Looking through some old photographs my of my MIL’s there are some showing her father blasting rock to clear land for their cabin, probably in the 1960’s. I’ve heard back in the “good old days” dynamite was available at hardware stores. I assume the government banned the sales. When did they? Her Dad DID have a connection to the coal mining industry so he may gotten it there. I was wondering about sales to individuals.

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Who are those guys?

The Organized Crime Control act of 1970 put the strict Federal controls on possession, sale, storage, transfer, ect of explosives.

It;s an update of the 1954 regs. and itself has been updated at times just like the GCA68 has been re: firearms..

I had several Uncles that owned farms from the 50’s up thru 2010. I remember several times when they used dynamite to blow stumps so as to clear fence rows or when one of them was building a road back through the woods.
Dynamite could be purchased back then from the local hardware stores or the farm coop. I don”t remember what legalities were involved, but dynamite was just another “ tool in the tool box” on the farm.

Farmers would buy dynamite by the case. They would finish the project or just forget about the remaining sticks, any you would years later find a wooden box with "sweating" dynamite sticks in it. You are suppose to turn Dynamite over every 6 months to keep the nitroglycerine from settling out of the cellulose/sawdust.

On the west side of Columbus, in the early 70's, an old barn had a 3/4 full case of dynamite that sat undisturbed for so long that the nitro leaked out completely soaking the wooden floor and 12" beam below it. There was Nitro hang like ice cycles 2 to 3 inches long. The bomb squad braced the beams in place and with hand saws slowly gut the saturated section of beam out took it to an old quarry and blew it up. Just another day!

Ivan

I remember as a kid in the early 60's our local hardware store kept it in an open wooden box right by the door. They would also sell you ammo as single rounds or by the box.

As a 16 year old kid in north Georgia in the late '50's I was buying blasting caps and dynamite easier than ammo.

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Old paratrooper in NC

I remember seeing it in the local hardware stores in Southern Ohio. I don't remember any concern about it being dangerous. The later gelatin dynamites did not sweat NG. In our area, there was a thick layer of sandstone just below the surface. And most houses had basements back then. Standard practice at that time was to blast the rock to make a basement when a new house was being built. The kids always liked to watch that. I remember the blasters didn't use much dynamite, maybe just drill a hole and use a half stick or less to crack the rock so pieces could be pulled out and hauled off. "Fire in the Hole!"

I am not certain that dynamite is still made. For commercial blasting, usually various water gel explosives are used now.

In the early 60's in California I had to affirm that I had explosives training to get a permit. From then on it was just a case of buying what ever I wanted. I used to get a terrible headache from the nitro fumes.

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Paul
Salome, AZ

Back in the late 60s early 70s the powers that be did over their explosive laws in NY state and put commercial smokeless powder on the list. Up to a certain (small) amount of gun powder you could get a "powder license". If I remember correct it was $3.00. Like said it was for a small amount of powder and being I was then shooting 4 gauge NSSA skeet it was not near enough.

So I applied and got a bigger license, that allowed me to get all I needed. It was finger prints/photo and background check quite similar to getting a CCWP. What was interesting was it allowed me to get real explosives, detonator caps and of course I was legal to transport those items. No I did not get any heavy stuff but I could of! After a few years the government for once realized how foolish that law was and no license of any kind was necessary to get smokeless powder!

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

On the federal level, the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (better known for its RICO parts), which gave ATF jurisdiction over explosives, tightened things up, but mostly in terms of licensing and documentation required, and restrictions were really toughened after 9/11 with the Safe Explosives Act. Before that, a lot was still left up to state regulation.

There are some funny stories about the left-wing crazies of the early Weatherman in New York who detonated many bombs. They tried to steal some dynamite and staged some risky break-ins at industrial sites and rock quarries, until one of them discovered accidentally you could just drive across the stateline and buy the stuff over the counter at any builders supply store in neighboring states.

Different times back then....we were just interested in clearing fields and hard honest work. Terrorism wasn't on our minds.
Gary

...had a friend not to many years ago cleared protruding rock from his driveway with black powder...

...always makes me wonder when the multitudes say to only use only safe old black powder in your damascus shotgun barrels...

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A Country Boy Can Survive

"......always makes me wonder when the multitudes say to only use only safe old black powder in your damascus shotgun barrels..."

It has to do with pressure curves and such.

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

I am 68 and I remember when you could by dynamite and blasting caps without hassle from any decent size rural hardware store. That was then, this is now.

An old friend of mine used to steal dynamite from a local quarry. They left it in sheds that were easily broken into. No one was around to see him do it.

Him and his cousin rode around on dirt bikes and blew up old abandoned houses. A couple of sticks per house was apparently their recipe.

Makes me think things were a big too lax in those days. These were 12 year old boys playing with dynamite. And apparently they got lots of it according to the stories I was told. I have to believe there should have been tighter controls even in the 50's when the whole world feared us big time. No terrorism to worry about at the time except for the home grown type.

I also remember my uncle storing a large case of dynamite in the barn on the family farm. It had a lock on it and he told us to never bother it. He wasn't gone 5 minutes before my older brother had picked the lock just to see what was in the box. Dad threw a fit that his brother left dynamite where we could get it and it was gone the next day.

My Dad used it to blow stumps in Missouri in the late “40s.




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I remember when you could by it over the counter. Then to buy
it you had to be licensed or get it through farm extension office.
Then it went further and you had to have certification to use it.
I might be wrong on some of this because I never went through
the red tape, I worked in the mines.

Just a couple years ago in a small community right along a state
high way they were cleaning out a old barn. Found a old partial
case of dynamite. Someone called the Sheriff, he called the state
and they sent bomb squad in from Columbus. They decided the
safest thing to do would be to burn down the barn ( no joke ).
That's what they did after evacuating the residents. There were
at least a 1/2 dozen guys that could have taken care of the
problem in short order. The reason they didn't volanteer was that
they were put up and feed by state/ cnty at motels up on the
Interstate. Sometimes the sweating dynamite story is overblown.
I would be more cautious of dynamite a couple yrs old that had
broken down than 50yr old stuff. I have handled dynamite,
blasting powder since I was a teenager, and TNT and Plastic in
the Army. All it requires is a little common sense.

Most people hurt with explosives were blowing stumps or taking
down dead trees. They get hit by their own scrapnel. The only
Problems I ever had were head aches from handling it or going
back in the "hole" before fumes cleared.

I grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. My Dad and one of his brothers had farms right next to each other. Uncle Woody wanted more tillable land so he cut trees and blew the stumps with dynamite. He and Dad used dynamite to break up an old concrete milk house. They would lay a stick on the concrete, cover it a bit and let her off....just cracked the concrete.

One of the neighbors cut dead trees for fire wood. They got tired of sawing so the old man used a hand auger to bore a hole for dynamite to split up the trunk. A crazy neighbor used dynamite to loosen manure in his cattle shed when it got packed too hard. We used to sit in our yard and watch to see if his roof blew off(didn't).

Thanks for reminding me of the old days.

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Bob.
SWCA 1821

Last cache of dynamite I recall was in a residential garage, about 1975. Homeowner was about 80 years old, spent much of his life prospecting in the Colorado mountains. When he went to the nursing home his sons found a nearly full case of DuPont 80% High Velocity Dynamite sitting on the upper shelf of the detached garage. Nitroglycerine had seeped out, running down the shelves and wall, soaked a work bench, and pooled on the floor. Four wooden boxes of electric blasting caps were sitting on top of the dynamite case.

A US Army EOD Team responded to the scene, spent all day with hand sprayers loaded with acetone to soak up the crystallized nitro residue, cut out saturated shelves and the workbench, hauled everything off to be burned in a controlled area.

Meanwhile, I spent my entire shift plus several hours coordinating the evacuation of a one-block radius all around, while making absolutely sure there was no use of radios or other electronics anywhere near the property.

TNT, C4, C2, ANFO, old hand grenades, artillery shells, and mortar rounds are much less trouble to deal with than dynamite that has been sitting around for a few decades.

When I was in high school in Missouri in the late 70's one of the local thugs stole some dynamite from a quarry. We were hanging out in the garage at my buddy Jim's parent's house and Jim and the thug made a deal for Jim to buy a stick from him.

So later that night the thug dropped by and left a stick lying out beside Jim's garage - right next to the trash cans. Of course before Jim got his hands on it, his mom found it.

The FBI came to my house and picked me up at about 5am the next morning and took me in for questioning. They had rounded up EVERYONE who had been there when thug was bragging about the dynamite he had stolen and offering for sale.

I was keeping my mouth shut, then the agents read me statements by a couple of others who were there and who had already been questioned. Then he told me I better start talking or I'd be charged with obstruction.

They already had all the facts including everyone who was present. There wasn't anything I could add, so I just basically confirmed what they already knew.

The thug went away to juvenile detention for about a year IIRC. It wasn't his first stint there, and I kind of doubt it was his last. I moved away right after graduation so I have no idea whatever became of him.

The whole thing sure scared the bejeebus out of me though. That was my one and only experience involving dynamite.

Had a cousin who sadly isn't with us anymore who used to work for a water well company drilling wells. Every so often they would hit rock that was a pain to try and drill. down would go three or four sticks of dynamite and a few 55 gallon drums of sand. Boom and problem solved and they would continue drilling. One day however the boss used too much dynamite and my cousin said it rained sand and rock after that explosion.

The powers that be also made things difficult for gardeners. I used to use the ammonium nitrate fertilizer as well and a couple others. They stopped selling it and the stuff they would let us buy wasn't the same as the stuff we used before that. Frank

In the 50's early 60's, the local hardware store nearest to my grand fathers farm keep dynamite in the basement of the store and the blasting caps/fuse material in a 2nd area in another building.
My Grandfather who had worked in the coal mines as a young man would buy it to remove stumps,rock ledges etc on the farm.
The same hardware that sold me a used Ruger Mark 1 .22 pistol someone had traded for 41$ when I was 18yo.
People had a lot more common sense then,never bought any dynamite but several firearms there. The owner knew my grandfather personally and understood that if I did anything stupid my grandfather would kick my butt over the moon...

Back in the mid 1980s I was a young project manager for a large construction company and one of my projects was building a new Chili's restaurant in Nashville, TN right across the street from Vanderbilt University. It had an underground parking garage and we had to blast a lot of solid rock to dig it out. The blasting company would drill holes, insert dynamite, then lay these huge, woven steel mats over the top and when they set it off it just made a rumble sound that wasn't even loud. Drilling the holes was extremely LOUD. When we were all finished I sent our final bill to the client and received a check and I signed a lien waiver saying we were paid in full. But the blasting company called me and said "oh we forgot to charge you for a bunch extra dynamite we needed". I was really nervous that this was going to be a huge bill that we wouldn't get paid for but then I got the bill and it was hardly nothing. It seems like the dynamite they charged me was $1.50 per stick, I remember thinking "I buy fireworks that cost more than that".

I lived in Bolivia 1996 to 1998. Dynamite was available in hardware stores without any restrictions. Dynamite that was sweating was half the price of the new stuff. We would take a drop of nitro, put it on an anvil and hit it with a hammer. Big bang but nobody was hurt. My Bolivian friends would take a quarter stick with a short fuse and throw it into a stream to fish. It worked, but not exactly conservation.

In the Andes, miners would celebrate the town's patron saint by getting roaring drunk then stand in a circle and pass around a lit stick of dynamite. The one who threw it in the middle of the circle was the big weenie for that year. Fun for all. The one who didn't throw it, had one less hand. You did see guys without a hand in that area.

Hollywood has given the public the impression that explosives
like Dynamite and hand grenades are a lot more powerful
than they are. I saw a reality show about life in Alaska. People
found a electric blasting cap and called troopers,they had Army
send a team into place a charge on the blasting cap to blow it
up. A blasting cap is dangerous but this kind of thing is rediculous
Before the terrorism plague hit dynamite was used by local
road crews to cap rocks, they did it all the time. Now when a
Rock comes down on road they have to use a end loader with
Jack Hammer.

My favorite dynamite story. A long one, but well worth hearing.

*Not safe for work!!!! (language)*

Dynamite? We can't even buy cherry bombs any more.

That is best dynamite story I ever herd. The only story I was
involved in was with a big White Oak Log. We had a old saw mill
that had a 96" blade. Log was to big in diameter to cut. One
guy was going to rip it with a chain saw, with a bar that would
have required ripping from both sides. Me & Bro chalk lined the
log and told them to run chalk line about 12" deep, I ran down
and got primer cord, caps and dynamite. We ran the det cord
the length of the cut, I took Dynamite apart and pushed about
1/4 stick in the cut about every 3'. We got a bucket of mud and
packed it in over the dynamite and capped the cord. We were
50' off township road and 150' from the house. Some guys were
worried and decided to go down the road about a half mile in
each direction to stop traffic. I touched it off from truck battery
50' away on side of road. We it went off it was just a muffled
thump. The mud did rain down but it split that 32' log slicker
than a whistle. You can't do that with most logs but White oak
has straight grain. Other species would bust and ruin the log.
Some of those present felt let down, they were expecting a
major explosion.

Probably most of you are aware, but DEXPAN (or its equivalent) works wonders to break up concrete or rocks. Way easier than any of the alternatives.

You can order it right off of Amazon and get it delivered to your door. No bang, no boom, but no license either.

Its also not that hard to get an explosive like Tovex, you just have to use it right away and not store it (as a legal matter). Its really nice to apply for those difficult logging situations.

...my wife's great uncle lost parts of several fingers on his left hand...and the sight in his left eye while playing with a blasting cap when he was 12 back in 1925...

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A Country Boy Can Survive

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Keep on Chooglin'

I can remember going into a hardware store that had a wooden barrel of 30-06 AP military surplus ammo. You put your hand in the barrel, and as many as you could pull out, that was a dollar's worth

My grandfather said he used to use it to blow up beaver dams back in the 60's but I never saw him actually do it.

I cringe when hearing folks say "back in the '60s" . . . doesn't seem so long ago to me.

I hated dynamite. Dad assigned me to dig out under the stumps to place the charge and then back-fill with soggy dirt. It was a half-day job for each blast.

Don't know if link will work but dynamite & dead whale is a classic

Raining rotten whale gobbets (little pieces). Gross.

Loved both the stories, especially dynamiting the septic tank. Having worked with both dynamite and septic tanks extensively in my younger days, and knowing a bit about hydraulics, I can imagine that the old Texan's story did not need exaggeration for effect.

I remember my dad and uncle buying dynamite at the rural hardware store in Marion County, Alabama and blowing up beaver dams on my grandad's farm.

I did a good bit of blasting when I lived in New Mexico in my early 20s. We built pre-cast concrete septic tanks and installed them, also laid a good bit of water line up to 12" diameter pipe. Frequently had to blast holes for septic tanks or to lay pipe. Solid granite, backhoe wouldn't touch it till you busted it up a bit with some powder. Surprisingly, when we'd have to blast rock to install septic tanks and field lines, those field lines would work great. The liquid would find and follow the cracks in the rock and we would rarely have problems with those drainfields. It was the caliche' clay soil that wouldn't take water. There's a reason those old native Americans made pots out of it - it held water great.