If you live in the UK it is very unlikely you have much experience with explosives, unless you are a terrorist or work in a quarry. So read on ...
This happened a long time ago. I had a friend, Richard, who worked in a small private quarry who was helping me rebuild a huge ruin I had very foolishly bought in the middle of nowhere (see Ruins above)
Now everybody knew Richard because he was a really competent, nice guy who would do anything for anybody. In particular, if one of the local builders or demolition contractors had a problem that could be solved with a big bang they would ring him up and he would pop round.
I guess that officially all the explosives were stored in a seriously protected mini fortress at the quarry. In practice, however, they were mostly stored in a big rubber bucket in the boot of his car - maybe twenty or thirty sticks of dynamite. Enough to bring down a small street. Plus a box of electrical detonators, a length of electrical cable and an old 12 volt car battery.
This may seem a little casual but these were different times - the idea you would wear a safety helmet or a bright green vest would have been laughed to scorn. As would risk assessments and all of the other box ticking
Similarly, the big dramatic plunger that you see in all films involving explosives was absent - hence the old car battery.
On this particular day, Richard got a phone call from a builder who had hit underground rock. They chatted on the phone and discussed the holes that needed to be drilled and a couple of hours later we arrived on site.
Richard squeezed a detonator into each stick of explosive and then wired it to the cable and carefully pushed it down its respective hole.
Now the cable probably started life 100 yards long but every time you blow something up you lose maybe 5 yards. And Richard had blown up a lot of stuff so when the cable was unwound it meant we were all only about 20 feet from the hole. Seriously close.
The obvious danger was large lumps of rock being blown up into the air and landing on our heads. The idea of going off to buy another cable never occurred to us. Then somebody had a brilliant idea. This was a building site and for some reason there was a big piece of solid steel sheet about 6 feet square and maybe an inch thick lying about. Why not put it over the hole to contain the blast?
It was seriously heavy (calculations suggest half a ton) but we were all big and strong so we managed it. After the usual fiddling about Richard touched the bare wires onto the battery and there was an almighty bang. The half a ton of steel must have gone up at least 100 feet in the air and fluttered in the sky like a piece of paper dropped out of a bedroom window.
We all watched as the steel sheet slowly descended, glinting in the sun. Fortunately it landed on the other side of the hole.
Job done.
Bob Cory
Modified on 22/01/2025 at 13:53:58 by ℗ Bob Cory