• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

  • Beginning April 1st, and running through April 30th, there is a new 2024 BMW MOA Election discussion area within The Club section of the forum. Within this forum area is also a sticky post that provides the ground rules for participating in the Election forum area. Also, the candidates statements are provided. Please read before joining the conversation, because the rules are very specific to maintain civility.

    The Election forum is here: Election Forum

Toys from the past...They wouldn't let you have now :eek

When I was 12 or 13, we were clearing land for pasture, and there were a bunch of giant old cedar stumps my stepdad wanted gone, so he got his blasting permit and we started blasting stumps apart. When the 4th of July came around, we had extra blasting caps, so we blasted various metal containers into near space. A metal gallon paint can would sail a good 30 feet in the air.

There was one huge stump about 75 feet from the house, it was probably 10 feet across the cut. Stepdad put about 3 rounds of powder into it and failed to crack or move it. This led to a more concerted effort. I was sent out to bore more holes, around the base and a few in the top. I worked at it for a few hours with the big ol' hand auger, made about 10 good holes. When I was done, stepdad packed powder and put caps and fuses in each hole. It was by far the biggest load he had ever set, but this was a substantial stump.

He lit all the fuses, they were cut about 90 seconds long so we grabbed the dogs and wandered back to porch to wait. The explosion wasn't loud, but it had a decent shock wave. Mom came shooting out the back door just as the chunks of cedar started raining on the porch roof yelling "What the $#&@!"... No one was hurt, and no real damage beyond a few dents in the corrugated steel porch roof. A few of the neighbors called to be sure everything was OK. The stump lifted about 3 feet and has a few good splits, but it still took a couple days with the chain saw and our little 8N tractor to break it up and drag it to the burn pile.
 
Got this for Christmas of '67. Dad (seemingly) was always on TDY and told me we'd fly it when he had the time to show me how. That never happened HOWEVER, I did manage to start it in the living room a few times. Mom was less than pleased about that....
00212310.jpg
 
Back
Top