Anybody blow any stumps up?

[Wapaloosie73]

On 7/14/2019 at 6:12 PM, Lawdog Dago Dom said:

Got into licensed blasting in the 80's. Knew a few guys that did the big jobs in quarries, and said a guy could pick up a few bucks doing small blasting jobs, that they didn't want to bother with. You would clear some ditches, culverts that would hold water and stumps. Stumps were done only in remote areas. Think of a wooden hand grenade. Then you have a nice hole to fill in. At that time Tovex, a water gel made by DuPont, was the hot item. Very safe. But expensive. The only company at that time using nitroglycerin dynamite (according to the DuPont formula) was Independent Explosives out of Scranton, PA. That was cheaper, only around a buck a pound. But dynamite has a tendency to "sweat" and once I saw little pools of Nitroglycerine in the box, I switched to the ANFO. Much cheaper.

 

We used to drill under the stump, to try to lift it rather than obliterate it.

 

But that wood really flies far when you do a stump. Really far. And high.

 

My dad set off a charge one time and it didn’t go off. He waited and waited and waited.....

 

He said after about 10-15 minutes he stood up and immediately took a giant slab of fir bark right in the chest. It had gone off.

 

As he rolled around in the pasture trying to catch his breath? All he could think of was how he had timed that so dang perfectly....