大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - These men just blew up 20,000 tonnes of beautiful Scottish countryside 鈥� but don鈥檛 worry, it鈥檚 their job!

These men just blew up 20,000 tonnes of beautiful Scottish countryside 鈥� but don鈥檛 worry, it鈥檚 their job!

8th January 2018 | By James Simpson, Area Civil Engineer, Galloway Forest District

The Galloway Forest district’s massive infrastructure of roads requires the Forestry Commission to produce 500,000 tonnes of rock every year. Drilling & blasting is one method they use to extract hard rock in locations where it is isn’t possible to dig.

Exploding 20,000 tonnes of rock in less than a second

A quarry explosion creates thousands of tonnes of rock for a new forest road.

How it’s all done

Step 1: Using a special drilling rig, an operator drills a set number of holes depending on the quantity of rock required for building a road.

Step 2: An explosive blend consisting of emulsion and ammonium nitrate is then pumped into the holes.

Step 3: The emulsion and ammonium nitrate blend is then detonated by sending a charge down the fuse lines which fractures and breaks the rock.

Step 4: The 鈥榓s blasted鈥� rock is used for the base layer of new roads or it can be crushed using a stone crusher to form an appropriate surface layer for forest roads if required.

Join the amazing men and women who live and work in the vast Galloway Forest, known as Scotland鈥檚鈥楬ighlands in the Lowlands鈥� and produce 600,000 tonnes of timber a year.