...............My Great Grandfather, and then my Grandfather grew citrus in So. California. My grandfather was born in 1906, and said his dad had it made before he was born. It was used to blow tree stumps so he could hook up his team of Percheron horses and pull them out in pieces. I also used it quite often, but not for blowing stumps (until later). Citrus trees do not generally have much length to their trunk. It grows 3-4 ft lengthwise above the ground and then branches out to form a gumdrop shaped tree.
In any event, that portion of the trunk where all the branches form around the perimeter form a wadded up snarly grain structure. On several occasions while splitting wood I'd have all 3 wedges buried, ..............and THEN what do ya do when all you have is 3 wedges?Grandpa really wasn't much help, other then he had 2 cans of Lafflin & Rand black powder. He had no idea how much powder to use. I was about 14 years old at the time, so I had no clue either.
Well, G Grandpa had a Wm Moore & son double bbl muzzle loading 12ga shotgun and a powder charger.
Later on I actually did quite a bit of shooting with that old shotgun, but it was kind of messed up so I kind of gave up on it, but that's another story. So IIRC we put in a 3 dram charge, some newspaper for a wad. Grandpa had some dynamite fuse, so we used that. It was a white fairly stiff cord. When you lit it, it sure smoked and a black oil came up through the white (paint?). Grandpa said that was so you could see where the fire was. He was a heavy equipment operator with the county and had worked with the 'Powder Monkeys' on occasion, so maybe that's where the fuse came from? I then drove the wedge into the crotch a couple inches.
When it went off it was sadly not very effective by a long stretch. So then I put in 6 Drams which is (didn't know it then) about 160 grs. This time it actually split it, but not into two pieces. However I was able to knock out two of the wedges and finished splitting the trunk. After that I used the wedge quite a bit. I also learned you needed to put something heavy against the flat end whether it was on it's side or straight down into the trunk.
One of the last times I'd used it I was splitting wood at the end of Grandpa's barn. He called it a barn but it was simply a 2 story tall, 6 stall shed. At the other end was a big ole English walnut tree that had to be 4' across and darn tall. I loaded the powder wedge (charge dis-remembered) and drove it into this chunk of crotchy trunk. Laid it on it's side, stuck in a piece of fuse and rolled my 'Wedge Rock' (about a head sized rock) up against the end. Lit the fuse and got back 20 yards or so. In a few seconds she went "ka-BOOM!!! and half of the chunk sailed end over end the entire length of the shed, and landed up in that big walnut tree!
The last time I used it was about 14-16 years ago. To make extra money a distant cousin was cutting and selling firewood. On my way to work, once off the freeway I traveled a surface street, which went past several citrus groves. One of which was for sale. I contacted the realtor about cutting down the trees and he sicked the owner on us. He was VERY enthusiastic about having this done. Come to find out later it would cost several thousand dollars per acre for the owner to have this done. That is to have them COMPLETELY removed, along with all the brush. You couldn't burn the trimmings so they'd have to be hauled. My cousin did eventually have the stumps pushed over out of the ground. Some street work was being down along one side of the grove. He paid the operator of a big skip loader to roll them out on a Saturday.
However, down the center of the grove had been a stand of Eucalyptus trees. They used them for wind breaks. They'd been cut off about 6' above the ground and the stumps were anywhere from 2' to 4' or larger in diameter, about 10' apart. Cousin Gary had a nice Huskvarna 20" bar saw (all I had was 2 little 14" bar McCullough saws) but I DID have that powder wedge!
We'd finished up the one big stump and was half way through the next one when I noticed a police car coming toward us bouncing up and down over where the irrigation furrows used to be. He was very congenial, and seemed to be halfway amused. He stood there behind the car door and said, "What in the heck are you two doing"!? So I explained were were blowing these stumps up into manageable sized pieces. Then I showed him the powder wedge and all the big hunks of wood. He was very interested in it all but finally he said, "Look, I've got to ask you guys to stop, and figure out some other means to finish. We've probably gotten 10 phone calls from people complaining about the noise". I think he was kind of wanting to see us blow a couple more, (who wouldn't) but it is what it is
Gary and I both decided to call an end to our stump blowing, and that was the last time I used it.
............Buckshot
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Originally Posted by john.k
