Originally Posted By TreddBarton:
Hello everyone, I'm bit late to this discussion so I'll do my best.  I'm a FEL Type 20 and a PA Certified Blaster.  I routinely work with ANFO as well as multiple other types of HE.  Personally I love ANFO, it's cheap and is a slower HE which makes it perfect for moving earth and breaking rock, but it does have it's issues, such as can't use it in a wet environment and it is not cap sensitive, meaning a #8 detonator (aka blasting cap) will not initiate ANFO.  You need a booster charge.  In the industry, we typically use a Cast PETN booster anywhere from 90 grams to 450 grams, but a stick of dynamite also works just fine.  Now to sent off the initiator charge, we use a #8 Det. The initiation shock needed to detonate ANFO is far higher than that of black powder.

Now, to break rock you want to have the charge inside the rock and this is accomplished by using a "blast hole".  If not, you would need ~10x amount of the charge to brute force the rock into cracking. Same thing with knockings down trees with dynamite.  You can precision slice a 8" green tree with one stick of dynamite if you have a blast hole, while that same tree with no blast hole would require 3 sticks to brute force if you just taped to the side of the tree.  Rocks are the same way.

Lastly, commercial ANFO (premixed and typically purchased in 50lb for smaller jobs) is WAY more powerful then home-made stuff to such a degree you can't really compare the two, so keep that in mind when calculating how much you need.

In most states and federally, it's legal to manufacture and detonate HE without a license. BUT, you can't transport it, store it overnight, or use it commercially for profit, however many counties and communities have banned the use of explosives for non-FEL's, so keep that in mind.

In this Google Drive folder we maintain:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Ts9DTGKJ7j9lO_lbNqP_5ajH5riUgp0x

There's a file called HE Gov.pdf that has a wealth of information about explosives and their uses.  It's a great read.