My paternal grandfather was a western PA coal miner wayback in the day. He came to the US right around 1900 at the age of 12 and went right into the mines. He was eventually promoted to “Shot Charge” and was responsible for setting the TNT charges in the mines. Back then, he would just go to the company store and buy his TNT there, and kept his stock at his house. In addition to his work in the mines, he was regularly called on by local farmers and property owners to clear stumps.
My cousin and I found an old crate of TNT, with 10 sticks left in it, sweating nitroglycerine, at Grandpa’s work shed, and we gingerly carried it to the back field, and used a 30.06 to blow it up. Took 3 shots; was the biggest explosion I’d ever heard or seen.
Police and fire depts showed-up, and gave us hell. We had to pay for a lot of blown-out/cracked farmhouse windows at nearby farms. I couldn’t hear squat for 2 days. It was fun, though.
I had a boss and he told stories that even in the 1960’s you could get TNT at the hardware store.
I was on a project in 2010(?) where we had a bunch of excess explosives. We bundled it up on the remote Alaskan beach to blow it up and dispose of it (about the size of a 5-gallon bucket). It was loud, but I was surprised at the lack of damage to the rocky beach.