Rock Drills - Wallace, ID - Preserved Machines on Public Display on Waymarking.com

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Rock Drills - Wallace, ID

in Preserved Machines on Public Display

Posted by:  T0SHEA

11T E 580301 N 5258854

At the west end of the little town of Wallace is a great museum which will almost certainly appeal to the gearheads of the world. This is a open display and can be viewed at anytime free of change.

The "museum" is actually the Wallace Chamber of Commerce. At their site on River Road just south of I-90 they have put together displays of mining machinery, geology and rock displays, some sculpture and a memorial to the firefighters who lost their lives in the Great Fire of 1910, which burned several towns in northeast Washington, northern Idaho, and western Montana.

One of the displays at the Chamber is this collection of early rock drills. In the collection are drills of every size, shape, colour, style, use and type. Most of the drills in the collection would be from the early twentieth century, with some being nineteenth century items.

Rock Drills

The demand for specific types of rock drills is often dictated by the intended use. Some are best suited for drilling vertical holes, and other work well for horizontal holes commonly used for blasting. The larger drills typically were mounted on mechanized equipment or were held in place by screw jacks. Compared with modern high performance drills such as the modern S83F, which has been the drill of choice for a least 50 years, they were relatively inefficient. This exhibit shows many of the early models as well, including a very early spring operated design at the far end of the layout.