I want one: he should start selling them! On Amazon!
This thought inspired by some DIY work I’m doing on a house in trying to repair a roof leak that’s developed around a skylight we installed 25 years ago. I’ve decided to up and out through the ceiling rather than down and in through the roof and having built a platform inside the bathroom I’m ready to begin the destruction construction.
No Minister 
The log splitter we used (1980s) was not quite as fancy. Just a cast-iron closed tube with sharpened (open) end to drive into a log with a hole drilled into the shaft for the fuse.
This type
Fill with black powder (then readily available), drive into log with mallet, light fuse, run, wait for bang, find log-splitter to re-use.
We must have had the deluxe model – I recall a chain and a large staple so it stayed sort of put 🤣
I’ve heard of those new-fangled ones with chains. Never encountered one though.
I grew up hearing stories of Dad using gelignite (dynamite?) to blast stumps apart on the farm. Similar process to you:
According to my Mum and sister Dad loved doing that shit.
Oh, plus driving into town for more gelignite, ordered from the store and carried home on bumpy gravel roads in the back seat of the 1939 Chevy V8.
In the eighties I drove from East of Masterton to Martinborough twice one day, first to purchase Gelignite from Pain And Kershaw then a second for fuse and dets to remove a stump in garden.
Very successful , the charge lifted said stump around a foot then it settled back to be removed with FELoader.
Swmbo came home from work and asked why I was so guilty? LoL
The two trips were simple precautions following a farmer mate had converted his series II Landy to a convertable Chassis and killed himself on his ranch at Te Wharau, carrying Gelly and Dets.
Gelignite and cordtex great for drains.
Can a farmer still acquire explosives so easily?
Also dugout a spring on main track of Waipara Farm c1977 that just appeared, might have over cooked things a bit as it took several loads of limestone to fill the crater but that spring did not return.
Ah the memories and still got all my Fingers unlike a working bunch of brothers in our village when a child who all had some damage from trout fishing with detonators.
Could still do rolly cigarettes with their remaining fingers though.
“Lessons of life aye”
In the 80’s????
Sheesh. I’d guess Dad stopped buying gelignite back in the early 1950’s simply because the stumping was done, but we all assumed that by the 80’s you’d have needed an explosives-handling certificate or whatever it might be called.
Dad only ever referred to that once when I was a teenager and asked if he’d ever been required to show any such evidence. Dad grinned and said nobody did because there were so many WWII vets like himself with much experience in blowing shit up with explosives. 🙂
I remember loading the blasting gun, hammering it into a log, then chainsawing a slice with the gun embedded, removing it, setting it up, lighting the fuse and propelling the Plug out across the creek, never bothered trying to find the plug, possibly around age 10 and brother aged 12?
Not sure how we survived childhood