Tiw International Incorporation
Office in Loyang

The year was 1917, Humble and Goose Creek, and the newly-developed rotary oil drilling technique caused a boom in the Oil Patch at Sour Lake, Texas. The Pearce family soon became flooded with requests to duplicate the standard design. The second event was the birth of my father, L.M. Pearce, Jr.” A TIW office was set up in Houston and the first machine shop was opened in Goose Creek, which is now part of the modern refining and steel center called Baytown.
But this improved drilling technology brought a need for more maintenance work and new products. If cable tool drilling was the “horse and buggy”, then rotary drilling was the “Model-T”. For decades, drillers had utilized a cable tool method to bore into the earth - a method that was slow and broke down easily and often. Towns filled with roughnecks sprang up overnight as people rushed to harvest the “black gold” which lay under the Gulf Coast marshlands. As the orders came in, but I wonder if you could make one with larger fins”.
In the early days of rotary drilling, “The last one you made for me was great, or, I need one with smaller wings”, “Hey, one roughneck would say, “fish tail” bits were popular among rotary drillers. On April 10, machinery, cash, pooled their abilities, who were blacksmiths and machinists, members of the Pearce family, and knowledge to found Texas Iron Works. The tools to be used in this process had to be developed by people who not only had the shop tools to create them, but also had the knowledge of the machinery and the imagination to invent new ways of drilling for oil. Steve Pearce, President of TIW says, “There were two significant events which took place during the year 1917. Rotary drilling was three to four times more efficient than cable tool drilling, and promises of faster drilling and faster payoffs caused quite a clamor throughout the region.
Louis M Pearce Jr.
Louis M Pearce Sr.
It was easy enough to make the modifications on the f