[AT] Preachers and Dynamite?

charlie hill charliehill at embarqmail.com
Sat Sep 24 08:40:44 PDT 2011


I used to work with a guy that was a graduate of the Colorado School of 
Mines.  He graduated sometime in the early 70's I think.  We were working as 
cost engineers on a huge construction project
and never got a chance to talk much about mining but he gave me a copy of 
the Dupont Blasters Handbook.  It's more than a handbook.  It's over 500 
pages hardbound on how to rig charges, time sequential charges, etc.   It's 
mostly over my head as I know almost nothing about explosives.  I keep 
thinking I'll study it sometime but I've had it for 30 years and haven't 
done it so far.  My how time flies!


-----Original Message----- 
From: Larry Goss
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 11:15 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Preachers and Dynamite?

This thread reminds me of the stories that were passed down to me about my 
great uncles.  My grandfather's twin brothers both attended Colorado School 
of Mines at the turn of the 20th century where they studied the practice of 
hard rock mining (more or less.)  They came out of that experience with a 
practical knowledge of what you can do with dynamite that absolutely boggles 
the mind.  I used to think that they were just stories, but both boys wrote 
letters home, and some of those have been preserved so there is a record of 
their shenanigans.  It was a different world in many many ways.

Larry

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene Dotson" <gdotsly at watchtv.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 10:05:18 PM
Subject: [AT] Preachers and Dynamite?

    Ministers and dynamite may seem like an unlikely combination, but what
better way to demonstrate "Hellfire and Brimstone'? Probably would have been
an unfair advantage in a fishing tournament.

    Dynamite has always been a ppular tool for clearing stumps and rocks
from farm fields. During th 1950's dynamite was sold in hardware stores in
our ares. Just had to be 18 years old or have a signed note from your
father. Most of the dynamite sold locally was only 40 percent nitro
glycerine, so was pretty safe, even if stored for a while. Never heard very
many instances of shenanigans with the stuff. one that comes to mind is when
a case was set off in the middle of a bean field to celebrate the belling of
one of the neighbor's daughters.

    Early 80's I bought a 53 acre farm that was mostly wooded. Had a lot of
stumps and trees to clear. Just went to the local sheriff's office and got a
permit to buy and transport explosives. Took this to local distributor and
bought from him. Only had to keep it in a locked building for storage and
display "EXPLOSIVES" signs on the truck when transporting it. Never had any
trouble with tailgaters. I enjoyed doing this and cleared several acres to
farm in combination with a D-4 Caterpillar.

    Interesting times were clearing in extremely wet ground. The dynamite
was mixed in the hole as a slurry with the water and when set off, the water
turning to steam really enhanced the power. Once rolled a 4 foot willow
stump about 75 feet into the woods. Neighbor wanted to clear the fence line
between us to build new fence. I blew out the tap roots on the trees and he
was able to push them over with a tracked loader. Made the clearing job a
lot easier.

                    Gene



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charlie V" <1cdevill at gmail.com>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 9:59 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] Antique well, but maybe not antique technique?


Interesting combination, a Minister and dynamite.  I am guessing that
a quarter stick out in the West church yard would be about the right
dose to bring the congregation back to attention around half way
through the sermon.

Did I really have that thought??  Must have been too many old Western
movies when I was a kid

.Charlie V.



On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 9:17 PM, Gene Dotson <gdotsly at watchtv.net> wrote:
> Grant;
>
> That brings back a lot of childhood memories. As a youngster, we had a
> minister who lived at the end of our road. His sideline business was
> rejuvinating water wells in the neighborhood. His tactic was a quarter
> stick
> of dynamite taped to a rock which was lowered to the bottom of the well
> and
> detonated. Most of the wells in the area were approximately 100 + or- feet
> deep and bored to porous limestone. This technique worked very well and
> saved a lot of wells in the area. Water was usually cleared up in 2 or 3
> days.
>
> These were mostly 4 or 5 inch wells as very little irrigation is done in
> out part of the country.
>
> Gene
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Grant Brians" <sales at heirloom-organic.com>
> To: "Antique tractor email discussion group"
> <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 8:35 PM
> Subject: [AT] Antique well, but maybe not antique technique?
>
>
>> Today we had excitement at the new leases. I asked the semi-local well
>> video
>> specialist to come out again to try one last technique on the irrigation
>> well that has not been cooperating. This 10" diameter irrigation well is
>> an
>> artesian well, but it was only receiving about 50 gallons per minute into
>> the bore throught the casing perforations. In our area this is TERRIBLE
>> as
>> it should have been receiving at least 800-1000GPM of infiltration if all
>> was proper. The problem is that the iron bacteria plugged up the torch
>> cut
>> perforations. The well was probably drilled in the 1950s as far as we can
>> determine and it was not pumped for over 20 years.
>> This situation has been completely frustrating because we tried two
>> techniques to solve the water flow issue. The first technique was called
>> brushing. This involves placing giant steel "brushes" made out of steel
>> cable stranded out into something like a bottlebrush and scrubbing up and
>> down repeatedly (in this case for almost 100' of the casing).
>> Unfortunately
>> this did not increase the 50gpm that was flowing into the well. Then we
>> made
>> a tool out of pipe, an old used and then cutdown cutdown disk harrow
>> blade
>> and some braces, which I attached to 200' of firehose. We connected this
>> to
>> the PTO pump and proceeded to use it to apply 85-90PSI water blasting to
>> the
>> sides of the casing. Think shooting a garden hose into the center of a
>> wok
>> and the water then shooting out from the circumference of the wok. We
>> then
>> proceeded to drop the hose into the well and blast the inner walls of the
>> casing. This was partly successful. The flow from the well increased from
>> the 50GPM to maybe about 200GPM. But that was insufficient to be able to
>> operate my irrigation pump that requires a minimum of 600gpm to operate
>> efficiently and to allow irrigating the about 35 acres of sandy loam that
>> needs to be growing vegetables.
>> So after further consultation with my pump contractor and re-viewing
>> of
>> the well video, we get to today's activities. The Video specialist came
>> out
>> with his fan and set blasting caps with fuse line in the well. The first
>> explosion was electrically ignited and we felt it through the ground and
>> heard a modest BOOM. It then stirred up the sediment in the bottom of the
>> well, and lo and behold the artesian water flow all of a sudden started
>> roiling out of the well into the pond surrounding the well and we had a
>> lot
>> of water up out of the top of the well, increasing slightly during the
>> first
>> two or three minutes after the explosion. Hmm, looks like 500 gallons a
>> minute coming up! Does Grant want to have a second explosive detonated in
>> the well in the other 40-50 feet of perforations? Yup, you bet!!!
>> Then they set the second charge to apply force to the rest of the
>> perforated area in the casing. Another modest BOOM with a jolt through
>> the
>> ground and then Eureka! The water started flowing up at easily twice the
>> rate it had just seconds before and it was obvious from the color and
>> makeup
>> of the water that no damage had been done to the casing of the well! Hot
>> dog
>> that made us feel terrific unlike the old Wanda Jackson song lyric - hot
>> dog
>> that made me mad! Yippee! Now to make completely sure. I dropped the
>> suction
>> into the well while it was flowing this large amount of water out of the
>> well thanks to the artesian water pressure. Then I primed the Berkeley
>> PTO
>> centrifugal pump, since after all they nearly always need it even if the
>> total distance to water was less than 1 foot, and fired up the tractor.
>> Sure
>> enough, nearly 900gpm and no drop in the level of the water.
>> So if I had done what made sense to me immediately, then we would have
>> had water much sooner and at less expense. Now we need to start madly
>> irrigating and plow the ground to plant post haste for a crop there
>> before
>> the mid-winter floods on those fields. But it sure feels good having
>> enough
>> water available finally there to grow our next crop.
>> Grant Brians
>> Hollister, California vegetable, nuts and fruit farmer
>> p.s. Today or tomorrow I need to go pick up the two "new" plows I agreed
>> to
>> buy yesterday. They are 1960's models probably, one is an Allis-Chalmers
>> model 800 rollover plow with 4 bottoms and the other is an International
>> rollover plow also with 4 bottoms. Of course when I say 4 bottoms I mean
>> 4
>> bottoms go in the soil at one time, the actual numbre of plowshares in
>> each
>> unit is 8!
>>
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