How Low Can You Go?

[EOU]

Apparently our knife sharpening friends in Australia and New Zealand aren't the only ones reaching new lows. The Russians  in Murmansk were as well although, unlike our friends on the far side of the equator, they weren't concerned with BESS scores but rather bore holes. The picture above is the cap for the 9" diameter and 40,230' deep bore hole and it only took the Russians 19 years, 1970-89 to finish the job. While the rest of the world was engaged in traveling to the moon and probing space, the Russians were drilling holes. They were successful in drilling the deepest hole...ever. 

One thing we found interesting about this story; the temperature at the bottom of this hole is 356° F. That's about perfect for tempering high HRC blades. Our knifemakers and bladesmiths are just going to need a real long rope to take advantage of it.

[grepper]

I have no idea how to massage this post into anything remotely related to knife sharpening, but it's pretty cool anyway.  That hole is the deepest, but not the biggest.  Apparently our Russian friends really dig digging. Here is the world's second largest hole:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura..._hole.html

There are some other super massively gigantic holes to ponder too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__ffxYqUdt8

One of the mines was started in the late 1800's and dug with pick axes.  There you go.  How did they keep their pics sharp?

[Bud]

My brother in law in Oklahoma used to work on a rig in Oklahoma that drilled 30,000 foot deep gas wells month in and month out. They used to drop a quarter in the hole after they finished a well because by the time it hit bottom it was worth 50 cents.

[Jan]

In Bavaria, Germany the KTB superdeep borehole was drilled to a depth of 9100 m reaching temperatures more than 260⁰C (500⁰F). I visited the site two times.

Jan