At one point it was pretty common for farmer's guidebooks to include recipes for explosives that could be used to clear land (e.g. boulders).

It's fairly common for tannerite to be used for target shooting.

Gunpowder is commonly available for reloading.

I doubt this is common and should probably be illegal if it isn't already because it's horrible for the environment. However, blast fishing is apparently actually a thing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_fishing

For a farmer or other rural resident - getting rid of tree stumps or large boulders. No one in a suburb or city truly needs explosives.

Note that it's not totally unregulated. If you are only an occasional user, you get a permit from the ATF for $25. Plus whatever your state/county wants.

https://www.atf.gov/explosives/federal-explosives-licenses-a...

Another application is removal of large rocks, or excavation in places where the bedrock is close to the surface. I recall seeing this done in Ridgefield, Connecticut some decades ago. The excavation was right next to a building and a mat was used to contain fragments.

Haha, as I read your comment I was thinking “yeah, like back in CT.” I saw this done in ridgefield as well. My friends property was basically all bedrock about 1’ under the topsoil.

It was at the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center (which Schlumberger since moved to Cambridge, MA in 2007).

Stump removal for one. I would wager this is one of those things where the further outside of the city you get the more common it’s use would be.

Maybe I am naive, but is the ability to remove stumps without specialists really worth the risk of random inexperienced/careless people buying dangerous explosives?

To be frank I don’t have much of an opinion on either side. Just sharing how it’s used. I have heard of very few issues with people buying these historically and most/all of these require putting your name on a list.

I suspect a far greater many are injured from fireworks.

We use machinery for that now. It isn't 1823 anymore.

I am not advocating for anything but sharing how it’s used. The why would be a lot of people don’t have access to stump grinders and they can be awfully slow if you have a lot to take care of. They also are more expensive to rent and especially to buy. You don’t seem to have experience in the area but if you are taking care of multiple acres and need to knock out a number of stumps, machinery is pretty inefficient. It’s also difficult to move around if we are talking multi acre properties and not a residential less than acre lot.

Get out of here with your ridiculous 1823 hyperbole. These explosive can be very efficient and useful when managing multiple acres.

I have either full time or part time row cropped and livestock farmed for the last 40 years. The last time anyone anywhere even remotely close to me used explosives was to bust a levee.

If you're clearing multiple acres you use a track hoe and a large bulldozer. Source: the 60 acres of grown up crp we finished clearing last month.

I know the Internet wants you to think that rural life is all guns and explosions, but that's sometimes not the case. Why do you think every small town has multiple excavator companies?

>I have either full time or part time row cropped and livestock farmed for the last 40 years. The last time anyone anywhere even remotely close to me used explosives was to bust a levee.

Because the law is such an expensive PITA to comply with that nobody does it. People blew up rocks and stumps all the time before the mid 1970s.

I am sure you have but in the parts of the country I have lived in it’s been a fairly common tool used when clearing forested back country. Not talking so much farming. I don’t know where your snark comes from but it still has a place for some use cases. Sorry to disappoint your imagination. Certainly if you are whole clearing 60 acres machines are helpful. If you are cleaning up some spots here and there on a multi acre property it can be quite useful. So much snark from you for no reason.

Different experiences for different folks.

Machinery is a complete joke compared to explosives unless you're operating right up near stuff you care about.

About once a week I get pissed off that I'm on Craigslist looking for expensive tractors and expensive attachments instead of just a drill bit and explosives all because some leftists blew up some bathrooms in the 1970s and the 1970s equivalent of people like you wrung their hands over it.

Source: Clearing acreage the hard way in my spare time

Blowing up beaver dams that are flooding your farm land.

Mostly agriculture, mining, and (re-)moving rock.