It's a Powder wedgeMy great grandfather had this made out of a Ford 'TT' truck axle.In the lower photo you can see the remnant of the keyslot for the hub. The fusehole is about 2" up from the bottom.A 3/4" bore.I split a BUNCH of citrus tree trunk crotches with this thing, and uprooted many a stump. If not for the powder wedge you'd have about 6 wedges stuck in various places. When my grandfather showed me how to use it the first time, I guess I was about 16. He just made a tight cup with his hand and then poured enough powder into it to about cover his palm. This was about 150grs come to find out later. He had 2 old cans of Laflin & Rand BP (looked like the old Boraxo cans, but red) and I used those up before too long. To fire it he had a big coil of dynamite fuse. It was a little smaller around then a pencil and was a chalky white and liiked like it was wrapped in some kind of fabric. When you lit it, black oil oozed out through the fabric so you knew where the fire was! He must have had about 100 yards of the stuff but us kids were always cutting off pieces and lighting it. When it reached the end it's shoot a pretty intense flame out several inches. Great fun! You put in the powder and then ram down some newspaper on top. Just a wad. Then all you had to do was drive the wedge into the stump or log maybe 2" or so. Talk about airspace. If the wood was green, or really wet you needed to put a piece of wood on top of it or against it if it was laid down. If you didn't the wedge might shoot out a ways. If the wood was dry you didn't have to mess with that. I guess the explosion drives the wood that's inside the bore like a bullet down through what you're trying to split. Blowing a stump in the ground was to merely break it in half, or maybe even thirds if it was a big one. Great grandpa had Percherons (Big Joe and Boots) and with a stump split like that, after being chained up they could pull away the half and roll the roots out with it. Then get the other half going in the other direction. My grandfather got lazy and when they cut down a rotten tree he'd just plant the new one next to the old stump, which would eventually rot. However! After my introduction to the powder wedge we didn't leave any trunks in the ground.. Grandpa had a Ford Dexta Diesel tractor but it's 3 cyl Perkins wasn't going to pull out a stump without having it blown first. Nice tractor, but it was just to pull stuff around. Speaking of those horses, my grandfather told me that on occasion the San Timoteo creek would overflow it's banks and would put sand and silt into the orangegrove. So his job was to hitch up the horses to the Fresno and commence scraping. What he said he did a couple times was to tip the Fresno until he had such a load that the horse's chests were about on the ground they were pulling so hard, and then he'd stop'em. After they'd stood there all relaxed for awile (with all the slack out of the harness and chains), he said he'd take a cottonwood switch he'd cut and smack'em on the butt! What would usually happen was they'd bust the singletree or snap one of the chains. Oh well. Done for the day! He said his dad HAD to know what was going on, but he said he never got in trouble for it. ..............Buckshot