Manually digging a fish pond - GIF

[Frank S]

When I was a kid my uncle, who lived a couple miles from us contacted some county guy, who brought out a few sticks of dynamite.to clean out a dried up very silted pond. Us kids were tasked with auguring small-bore holes spaced at several intervals to varying depths. The county guy then inserted the sticks of explosives in the holes, short pieces in the outer ring of holes and progressively longer pieces in the circles as they grew smaller and deeper until the middle much larger borehole. Everything was wired the holes were carefully repacked with at the fertilizer and soil, then connected to a rotary switch a good distance away from the pond. From our safe area He connected a large dry-cell battery to the switch then gave it a spin the charges went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, The silt was blown out of the pond in all directions. Then us kids had to use shovels and wheelbarrows to finish cleaning out the remaining loose dirt We thought that was the best entertainment we had ever had even clearing out the rest of the dirt wasn't bad. There was an almost a perfect bowl-shaped pond from the blast.

Probably couldn't do something like that today.