Can I set off the whole 20 pounds in one stroke?
Questions like this scare me just a liddle
Of course "you can".....just mix it up and shoot it. It'll go off.....BUT.
Please understand that in most neighborhoods a single POUND will bring police.....this is HE, not a toy. It shatters rocks. I keep 20-30lb on hand (an make it in bulk as needed) but I'm pleading with you TRY A SINGLE LITTLE BOTTLE before you torch off 20lb! We MOVE stuff with ANFO, we SHATTER stuff with "tannerite." I've broken boulders 4ft diameter into manageable hunks when I didn't have a machine on hand....I knocked the tops off of maybe 10 volkswagen sized bones in my yard by shaping it in sandwich baggies and shooting the bags..... Even though we sometimes detonate it with Acetone Peroxide or PETN, it's fast enough that you can shape it and direct it even shooting it with a 22-250. What this means is......"when you shoot a bag of this powder with a 22-250, it detonates so fast that the bullet is destroyed and DOESN'T AFFECT THE SHAPE OF THE PILE." While blasting these same rocks I got lazy on one rock, didn't probe it well....."assumed" it was kinda' round.....and one side wasn't. The shock wave impacted a buried 1" water line 60ft away and wrecked all the pressure gages in my well house.
You will feel the wind pluck at your shirt from 1lb at 100yds on a still evening.
I can and do shoot 50BMG's on my property day or night and have never had a neighbor complain.....nor even notice. I live on the end of a mile long private drive a mile from a working rock pit and have gotten the pit in trouble for "blasting outside of business hours" with calls from neighbors 2 miles away when doing spherical 3 pounders of Tannerite..
Also note that as a noisemaker, the Inverse Square Law is in charge....."BOOM" is more a function of placement, air conditions and size of the environment than size of the charge. I've had one-pounders make everyone cower while in another setting a 10-pounder isn't impressive. Directing the "sound" is paramount. Some friends of mine touched off a 20lber on a mountain peak 12mi line of sight from a town near me while other friends watched from Starbucks...they heard it, saw it and the folks near the blast who set it off complained "it was weak".....yet it made the local paper in a small town 6 miles the OTHER side of the mountain.
We were putting on a fireworks show once and 2lb suspended spherical charges from 100yds out started clearing the shelves on the garage wall......gallon cans of paint falling, bursting and splattering acros't the potluck tables....
Atmospheric conditions.....evidently the air was fat that nite....
And always remember the cardinal rule of HE....."if you can see it, it can see you!"