Made in Colorado (Winter 2023): Subterranean Boring Cuts Through Solid Ground

There’s a common misconception that the United States doesn’t manufacture much anymore. In reality, the country continues to out-manufacture China on a per capita basis, and domestic growth outpaced the global average for the first time in years in late 2022.

Colorado is a case in point. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that employment in Colorado’s manufacturing sector peaked in 1998 at 192,200 workers. That plummeted to 122,200 employees in 2010, but the state’s manufacturing workforce has steadily grown to surpass 150,000 as of late 2023.

With these dynamics front and center, this year’s “Made in Colorado” profiles illuminate 10 of the state’s pioneering manufacturers, makers of whiskey, satellites and just about everything in between. Today, we’re highlighting Autonomous Tent Co, the world’s first movable five-star hotel.

READ: Inside the Colorado Semiconductor Industry Renaissance — CHIPS Act Sparks Manufacturing Revival

Subterranean Boring Inc.

Industrial

Golden, Colorado

Website: www.subterraneanboring.com

Founded by Stu Blattner in 1980 and now owned by his nephew, Jesse Blattner, Subterranean Boring Inc. (SBI) makes tools that tunnel through earth and rock. The company uses its own line of equipment, manufactured in-house by subsidiary Golden Machining Solutions (GMS), to excavate circular raisebores, vertical or diagonal shafts cut through solid ground, without explosives.

With about 20 employees each, the two companies occupy a single 100,000-square-foot facility in Golden. GMS pursues outside contract manufacturing jobs, with SBI as its primary customer. SBI is focused on contract boring, and also sells its tools to an international market.

A reamer holds several cutters to excavate holes from 28 inches to 18 feet. One that SBI used to excavate a 20-foot-wide borehole had about 40 cutters, Tuell says.

Each carbide-studded cutter is built for durability and reliability. “There’s over 100 parts that make up the cutter assembly, and that’s not including the carbide — each cutter has roughly 180 pieces of carbide,” Tuell says. “It’s all pretty specialized material. We’ve got a source for forgings from here, the bar stock for the shaft from another company, the carbide from another company.

“They all have to get sent out for heat treating to get the right hardness and the right durability. Then they come back and get re-machined, and then we have a whole assembly area where we assemble the cutters, test the cutters and press the carbide in. It’s quite the operation.”

The market is centered on mines and big civil construction projects, including water tunnels for reservoirs. “Primarily, it’s used in mines for ore passes and ventilation holes,” Tuell says. “I can’t even count how many holes we’ve done up at Henderson Mine here in Colorado.”

Manufacturing its own cutters, reamers and raisebore machines is a competitive advantage for SBI as a contractor, he adds. “We’re able to control the cost a lot more, whereas most of the competitors out there in raiseboring have to go to a supplier for cutters.”

As SBI’s market is very much international, the company’s proximity to Denver International Airport is a big plus. “We’ve got a great airport here so it makes it very easy for us to move people not only around the country, but the world,” Tuell says.

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected].