Friday, February 1, 2013

Band Wheels of Taft, California


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3 comments:

Parm said...

Right. I looked up "band wheel" on wikipedia and the best it could come up with was Twisted Wheel, an indie band from somewhere.

So, a band wheel is?

February 3, 2013 at 8:12 AM
Willy "The Roustabout" Biscuit said...

Readers may (or more likely probably not) recall our post from awhile back entitled The Painted Pumpjacks (nodding donkeys, pumping units, horsehead pumps, beam pumps, sucker rod pumps (SRPs), grasshopper(!) pumps, thirsty birds, jack pumps) of Coalinga.

Well, the big wooden wheels on old pump jacks are "band wheels", which connect the pumpjack to an engine of one sort or another - steam in the old days, and oil or electric these days. A giant belt, in other words the "band", enables the engine to rotate the axis of the band wheel. A pivot arm called a "pitman" runs from the outer edge of the band wheel to the back end of the walking beam, and as the wheel rotates this pivot arm causes the beam to rock back and forth, thus moving the sucker rods up and down. (from the webpage "Old Stuff from the Oil Fields")

February 6, 2013 at 5:54 PM
Parm said...

Ah! Now I know!

February 9, 2013 at 6:53 PM

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