A city wide blackout at Tue, 30 Dec 2003 08:00:21 GMT did not prevent Gunner
from posting to rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Why? When the plastic water feed line under my yard spring a leak,
the plumbers made a new trench for the copper replacement. They
wouldn't use a pull-through splitter / puller for some reason.

One faster, less disruptive alternative I though of: Thread a string
of primer cord through the old pipe, Cover up the pits at each end
and set it iff. Ideally, it would leave a temporary channel in the
ground big enough to push the new pipe through. Eventually the earth
would settle back around the new pipe.

Depending on soil composition and depth, it could indeed work. One would
have to start big with the grain weight of the det cord. IRRC..we were
using 200gr which is rather powerful. About 5/16" in diameter IRRC.

Okay, in the "don't try this at home" category comes the tale of Tom and
the Gophers. Tom, being the resourceful lad that he is, decided to nuke the
little buggers digging up his yard. So one morning, he puts calcium carbide in
the gopher hole and adds water before going to church. On returning, he
inserted a length of fuse and lit it. "And lo, the yard did part like unto the
Red Sea" as the acetylene gas blew his yard into a miniature model of Verdun in
1917. That was only half the problem. Blew part of the neighbor's yard up as
well.

Didn't phase the gophers one bit.





I've alway wondered if it would leave a usable open channel in the
ground.


Gunner

--
pyotr filipivich.
as an explaination for the decline in the US's tech edge, James
Niccol wrote "It used to be that the USA was pretty good at
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."