The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1894-02-06
VALUE OF DYNAMITE.
The Many Useful Purposes Which
It Serves.
HARMLESS and Safe to Handle If Precau-
tions Are Taken = Both Heat and
Percussion Needed to Explode
It-Methods of Manufacture.


Dynamite is name that, to the ma
iority of people, Is synonymous with
murder, ruin and anarchy. In reality
it is very safe and useful commodity
when properly handled, and will not
explode except under peculiar condi-
tions. When a match is applied it will
merely burn and sizzle as the ordinary
red fire does, says the Providence Jour
nal, and ninety-nine times out of a
hundred it may be thrown from the
top of a building without doing any
harm. To explode the substance there
must be the heat and conclusion com
bined, and this can be obtained only by
the use of the dynamite cap or fulmin-
ate of mercury, discharged either by a
lighted fuse or by the passage of an
electric current.
The explosive substance itself is a
mass of sawdust or lamp black soaked
in nitro-glycerine. Either of these two
preparations is called dynamite There
is another, the latest explosive yet in
vented, which is obtained by mixing
the nitro-g1ycerine with gelatine, or
any suitable g1utinous substance.
This is called forcite, and has the
double advantage over dynamite of be-
in its working. The dynamite is made
up in sticks or cartridges, generally of
half pound weight, and held in hol-
low pape cylinders eight inches long
and one and quarter inches in diame-
ter. For shipment these sticks are put
up first in ten-pound packages, and
then five of these packages are placed
in a strong wooden case, and in that
bulk they are sent out from the facto-
ries to the selling agents. 1t is not
brought here by train, and neither is
ordinary gunpowder, for that matter,
because none of the railroads which
, run freight lines in Providence will
carry any kind of explosives. But the
dynamite is brought as far as Acton,
Mass, in the freight cars, and then
carried from there in four-horse teams
It takes the team day and half to
make the trip, and the selling parties
pay the carriage. Of course there is
more or less of the stuff Struggled in
here by train; sometimes it comes
marked as soap or some equally harm
less commodity, and the freight hand
lers throw it around accordingly, and
very frequently workmen who are going
a short distance by train out of town to
do some blasting take enough with
them in valise to cause fuIlhedged
modern railroad horror if it should
go off.
In the retail stores, where the dyna-
mite is for sale, there is no unusual
precaution taken in the storing of it.
1t is kept under the counter or on the
shelves, very much the same as COM
mon salt is; only the dealer is very
careful to keep his dynamite cartridges.
at one. end of the store and the dyna-
mite caps at the other. The latter is.
the more dangerous of the two, and it
is when they are brought together
that dynamite is a most excellent
thing to keep away from. It is the cap
and the cartridge that are so often con-
founded in the accounts of explosions,
etc. The prevailing idea about Anar-
chist Lingg's death is that he exploded
a cartridge in his mouth; instead it
was the much smaller but just as dead
ly cap.
The explosive retails for anywhere
from twenty-five to sixty cents a
pound, according to the percentum of
nitro-glycerine with the sawdust or
lampblack. The uses to which the
dynamite is put in everyday work on
the farms, lodges and highways are
many, for simple rock blasting, remov-
ing powders, breaking up iron, clear
ing tree stumps and shattering ice and
frozen ground. 1t has been frequent
ly used at Benedict pond, where it's ex-
plosion under water, after a drowning
accident, has brought to the surface
some body that could not be secured
with the dragging irons.
If the charge is to. be used under
water or in break ing up ice the cap
has to be made water-tight where the
fuse enters before it is inserted in the
cartridge by filing in the opening
with tar or some kind of grease.
Water does not injure the dynamite,
but it must be kept from the fulmin-
ate. The powder is injured, however,
and its power greatly diminished by a
low temperature. High explosives
freeze at a temperature of forty de-
grees to forty-three degrees, Fahren-
heit, and when in Nthis condition will
explode, if at all, with but little effect
| So to use them in cold weather the
workmen have some contrivance fol-
warming the cartridge, either by leav
ing it in an iron kettle which is i'm
mersed in larger one containing hot
water, or by burying it in sand heated
to temperature of seventy degrees
Carelessness in this part of the worl
has on several occasions resulted in {
premature explosion and accident, fol
while both conclusion and heat arr
generally necessary to produce any re
suit, either one of the two agents alon'
may do SO, as was the case in the re
cent catastrophe at Santander.
There is one rule of safety that is al
ways needed in blasting experiments
If the charge fails to explode after tn
fuse has been lighted or the curren
turned on the operator will never dil
it out to find the reason why-it is to