Bustin' Up Boulders

[3RRL]

We often shoot guns so the blast noise was no big deal for the neighbors.

Gee, what a surprise.
That's also why I'm not worried if my distant neighbors heard a "bang" coming from my place. The .378 Weatherby Mag gives off a fairly good report...like almost twice the :06.

Larry,
36Kfps is pretty fast. Wow. I have no idea man...
Does it really do that? That's like roughly 6 miles per second or 10x faster than a .243 bullet at muzzle.

[GuglioLS]

Rob,

Typical velocities for solid explosives often range beyond 4000 m/s to 10300 m/s. Converting Meters / second to feet / second that's 16,404 FPS to 33,792 FPS. My 36K was a little on the high side but at that rate whats a few thousand feet? Another way to look at it - 10,300 m/s = 23,040 MPH

Amazing stuff those high explosives.

Larry

[3RRL]

Thanks for info Larry, I had understood the power of explosives, but had no idea of the velocities they attained.

I have a few more pictures that show how I drilled that rock to blow the top off like that. You can see the expanding Spanish Brand Bustar compound started cracking the top off like I wanted. I drilled the holes about 3 to 4 inches apart. You can see all the white rock dust all around the work area.



I also promised to upload that video of the dust being blown out of the holes, so here it is below. That makes sure the compound gets down to the bottom where it can do some good. I thought the streams of dust coming out looked pretty cool.

[bracabric]

Rob, I suppose the basic difference between your stuff and Larry's is that yours splits the rock up and Larry's splits the rock up but also conveniently moves it to the other side of the county !
Dick

[3RRL]

lol Dick,
Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. Those explosives are something else.
In my younger days I had several pounds of C-4 that a buddy of mine got from me when he was in the Marine Corps. I had blasting caps from my Dad? and used about a thumbnail amount to blow my kid's little red wagon about 100' into the air. This was in the middle of a city lot where I lived at the time! Now I stick to this stuff which goes about 1/8 of an inch every 12 hours. ;D
Rob-

[bradblazer]

Ran across this article today:
www.acppubs.com/article/CA6603828.html?industryid=48591

Here is some more on the mfg. web site.
www.daighcompany.com/jobStories.asp

[3RRL]

Hmmm, makes my boulder splitting story seem puny...