I usually read news every morning when I wake up.
Mostly, I try to find some interesting stories out there to get my day started.
Yep, that means staying away from the depressing “gloom and doom” political news these days.
Anyway, I found a real gem of a story this morning.
Wayne Newton, the old Las Vegas entertainer, owns a yacht on Lake Mead.
Lake Mead is the large lake by Vegas that is formed by the Hoover Dam.
As an aside, if you ever get a chance to go to the Hoover Dam, it’s well worth the tour.
I recommend buying a tour package that picks you up in Vegas, then drives you out there for a few hours.
You also get to see the impressive bridge they built just to the south, where the highway now runs.
So, legendary entertainer Wayne Newton owns this huge yacht that he used to frequently get out on the lake.
Right now, the yacht is pierside at a marina.
And there it sank.
Yes, it sank right at the pier.
No one was onboard or anything.
Wayne was in a foreign country somewhere.
I’m sure the local police are investigating this horrifying loss.
Could have been someone sending a message to old Wayne. He apparently owes some people a lot of moolah.
Typical Vegas story, right! Entertainer having ties to unsavory characters and so on.
Or, it could have been the maintenance man screwed up some sort of valve lineup, and the yacht just accidentally sank.
The same is true with frac sand testing.
If you don’t know what you are doing, you results could be “sunk.”
What I mean is that with some processing, a not-so-good sand can be improved.
I had some clients recently that wanted to do some additional processing.
You see, their crush resistance test was failing.
I noticed that even after the initial washing and processing, we had some small clusters of sand that I could see in my crush prep material.
I figured that these clusters were “blowing apart” under the hydraulic press, and causing the crush to generate fines at low stresses.
For instance, we were getting about 15% at 7,000 psi. Not great.
So, I did additional processing with equipment that I have at the lab.
I inspected the sand, washed it again, and then performed another crush test.
The results were much better.
Turns out that those small clusters were “sinking” the crush test results.
With some phone calls and additional work in my lab, I worked with the client to give them an idea of how their sand would perform with additional on-site plant processing.
That close working relationship with clients is one of the key advantages of our frac sand testing lab.
We are small, but that means each client becomes a team member.
Not just a customer at the cash register.
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