FAQ

Yes, by Alfred Nobel who figured out how to make nitroglycerin easier to transport. But that said, commercial powder sticks or powder catrridges (black powder) were used by some mines and industries others rolled their own. Here are some discriptive references:

"Three men (two strikers and a drill holder) would be employed to prepare the blasting hole "using an ordinary inch and one quarter drill". It would take a full shift for the three men to drill a sufficient number of holes which usually extended from 6 - 10 feet into the rock. Since the holes were rarely uniform the blasting cartridges had to be made by hand. According to George Stuart,(19)9 a 19th - century mining entrepreneur, the cartridge shells were covered with thick brown paper and common soap was used to make them impervious to water. The shells were not only made to fill the holes as drilled but were adapted as well to the condition of the rock.(20) "

(George Stuart was associated with gold mining in Nova Scotia from the early '60s until his death. He assisted his father in the construction of the first stamp mill at Waverley in the early 1860s. G. Stuart, "History and Outlook of Gold Mining in Nova Scotia" (unpublished paper, 1933), p. 1: "I helped my father to erect in Waverley the first gold stamp mill in Canada." See also, H. J. Morgan, The Canadian Men and Women of Their Time: A Handbook of Canadian Biography of Living Characters (Toronto: William Briggs, 1912) p. 1074. Stuart was born in 1842)

and:

"Pellet powders, made from sodium nitrate, are finding extensive use. These consist of cylindrical "pellets," 2 inches long, wrapped in paraffined paper cartridges, 11/4, 1 3/8, 1 1/2, 1 3/4, and 2 inches in diameter, which resemble cartridges of dynamite. The cartridges contain 2, 3, or 4 pellets which are perforated in the direction of their axis with a 3/@-inch hole for the insertion of a squib or fuse for firing. "