Vertical caving terminology and methods > Rigging methods and equipment
An electric tool to make holes, used when bolting up an aven or initially setting up the anchors on a pitch, which can then be used for all future rigging. Drills are cordless, powered by batteries. Drill bits are of the masonry type (designed for cutting into stone), and generally should be very high quality, with 4 or more "flutes" (spiral ridges). Drills must be connected to a gear loop via a tether, to avoid dropping them.
There are also various kinds of hand powered rotary drills and rotating hammer drills, typically with a crank wheel on the side which is turned, but these are very rarely used. However, some mining drills have been used, which push against one wall while drilling into the other (much like a stemple), with a rotating collar which is manually turned to turn the drill bit. As it rotates, the drill bit is retracted then hammered into the rock using a spring.
Pneumatic drills were invented in 1871 by Samuel Ingersoll, and were used in the mining industry. Australians Arthur James Arnot and William Blanch Brain invented the electric drill in 1889. Black & Decker released the first battery powered drill in 1961, but early ones were not suitable for caving related tasks. Electric drills were first used in caves with external generators. The earliest known record of this is that one was used in the 1970s in the Grenoble region of France. A hand-powered mechanical mining drill was described as being in use during the British caving expedition to Ghar Parau in Iran in 1972. In the late 1980s, battery powered drills finally gained enough power and capacity to be worth the effort of taking them a long distance into caves, and they started to take over from star drills. For big projects, the drill might be modified to use a fly lead, allowing an external battery pack to be connected, such as a lead acid or NiCad battery, with the associated weight that brought. At that time, some cavers were using pneumatic drills, with external generators on the surface powering air compressors, with lengthy high pressure hose pipes taking the compressed air far into the cave. During the 1990s, near-surface cave digs still sometimes used powerful drills powered by generators. By the early 1990s, 24 volt drills were being used, and powering those would typically require two small format motorbike lead acid batteries to be carried in and out of the cave, often crammed into an amunition box. This approach was used in many parts of Britain, and is what was used for scaling Titan, Peak Cavern in 1999. Makita released the first lithium ion drill in 2005, and cavers started using lithium ion drills shortly afterwards.
This history section only covers drills. This article also has a detailed history of many of the other devices and techniques that are used for vertical caving.
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