“This is a blast-face, and those are blast-holes,” his new acquaintance lectured. “The active mining is going on
They sank into the pit again and passed above the rusty Quonset with the stove-stack, the powder magazine, and the cluster of machinery where the road ended. Up the slope, above the gaping hole, was a wide area pocked with other, much smaller holes. David thought there had to be fifty of them at least, probably more. From each poked a yellow-tipped stick.
“Looks like the world’s biggest gopher colony.”
“This is a blast-face, and those are blast-holes,” his new acquaintance lectured. “The active mining is going on right here. Each of those holes is three feet in diameter and about thirty feet deep. When you’re getting ready to shoot, you lower a stick of dynamite with a blasting cap on it to the bottom of each hole. That’s the igniter. Then you pour in a couple of wheelbarrows’ worth of ANFO—stands for ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.
