hello everyone tonight

Thanks DL and Dave

These insights into some more of yester years methods and customs needed to find good drinking water are very interesting I am sure to everyone looking in

Dave your method of digging from underneath a form is very logical and was used, this I know from personal experience

When I was about 6 years old my father built a new barn, and of course we needed a water supply--my father being very ingenuative used that very method to go down the first 16 feet, he built 2 circular forms about 8 feet in diameter and 8 feet high and proceeded to remove the material from underneath which of course let the form drop, at the depth of the 2 forms he stopped and proceeded to drill further using a home made outfit , that included a 2" steel sharpened axle from a land roller and lengths of 6" inch steam pipe

He rigged up a method using a pulley attached to one wheel of the tractor-now the tractor was up off the ground so he could brake one wheel making the other one with the pulley only able to turn

He used horse fork rope and one man could methodically tighten and loosen the rope on the pulley, this in turn lifted and let fall the sharpened axle inside the pipe

Every once in a while as needed the weight of the axle was used to pound the pipe further into the ground

Using this method he went down another 40 feet and eventually found water in sufficient quantity for the livestock

I might add that every once in a while a stone was encountered and interfered with the drilling process, and dad would prepare a stick of dynamite lower it beside the rock and blow it to pieces

I might say father was sure ingenious and had a lot of solutions up his sleeve--you might say I got my education out behind the barn--more on this subject next time

You might say what has all this got to do with timber framing well I might say this--it is all a part of expanding ones knowledge of everyday living--keeping your family warm and fed during times of need, knowing how to build was one part of that knowledge, using new ideas was never frowned on but added to the knowledge base to be used as needed

Thanks everyone for dropping by

NH