GB2282772A - Tool for twisting wires and the like - Google Patents

Abstract

A wire twisting tool consists of a body (9) one of whose ends (5) is bent, a wire twister (7) formed in one of its sides to allow wire (2) to be twisted about itself when the tool (4) is rotated at right angles to the part of the wire (2) that passes therethrough the space between the body (9) and the bent end (5). <IMAGE>

Description

"TOOL FOR TWISTING WIRES AND THE LIKE" The purpose of this invention is to provide a tool that will twist wires about one another, which is something that often has to be done, particularly when preparing to lower oil well tools.

Whenever a device has to be fastened to the end of a wire this is often difficult and obliges whoever is doing the job to use much force or even to have to depend on the help of at least one other person. Because of the properties normally peculiar to wire the effort required to bend it into some sort of knot with which to fasten a device to it is often very considerable and calls for the use of tools to help out in the task.

Over the years several kinds of tools have been developed to make different sorts of knots capable of securing a given device to a piece of wire. The kind of knot which proved to be best for this is that where the end of the wire is wound round itself several times. A few turns of the wire are enough to ensure that a given device is securely held by the wire.

US-A-1,835,204 discloses a tool for such a kind of knot. Its chief drawback was that there were too many parts to it, which made it costly and rather difficult to use.

Brazilian Utility Model 6501549 discloses a bent-shaped rod to twist wire about itself. It is a simple kind of tool but when employed has several shortcomings. One of these is that a great deal of strength has to be used to do the twisting, particularly if the wire is a relatively heavy gauge wire, and sometimes this cannot be done just with the aid of a pair of hands. Another shortcoming is that the tool is unable to ensure that knots are evenly spaced apart, a requirement which is often essential if the job in question is to be done properly.

Particularly, in the oil industry, knots of this kind are essential if jobs are to be carried out correctly in oil wells where wires have to be used. This is known as wire line work, and consists of lowering some kind of tool down to a given depth in a well to carry out some sort of job. The tool must be fly fastened to the wire so as to ensure that it can be brought back up again merely by winding in the wire on to a reel with the aid of a device known as a wire line winder.

The knot, which is made by twisting the wire about itself several times forming a helix, is known in the oil industry as a wire line knot. In oil well wire work, top rate wire line knot-making is necessary because, if a knot should fail, a tool might get stuck in the well necessitating the undesirable and costly operation, known as fishing, for bringing it up again. This would mean shifting a rig over to the well in which the tool is stuck.

A certain amount of skill and some strength is still needed to make such wire line knots. There is no known tool able to make a wire line knot secure enough for oil well purposes, which means that such knots have to be made by hand with the aid of grips or other means of holding the disk about which wire has to be led before starting to make the knot itself. Obviously the soundness of the knot will depend upon the skill of an individual, and upon his strength, which of course is not the best way to standardize and to ensure quality.

The present invention aims to do away with the need to depend upon the skill and strength of a given individual in the making of wire line knots, and to enable such knot making to be greatly standardized and carried out swiftly, cheaply and safely.

The objective of the invention is to provide a tool that can make a knot in wire, by twisting the wire about itself several times, thereby forming a helix.

The invention will be more easily perceived from the following detailed description given with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a front half-section view of a wire holder; Figure 2 shows a wire line knot being made by hand; Figure 3 is a front view of a partly made wire line knot; Figure 4 is a front view of a wire line knot itself; Figure 5 is a side view of a tool according to this invention, for making wire line knots; Figure 6 is a front view of the tool for making wire line knots; Figure 7 shows a wire line wire stop; Figure 8 shows the spindle that carries the wire line knotting disk; Figure 9 shows the wire line knotting disk; Figure 10 is a perspective view of the wire line knotting tool of this invention, ready to start making the knot; Figure 11 is a front view of a wire line knot made at the wrong angle; and Figure 12 is a perspective view of a wire line knotting tool of this invention ready to correct the wire line knot angle.

Before starting upon description of the wire line knotting tool of the present invention let us look at Figures 1 to 4 which show the present way of knotting a wire line.

Figure 1 shows a wire holder 1 through which the wire has to run with a knot designed to lie within one of the ends of the holder so as to bear the weight of the device that is to be fastened to the wire line knot by means of the holder 1.

Figure 2 shows a hand-made wire line knot. Whoever makes the knot most somehow hold firmly the wire line knot-making disk 10, for example with the aid of grips 11. The knot-making disk 10 will henceforward be referred to merely as the disk.

Then, just with his hands, he starts making the knot in the wire line by twisting the wire 2 once, completely about the disk 10 which is provided with a channel 12 into which the wire fits snugly, as can be seen Figure 9. Having wound the wire once completely round the disk, the next step is to start twisting the wire about itself as shown in Figure 3.

Having twisted the wire about itself for the required number of turns, the surplus 13 of the leg twisted on to make the wire line knot 3 is cut off, and the wire line knot becomes as shown in Figure 4.

This way of making a wire line knot has several shortcomings; the most obvious one is that a certain amount of skill is needed to make the knot in order that the turns of the wire lie close to one another and evenly spaced if the knot is to be a sound one, which means that wire has to be held with one hand with the aid of grips while the other hand is manipulated to make the knot in the line. Obviously, in this manner, it is practically impossible to make a knot with evenly spaced turns. Another shortcoming is that considerable effort is required of both hands.

Another serious problem posed by this method is the damage which may be caused by the heat generated by hand-twisting the wire. Owing to the poor distribution of force, since all of the force is applied to one small area, plus the fact that usually the force applied is much greater than is really needed for such method does not enable just the force needed for the twisting to be applied, the small zone upon which it is applied becomes heated and may even reach temperatures which can adversely affect the properties of the steel from which the wire is made. Since wire lines are made of special steels, often heat-treated to increase their load-bearing resistance, it is not advisable to let them become overheated for they become prone to failure.

These and other kinds of drawbacks may be overcome by use of a wire line knot-making tool 4 shown in Figures 5, 6 and 10. As can be seen from Figures 5 and 6, the wire line knot-making tool 4 consists of a body 9, the ends of which are bent as shown in Figure 5 so as to enable the wire to pass between the bent end 5 and the body 9. The two holes 14 at the bent end 5 match up with two holes 15 in the body 9 of the tool 4, so as to enable a U-shaped stop wire line 6 to pass therethrough. At one of the sides of the tool 4, close to the bent end 5, lies a wire twister 7. Completing the arrangement, as shown in Figure 6, there are two notches in the side opposite to that of the wire twister 7 a little below the bent end 5, which notches form the knot angle altering device 8.It should be mentioned that these two notches that make up the knot correcting device may lie in any part of the body of tool 4 provided they do not hinder the making of the knot. The two notches are separated by a projecting portion 8A of the body, serving as a pin on which a disk 10 may be mounted, as will be described below.

It is quite easy to work with the tool 4. To begin with, starting from end X of the free leg of wire 2, a length XY is measured off equal to the number of turns of wire needed to make the knot, Y being the point on the free leg of wire 2 representing the end of the length needed to make the knot. To make work easier there are some marks made on the body 9 of the tool 4 to represent standard distances taken up by certain numbers of turns. For instance in Figures 6 and 10 there are marks of distances to be covered by four, eight and sixteen turns of the leg of the wire, but any other distances and number of turns could have been chosen, those shown being just the most common.

Having decided upon the length wanted, a full turn of wire 2 should be made about the disk 10, starting from the point Y and running inside the disk channel 12.

It should be noted that disk 10 is not part of the tool 4 but is a part of the wire line knot itself.

The next step is to pass the wire 2 through the space between the body 9 and the bent end 5 of the tool 4 and then to insert the wire line stop 6 through the hoies 14 and 15 so as to prevent the wire 2 from getting out. With the wire 2 thus positioned between the bent end 5 of the tool and the rest of the body 9 of the tool, the protruding end of the wire passing the wire bending guide 7, referred to as the wire twister, is bent back on itself through 1800 to form a U portion of the wire which can then receive a disk 10 with the groove of the disk receiving the bend in the wire so as to trap the disk in place in the U-bend. Clearly, in order to allow the disk to be inserted, it is necessary to draw the wire outwardly of the gap between portions 5 and 9 to some extent (in order to clear the bend in the wire from the bending guide 7 in which it was formed).

Also note that the disk 10 must be borne by a part 17, which we shall refer to as a spindle, shown more clearly in Figure 8. With the disk 10 then held on a spindle 17 as shown in Figure 10, the free end XY can be positioned so as to be perpendicular to the rest of the run of the wire 2, and below it (i.e. between that run of the wire 2 and wire bending guide 7) as shown in Figure 10. Also note that the disk 10 must be borne by a part 17, which we shall refer to as a spindle, shown more clearly in Figure 8. Here it should be mentioned that the wire line stop 6 shown in Figure 7 may be a piece of the wire 2 itself, cut off before starting, and bent over by hand into a U-shape.

Next, start making the wire line knot. The spindle 17 must be firmly held with one hand while the other hand rotates the tool 4 about the stretch of wire 2 that has come through the space between the body 9 of the tool 4 and the bent end 5. This rotation is shown in Figure 10 by the arrow MN. Once rotation commences, the wire twister 7 begins to exert a steady force upon the stretch XY of the wire, obliging it to bend. Upon completion, all of the stretch XY of the wire 2 will have been twisted as shown in Figure 4, and no surplus thereof will need to be cut off.

It may be that, after the wire line knot has been made, its arrangement may be as shown in Figure 11 where the knot is not square with its longitudinal centre line.

If so, this must be remedied and this is done by inserting the entire disk 10 in the correcting device 8 with the pin 8A inserted in the hole in the disk 10. The notches thus act as the knot angle correcting device 8, as shown in Figure 12. By applying a little force in the direction shown by arrow GH, the angle of the knot axis relative to the centre line of its end loop can be easily corrected. Area 16 of the tool 4, an area which will be in contact with the knot, can also be covered with some kind of plastic or like material as shown in Figure 12, as a means of protecting the wire from being damaged during the operation of correcting the lie of the knot, by keeping the wire away from the harder material of the body 9 of the tool 4.

From the above it can be seen that the wire twister 7 constitutes a guiding blade projecting longitudinally beyond the end of the tool body 9, and it serves both as a guide about which to form the initial bend in the wire 2 to receive the wire line disk 10 and also a thrust member which can exert force on the wire run XY during the knotforming rotation of the tool 4 relative to the stationary disk 10 (held manually on the spindle 17).

Use of the tool 4 of this invention has several advantages. The first and most obvious one is that the tool is easy to make, for instance from sheet metal. Other advantages that might be mentioned are the evenness and uniformity of knots along a wire line, and the fact that less effort is needed to make them and also that they can be made swiftly.

Claims (5)

1. A tool for twisting wire or the like, including an elongate body having one of its ends bent so as to enable a wire to pass through a space between the bent end and the rest of the body, said bent end being provided with at least two holders which are in register with the holes in said rest of body so as to allow a wire line stop to pass through them, said wire line stop thus serving to prevent wire from slipping out after having passed through the space between the rest of the body and its bent end, wherein said tool is provided in one of its sides with a wire bending guide about which wire can be bent when said tool is rotated at right angles to the part of the wire that passes through the space between the bent end and the rest of the body of the tool.

2. A tool according to claim 1, wherein said tool body is provided with notches which receive a knot of the kind used in oil well wire work provided with a disk, the hole in the disk being slipped over a portion between the notches serving as a pin to enable force to be applied at right angles to the centre line of the wire in order to square the knot with such lengthwise centre line.

3. A tool according to claim 1 and 2, wherein a part of it is covered with plastic material in order to reduce friction between wire and the body of the tool.

4. A tool according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein said tool body is formed of sheet material bent at one end in order to define said bent end, and wherein said wire-bending guide is in the form of a blade projecting parallel to the said rest of the tool body adjacent to the bend end and extending beyond the bent end of the sheet tool body.

5. A tool for twisting wire or the like, substantially as herein before described with reference to and as illustrated in Figures 5, 6, 10 and 12 of the accompanying drawings.