It blows sideways at you when the oil or water comes shooting ... He could be sent to clean the rig manager’s — the “tool pusher’s”— kitchen. The roughneck’s iconic tools are the ...

the iron roughneck uses a rotary table and torque wrench(es) to make up or break down pipe. What was once an extremely dangerous process on the rig floor has now become almost completely automated ...

Nimeck, who started in oil as a 14-year-old roughneck on the Alberta service rigs, believes that prosperity is one of Alberta’s birthrights, as long as hard work is part of the mix.