I thought that only happened in cartoons

[sd455dan]

Dad's theory on doing anything. "if this is enought, a lot more will be better" When blowing stumps there wasn't a lot left to pick up!

Similar to the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Think you used enough dynamite there Butch...


Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid "Train explosion scene" - YouTube


Way back when I much younger -worked on an oil exploration crew.

Part of the time working as a "Shooter" they used about 40lb. of class A dynamite per charge that the drillers would set up for us.
Occasionally the charge would float up in the hole..., We always stayed in the truck when the recorder would fire the charges after we connected to the blasting cap wires and armed the system.
Sometimes it would lift a good 10 foot circle up a couple feet or worse the hole would blow and then all that rock/ dirt would come down dent the truck and even shattered a windshield once .

There was something exciting about shooting off a couple thousand pounds of class A in a day though.

Sorry to hear the Lady was injured. Still don't understand how she thought it was a candle

 

[Doofy]

Similar to the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Think you used enough dynamite there buddy...


Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid "Train explosion scene" - YouTube


Way back when I much younger -worked on an oil exploration crew.

Part of the time working as a "Shooter" they used about 40lb. of class A dynamite per charge that the drillers would set up for us.
Occasionally the charge would float up in the hole..., We always stayed in the truck when the recorder would fire the charges after we connected to the blasting cap wires and armed the system.
Sometimes it would lift a good 10 foot circle up a couple feet or worse the hole would blow and then all that rock/ dirt would come down dent the truck and even shattered a windshield once .

There was something exciting about shooting off a couple thousand pounds of class A in a day though.

Sorry to hear the Lady was injured. Still don't understand how she thought it was a candle

I think common sense has either been bred out of people or that the reasoning process has shriveled from lack of use. Scary!

 

[the old grind]

I think common sense has either been bred out of people or that the reasoning process has shriveled from lack of use. Scary!

I don't know about Alaska, but here in the midwest "BOTH". Been studying the progression for over 60 years.

 

[YLee Kioti]

Five pages and no one remembered our legendary hero?
Well OK guess I'll be the one to do it.

 

[flyerdan]

Five pages and no one remembered our legendary hero?
Well OK guess I'll be the one to do it.

That's what you get when you buy ACME instead of DuPont.

 

[dstig1]

We were blowing up some friend's model ships with small firecrackers in the yard one summer day. My father came out and watched. The models would bounce a bit, but not much damage. Dad was, among many things, a demolitions officer in a combat engineering battalion in WWII. He showed us how to pack some dirt around the firecracker and put a large rock next to it to direct the force of the explosion into the model..... WOW! It split the boat in half! That ship was SUNK!!! THANKS, DAD!!!! :laughing:

Ha! I had a similar experience as a kid. but we didn't have any help from Dad for this one...

A friend and I were setting up to blow up a model airplane with a couple firecrackers. We wanted this thing to blow up well, so we put one firecracker into the afterburner on the rear (like an F15? type jet) and one in the cockpit. Sealed them in with glue. Then we sealed every crack with glue. Now we wanted this to all happen "mid air", so we rigged up a clothes line from a tree limb maybe 6-7' off the ground (step ladder) down towards a stake in the ground, and drew it reasonably taut. Took a small hardware hook and screwed it into the top of the plane to hang on the line. A few dry runs to get the hook in the right place so it slid down the rope nicely and we were ready to light it. We had also put some lead sinkers in the front so it had some mass to slide down the rope. Lit the one in the rear and didn't have time to get the other one so sent it quickly down the rope. BLAM! It blew up near mid span and absolutely disintegrated. We spent 30 min looking for parts in the grass and never found anything. I mean it was so perfect I couldn't believe it worked as nothing you do as a kid like this ever works out right. Yep, even 40 yrs later i can't quite believe it... :firecracker: :drink:

 

[MossRoad]

The following story is not meant to be funny, but illustrates how unsupervised kids with fireworks can cause a catastrophe....

A friend of mine and his buddy were about 12, over at the buddy's house, blowing up models. They had an aircraft carrier. So they packed it full of firecrackers and bottle rocket heads and floated it in the creek behind the buddy's house. Then they thought it would be cool to have flames, so they poured out a can of gasoline onto the aircraft carrier. Then when they tried to light it, the lighter didn't work. So they walked to the house and got some matches. When they came back, they lit a match and threw it at the boat.....

Well, WHOOSH! The entire creek lights up about 50' down from them. While they were gone, the gas moved downstream. So now there's a 6' wall of flame about 50' long moving down the creek setting shrubbery on fire as it passes each subsequent piece of property. They ran inside and told the kid's mom. She comes out to look, eyes get huge, and she runs back in and calls the fire department. Takes the fire department about 5 minutes to get there, and several minutes to get to the back yard. By then, the fire is about 100 yards down the creek and starting to diminish.

Fortunately, it was a very wet area, the bushes were green mostly, and about all of it went out before the fire department got there. However, they had to go through about 10 yards and spray down smoldering shrubbery and such.

Both kids were charged with arson.

The charges were eventually dropped, and their parents had to pay some fines and restitution for some of the landscaping. All-in-all, it could have been much worse if it had happened in a different location, a dry area, etc....

When my friend told me about the fire the next day, he was actually very remorseful and scared. I could see it in his eyes. He was just shaking his head in disbelief at how far that gasoline traveled downstream and how much fire there was when it first went WOOSH!

Now we still blew stuff up after that, but we never messed with gasoline again. Sometimes you never know or learn until you see it for yourself. His story was good enough for me.

 

[MossRoad]

Ha! I had a similar experience as a kid. but we didn't have any help from Dad for this one...

A friend and I were setting up to blow up a model airplane with a couple firecrackers. We wanted this thing to blow up well, so we put one firecracker into the afterburner on the rear (like an F15? type jet) and one in the cockpit. Sealed them in with glue. Then we sealed every crack with glue. Now we wanted this to all happen "mid air", so we rigged up a clothes line from a tree limb maybe 6-7' off the ground (step ladder) down towards a stake in the ground, and drew it reasonably taut. Took a small hardware hook and screwed it into the top of the plane to hang on the line. A few dry runs to get the hook in the right place so it slid down the rope nicely and we were ready to light it. We had also put some lead sinkers in the front so it had some mass to slide down the rope. Lit the one in the rear and didn't have time to get the other one so sent it quickly down the rope. BLAM! It blew up near mid span and absolutely disintegrated. We spent 30 min looking for parts in the grass and never found anything. I mean it was so perfect I couldn't believe it worked as nothing you do as a kid like this ever works out right. Yep, even 40 yrs later i can't quite believe it... :firecracker: :drink:

We used to use the rubber band powered balsa wood airplanes.

We'd tape a firecracker and a smoke bomb onto the main stick. Then we'd poke a hole in the middle of the smoke bomb and push the firecracker fuse through it. Then we'd wind it up, light the smoke bomb fuse, and toss it into the air. It would fly a couple seconds and start smoking like it was having engine trouble. Then about 4-5 seconds later, it would light the firecracker fuse and BANG! The plane would blow up in mid air.

The hard part was getting the balance right so the plane would fly level, and then timing it right so we'd get the most smoke out before the "engine" blew!

 

[2LaneCruzer]

We used to use fuse (and crimped cap) about 30 years ago, the fuse came in two colours and had different burn rates per foot.
Used it to remove fallen trees over tracks but used red cord and not stick explosive.
Would put signs on the track to stop traffic, leave someone at each sign, light a 2 minute fuse and WALK away, more chance of falling and getting hurt if you ran.
Leftover redcord was disposed of by burning, would just catch fire as it needed a very high temp to explode, also gave you a headache if you didn't wear gloves.

My Dad was a Superintendent at several aggregate plants when I was small; they did a lot of blasting. He would come home sometimes with terrible headaches...he called them "dynamite headaches". Seems that Nitro Glycerine is a vaso-dilator, and when it dilates blood vessels in your head, it causes severe headaches. In fact, when my wife had some blockage in her heart, she was given about a gram or so of Nitro Glycerine to place some under her tongue if she had chest pains.

 

[cqaigy2]

I believe the % of nitroglycerin determines how fast the explosion is. Slow moves material, fast shatters things, but won't move as much.

Bruce

When putting tunnels in, we'd put high percentage, straight in the center with faster caps would shatter the middle, next was top load, slightly upward, for roof, was smaller load of lower percentage, then last to go was the "lifter" at the bottom, slight low angle, larger load of low percentage would lift, fluff, the rubble and make it easier to engage and remove.