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

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-
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 idea of economising and bring-
ing into play this little waterwheel (which has now
ten tines 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
...a, mere to make their own weapons, ana intruaLe
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 sk
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 iajured 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
mi ;ht 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 bent 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 24 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 again, until the operation has
been repeated 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
ee
rwaeetalipod,ni n, g
anoan
commences.
otnhee %:Crhohinci
she - sleaattt
requires
oirs nipple for
Toinsure rapidity on
of the
strikingp ar to!
quickness, care, aid skill awtnhhoei
w e
oittit.
hkl e
op
metals are red-hot, the breech of the little
difficult
barrel with
the cone-seat is placed in a
steel die under a small
hammer worked by steam, which strikes at the rate
' and
crushed of 400 blows a minute, ushndeedr which,
terrific din, the metals are
more than the strength of one piece. to gt ls together, mwidit a
With
This completes the forgings, and the barrels are
passed toth e or ion"
rifling)s wish ere
tlte from
operation
of
the
smithy
(exclusive
boring
re-
peated no less than five distinct times.
The barrels
are for this purpose laid in horizontal machines,
and the first sized borer is drawn up through them
not forced down, as, from the bend of the
boring,
bit in forcing it through, it was found difficult is
secure strict accuracy. The second 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 also to
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 eithhea
r
to bend the barrel outright, or else to put suc
dint in its side as effectually makes an end of its
good shooting. Thus, in the processes
which we
have already described, in spite of the utmost care,
the barrel is supposed to ha.'c deviated from its
true line sufficiently to rcquire 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 tap 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-
toundi
lig in connexion with a bore that must
be
the managers accurate
to the thousandth part of an inch,
achieved, and
the
that out of some 2,000 weapons
made weekly
hair breadtli hThgiange of all is accurate to a half-
nevertheless very far s undoubtedly is true, but it is
matical exactness is brought proving that such mettle-
looking through the rbouurght about by a man simply
now and a knock then 1,./h and giving.. it a knock
e Ncts an inequality
he fancies he by
sight det
mechanics are of opinion that it' Most practical
the process either
does no good to the barrel at all) Or that its result,

THE SUN, LONDON,

if worth anything, would be better and more easily
accomplished by machinery.
An immense variety of milling and grinding stages
are next gone through, which merely relate to the
exterior of the barrel, and with which, of course, we
need not trouble ourselves hero. A detailed account
of the whole manufacture would be out of the ques-
tion, as our readers may easily imagine, when we say
that the barrel undergoes no less than 66 distinct
processes, and the whole rifle upwards of 700 ere it
is completed. The barrel, then, having so far ad-
vanced in its progress towards completion as to be
bored for the fourth time, it undergoes its first proof
test of nearly one ounce of powder and one ball.
Not one per cent. of the barrels yield under this
trial, which has sometimes, in the case of doubtful
barrels, or those which it was wished to burst, been
carried to as high a charge as 21 oz. of powder and
17 balls—the whole barrel full, in fact—before the
metal ripped. After this the nipple-screw and
nipple, with the " tang" or tongue which fastens
the barrel to the stock, are made, though not a
single piece is put together till the whole musket is
complete to its minutest detail. Before the barrel
leaves the boring room it is again bored out for the
fifth time, and, having been polished by machinery
inside and outside till it shines as bright as silver,
it at last reaches its 56th stage of manufacture, and
is taken to the finishing shop.
With the exception, perhaps, of the Laboratory at
Woolwich, it would be difficult to name any factory
room in the kingdom, not even excepting our largest
cotton mills, which at the first glance presents
such a bewildering scene of active, never-ceasing
industry. Let our readers imagine, if they can, a
single room more than an acre in extent, lofty and
well lit, in which some thousand men and boys are
incessantly employed in superintending machinery.
The ear is pained by the hum of flywheels, which
revolve in thousands till the eye is giddy with their
whirl. Miles of shafting are spinning round mistily
with a monotonous hum, the room is almost darkened
and the view completely obscured by some 50,000
or 60,000 feet of broad flapping lathe-bands, which
are driving no less than 600 distinct machines, all
going together on their own allotted tasks, with a
tremulous rapidity and ease that seem to swallow
up the work like magic, andthe first sight of which
is inexpressibly astonishing to the spectator. It
takes some minutes before th visitor can subdue the
overwhelming feeling of surprise which this scene of
activity always excites, no matter how often entered
on. Following- the barrel, then, but with care, into
this maze of lathe-bands, we see the process of
rifling first commenced. The rifling in the Enfield
barrel consists of three broad shallow grooves, with
a pitch of a half turn in the length of the barrel of
three feet six inches. The depth of the rifling is 0.5 at
the muzzle, and 0.13 at the breech, the width of
each groove being 3-16ths of an inch. There are 16
rifling machines at Enfield, each of which turns out
26 barrels a day, though, of course, the grooves are
made separately, and after the same fashion as in
the boring, viz., drawn through the gun from the
muzzle to the breech. Looking at the light through
a newly-rifled barrel has an extraordinary effect,
the rings of reflectedraysshowing like bars of black
and white metal alternately ; and by the aid of
these, as it is said, the workmen are able to distin-
guish-whether or not the tube is perfectly accurate.
After the rifling it is again proved with
half an ounce of powder and a single ball ; when
it is retouched, sighted, trimmed-off, milled,
levelled, browned, and gauged, coming out in
the guage-room at last a finished barrel, made to
such perfection and accuracy that the steel gauge of
577 thousandths of an inch passes freely through,
while that of 580 sticks firm in the muzzle. Brown-
ing, as we have said, is the last operation which the
gun undergcse and this merely ornamental process
occupies a week more than the whole manufacture
of the gun itself—namely, four weeks. The time
thus bestowed, however, is not without its value,
inasmuch as after the " browning" is completed,
though not till then, the gaugers are enabled to
detect the slightest imperfect welding or least per-
ceptible flaw of manufacture, when the piece is in-
stantly rejected, and the workman under whose
hands the flaw took place fined 35., no matter
whether the imperfection is discovered at the very
commencement of the process or when all is finished.
The barrels thus flawed, we regret to say, are sold
as old iron, but still in the form of finished barrels,
and so doubtless find their way back again into the
market as proved pieces. Than this latter arrange-
ment of selling the barrels complete, though as old
iron, nothing can be more objectionable, and we are
sure the War-office only require to have their at-
tention drawn to the matter to secure for the future
that all such pieces, before they are sold, shall be
bent and flattened in such a manner as to be totally
useless, at least for gun barrels, ever after.
But, as we intimated at the commencement of this
kl Lia.ly, Liao lobs renre.ese 117 which the -Enfield is
brought to completion cannot easily be disposed of
in a notice like the present. We defer, then, to a
future occasion our description of the other portions
of the manufacture and the peculiar weaknesses
which render this weapon above all others so liable
on slight occasions to irreparable injury.