Once you remove a couple key pieces by shooting them you can loosen up the rest with a bar. It saves a bunch of hammer swings getting the muck moving. You are not going to shoot rock with it but it will sure lift a bunch of dirt.Ĭapping little rocks with shotgun primers or hilti shots works well for little key rocks after using the expansive material. Potassium Nitrate works dandy and is cheap and available. Dirt and gravel shoot nicely and you can lift and fluff a whole lot of dirt with a wlell placed slow shot. Rocks are best moved big and shooting them just makes 40% more volume of smaller rocks. The expansive plug just swells and breaks the rock easy. It is great on Opal veins too because a shot will fracture that stuff for a long way down the vein. I have used it to demo concrete in areas that a jackhammer and saw is not possible. Any rock that can be split with Hilti shots can be cut by hand with just a little more effort. Most rock can be split with a hammer and chisel by scoring a line and giving it a good whack.
You can pull a great big one out with a gin pole for nothing. You can move a hell of a big rock with a bar and some smarts. I have never heard of shooting boulders in a gulch. Rocks that can't be moved by a bar are generally moved with a gin pole.
