Miners  immense pride in their skills of the craft  led to mining competitions. Miners competed in mucking, pushing cars, machine drilling and the greatest contest of all them, hand drilling.  To be successful in a hand drilling competition  one has to master ,team work, technique, and have speed, with fantastic  endurance. Danger always lurkers  with the possibility of a hand destroyed by a miss of the steel by the hammer. The best drillers will be striking the steel 60 to over 70 hits a minute. 

The contest were held using all styles of hand drilling with additional style call single hand . It is done like double jacking except the driller does all the hitting except no switching with the person turning the steel.

There is a lot of disagreement and misinformation on the drilling records set.  Most of the misinformation is from the lack of understanding how to drill.

The important factors to consider in comparing early drilling contest

• Rock type – hardness, consistence

• Hammer weight

• Steel width

• Time allotted

• Style

Some contests limited the number of steel changes I personally believe this hurts the contest a critical   part of the drillers skill is to know when  it is time to change steel. If the steel is change to much  or too little the driller will lose time drilling. The difficulty of pulling the longer drill steels from a deep hole without missing a hammer strike proves great ability.   

Drillers had their steels custom made with specific tapers, edges and flaring, some of the them went as far as having custom made hammers.  The Bisbee Mining and Historical museum has in their collection a beautiful set of custom steels. These were supposed to have been made by the blacksmith James O’Malley for the Calumet and Arizona  team and  used in the July 4^th 1913 contest in Bisbee

Champion rock drillers were the rock stars of the day, Mrs. Hugh Brown describes them like this “Champion drillers were kings, known and feted throughout the mining world. Prize money was accompanied by cases of champagne and liquors”.

One of the greatest contests was held August 18,1907 in Butte Montana. McIvor and Pickens of  Bisbee  won a purse of $1250.00 by drilling 45 31/32 inches in front of a crowd of  25,000 spectators .

With the introduction of pneumatic drills, hand drilling went to the wayside. In 1913 Bisbee’s hand drilling contest came to an end. They were replaced with machine drilling contest which never took hold and they were eventually  stopped.  Bisbee’s hand drilling contest were restarted but have never reached their past glory.

  Today  the “Iron Man” represent Bisbee’s hand drilling  past.  A statue of a miner holding a single jack and steel, mounted atop the block of Gunnison granite which the contest drilling was done.