The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-02 00:00:00

THE ENFIELD RIFLE.

Some three or four years ago many of our engi-
neers, manufacturers, and scientific men were de-
luded into going over to New York in the expecta-
tion of there seeing an industrial exhibition, Among
others so misled was Mr. Whitworth; who,
like all
the rest, finding nothing worth looking at in the
exhibition itself, tried to recompense himself for his
visit by inspecting those manufactories which most
abounded in the labour-saving machines which are
used more or less extensively throughout the States.
The two great centres for machinery of this descrip-
tion were at the United States' arsenals at Spring-
-1 field and Harper's Ferry, and these accordingly
Mr. Whitworth visited, saw the various processes
there pursued by making small arms in thousands
by machinery, and reported to our own Govern-
ment ;strongly in favour both of the plan of the
Government making its own weapons, and the
means by which it could best be accomplished.
The War-office, on receiving this report, adopted
it forthwith, and, to their infinite credit, at once
took a step which at the time even the most
strenuous friends of progress in their secret souls
scarcely approved. They sent out a commission, of
which Mr. Anderson, now the chief superintendent
of the Armstrong Gun Factory at Woolwich, was at
the head, to make further inquiries into the subject
of Mr. Whitworth's report, and with power not
only to order machines in America, but to engage
American engineers to superintend them. This was
the commencement of the famous Enfield factory,
and this is the first instance in which the English
Government have ever had to send abroad either for
machinery or men to work or make it. To their
praise be it said they at once overstepped the for-
midable though narrow boundaries of national pre-
judice, and looked only for the market in which
what they wanted could be best and easiest ob-
tained. For a short time several of the new ma-
chines were erected and worked at -Woolwich ; but,
when " Brown Bess" was no longer paramount in
the service, it was determined to create an immense
establishment for the manufacture of rifled small
arms, apart and in itself distinct from the opera-
tions carried forward at the arsenal. A small shop,
if we may so term it, for the manufacture of gun-
stocks had always existed at Enfield, and this led
the Government to turn their eyes in that direc-
tion, and, once the place was seen, their gaze was,
so to speak, fascinated. It was not at all the beauty
of the spot which induced the Government to select
it, for, in truth, a flatter or more dreary-looking
waste, save Aldershott, was never seen. It was
certainly not its salubrity, inasmuch as the whole
country is eminently damp and unhealthy ; neither
was it either its convenience of access or its vici-
nage to skilled labour, for in both these requisites
it was and still is singularly deficient as compared
with other neighbourhoods. The reason why the
Government selected it was entirely independent
of all these considerations of fitness, and due
only to the simple fact that near the shop be-
fore alluded to was a canal which turned
a waterwheel exerting some twenty or twenty-five
horse-power. The ida of economising and bring-
ing into play this little waterwheel (which has now
ten times its power of steam machinery to assist it)
settled the whole affair. Foundations were laid
and buildings commenced forthwith, and factories
the size of little villages sprang up with more than
the rapidity of colonial enterprise. Already the
nucleus of a small town is fast gathering round the
works. Hucksters' shops, workmen's houses, and
small hotels are dotted here and there ; and it be-
comes easy now to calculate when, according to the
natural course of things, " Ordnance Enfield," as it
is called, will some day become a town clamorous
for corporate rights and the privileges attaching to
its own M.P. And all these changes will be due
to an old waterwheel which the Government could
have got anywhere, and that, too, without the
drawbacks attendant upon a superabundant supply
of the pure element which turns it, and which occa-
sionally hides the face of the surrounding country
at Enfield, and places the floors of cottages and
houses some inches under water. However, we sup-
pose we must not quarrel with any cause which
produces an effect so perfect it itself, so economical
in its work, and so admirably managed, as the fac-
tory at Enfield undoubtedly is. It used to be a
general remark, and one pretty generally believed,
that Government could never compete advantage-
ously with private manufacturers, and, to do them
justice, the Government occasionally gave great
force to the observation by rashly entering into
contests with the trade on most unequal terms. At
Enfield, however, they have discarded the usual
routine. There is no costly system of supervision ;
on the contrary, everybody connected with the
place is rather underpaid. The Government only
seek there to make their own weapons, and intrusts
all the means and appliances to the hands of pri-
vate engineers of acknowledged, though unofficial,
capacity. Mr. Burton, an American gentleman, is
the working and real head of the factory, and to
his untiring skill and diligence its singular excel-
lence is due.
With such tokens of military ardour as now s 4
extensively prevail throughout the kingdom the En
field rifle is likely to become not only a household
word, but almost a household weapon. At such a
time, therefore, some account of the manufacture
and peculiarities of this most effective, but most
easily injured weapon, may be of interest, and, if it
does not make our young volunteers good marks-
men, it will at least put them on their guard against
such careless treatment of their pieces as may put
it out of their power ever to hit anything with
them smaller than a haystack.
The first thing that strikes a visitor on entering
the forges at Enfield where the barrels are made is
the apparent rudeness and inadequacy of the ma-
chinery to its purpose. It may be urged that it
makes the barrels very well, but the same excuse
miaht be advanced for non-improvement in every
stage of manufacture, and we are sure that among
the clear-headed American mechanists now at the
works are many who could at a day's notice devise
a far better apparatus for working up the iron of
the barrels than that now in use. The materials
for the barrels are brought to the factory in short
square slabs of wrought iron (with the fibre of the
metal crossing and recrossing at right angles), each
some 12 inches long by 4 broad, and half an inch
thick. These are heated and beat into a short
tube, having somewhat the appearance of a rough
and ill-made draining tile, and in this state are
again heated to a bright white, and passed between
iron rollers of the first gauge, which weld up the
joining down the middle, and, by compression,
lengthen the tube about 21, or 3 inches more. It
is again heated, and again passed between rollers
of a smaller gauge, which lengthens it still further
and so on, again and a. ffain' until the operation has
been repeate through 13 different gauges, when
the roller is complete, and the barrel—after some
two hours' manufacture—emerges at last a slender
rough iron tube about four feet long, and having a
hole down the centre the size of a large pea. The
muzzles are then cut off the " butts," or ends,
as they are termed, made up, and the process
of welding on the "cone-seat," or nipple for
the cap, commences. This latter is a . difficult
operation, and one which requires no little
quickness, care, and skill on the part of the work-
manielidtshlfdca'rooinonnitiphtnithesehueteer completes the
strengthmth rapidityittehf
metals are red-hot, the breech of the barrel with
the cone-seat is placed in a steel die under a small
hammer worked by steam, which strikes at the rate
of 400 blows a
mmeitnulte, and under which, amid a
oap terrificaois,sarfe crushed together, with
ortgionntgies,paineede.the barrels are
eoxte
oesbivoer boring-shops, -slm
rifling)ps
is where
the operation of boring (exclusive
re-
peated no less than five distinct times. The barrels
are for this purpose laid indr
drawn
machines,
andu
bend of
through
of h
tehtohr
omg,
not
forced
firstdo sizedwn,a borerst.ronias
the ben
secure
inur forcing
estrietaiet through,euraey .Ti was
hte foundsecond difficult to
boring at swift
speed is then continued, and the third at slow speed,
by which time the barrel is finished to within some
two or three thousandths of an inch of its
proper
diameter, when the exterior is turned down r
alsopet
or
its service size. The operation, if such it may be
called, of straightening the barrel is then gone
through after the screw-hole for the breech-piece
has been bored. This straightening is one of the
roughest and most unsatisfactory portions of the
whole process of manufacture. From the very fine
soft nature of the iron used in the construction of
the barrel, and the extreme thinness of the metal
itself, the least violence or concussion is apt either
to bend the barrel outright, or else to put such a
dint in its side as effectually makes an end of its
iinntshpei
teproofeteisiseesutianvohsitc lt
care, we
have already described,astoatdinyg.
the barrel is supposed to ha-e deviated from its
true line sufficiently to require considerable rectifi-
cation. This rectification is done, therefore, not
by machinery, but by hand, a workman looking
through the barrel and giving it a tap hero and
a tip there with a hammer, wherever it seems
to him to require it. In defence of this appa-
rently very rude method, which seems so as-
tounding in connexion with a bore that must
he accurate to the thousandth part of an inch,
the managers of the works point to the results
amhcaahiaireevb,4e,
breadth:
ea,edaktnlhyd.
ts
Thisy
he gt ah
uaieout of some 2,000 weapons
exactness undoubtedly
utrrautee, to a half-
looking through is
doofubatlledisl but it is
nevertheless very far f• om preying that such
mathe-
maticalnow and a
sight detects anbrought about by a man simply
knack
kthe barrel and giving it a knock
then whenever he fancies he by
mechanics are of inequalityopinion
in it. Most practical
does no good to the barrel that the process either
at all, or that its result;