Tamp

A heavy wooden tool used to compact soil. A tamp consisted of a handle for grasping the tool and lifting it vertically off the ground and a heavy flat bottomed ram that when driven downward would compact the soil. Tamps were used to solidify freshly dug soil composing a parapet or other earthen structure.

In military mining a tamp was a seal within a mine gallery leading to a powder chamber that prevented the force of the explosion of the powder from dissipating through the open gallery or blowing back through the gallery. Tamps were constructed by closing the powder chamber with planks and filling the gallery with alternating sections of packed earth and sandbags buttressed by scantling shields. The length of a tamp was proportionate to the amount of powder used in the charge; a tamp had to be long enough to survive the destructive effects of the explosion and maintain the seal.

January, 2003