of light and had to hop a fence to use a vise in a nearby man camp. After taking off the 5mm allen head bolts the key comes off. Then I tried to chisel a groove in the top of the rod only to discover that as I was hammering on it, the other end of the sleeve was pushing out the back end. I kept hammering until I had the splined insert portion out with the rod still jammed in there. Then I took it to the vise and set loose Oggy ingenuity with a sledge hammer and a set of vise grips and a flashlight in my teeth. A nail puller was involved too.
And it worked. I'm real good at fixing shit I broke.