The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-24 00:00:00

THE ARMSTRONG GaN.

Thire has been no warlike invention of modern
days which has excited higher hopes, and certainly
none about which such a mystery of secrecy- has
been maintained, as in all relating to the perform-
ances and manufacture of the Armstrong gun. Like
the well-known wild-goose shot, no tale is too mar-
vellous for credence as to the accuracy and range
of this celebrated ordnance, while, on the other
hand, the Eleusinian mysteries of the secrets of
Freemasonry are supposed to be as nothing when
compared with the obscurity which shrouds all
pertaining to the construction of the pieces them-
selves. Now, on both these points, and without at
all departing from the rule of regarding the inte-
rests of the public in this matter, we think we may
venture to afford our readers a little information.
We may premise, first of all, that there is scarcely
any tale current regarding the enormous range and
deadly accuracy of the Armstrong gun which is not
more or less true. In fact, the power which this
artillery, possesses is almost beyond belief, and, if
our artillerymen are but educated up to the proper
use of these most scientific weapons, there is an
achievement in the history of modern warfare which
is not easily to be surpassed. The secrecy which
envelopes all the long and elaborate processes by
which every part of the gun is brought to the highest
degree of manufacturing excellence has, however,
become uselass, because totally unnecessary. We
by no means intend to deny that the gun under-
goes some peculior process or processes, the reason
for which is known only to one or two of the chiefs

of the two great factories at Elswick and Woolwich,
and which is so carefully concealed that it is made
a rule never to mention it even among themselves.
This we may term the common secret, for if anything
is more certainly known than another it is that this
mere verbal concealment must in the natural course
of all such things before long be broken. Fortu-
nate it is, therefore, that there exists beyond this
little mystery another and the best of all known safe-
guards under which any manufacturing process can
ever be concealed—the secret which can neither be
told nor stolen—the secret of unmatched mechani-
cal and manufacturing skill. The English are the
foremost people in the world for their skill and art
in iron work, and, taken as a whole, the Armstrong
gun is, for lightness, strength, and the minute ma-
thematical accuracy of all its many component
parts, the very finest specimen of wrought iron
work that has ever been put together in this coun-
try. Here is a secret beyond the reach of either
spies or traitors—a secret only within the attain-
ment of nations which shall labour for it as we have
done any time this century. No one ever thought
of concealing the secret of the manufacture of loco:.
motives ; on the contrary, we at once set about try-
ing to teach the worli how it could best be done.
What is the result ? After 25 years' incessant
schooling and sending our mechanics among the
nations of the earth all people still come to us for
their machinery and engines, all save the Ameri-
cans, and even they rely on our aid for their
greatest engineering triumphs. So confident are
the managers of the Armstrong factories of these
facts that in their opinion the public might safely
be admitted to view the processes of manufacture,
without the least fear that any amount of observa-
tion would ever penetrate the so-called mystery.
What these numerous processes consist of we shall
now briefly describe to our readers as clearly as we
are able to convey in words the outline of a long
and often obscure manufacture. The Government
are often, and not unjustly, blamed for adherence to
routine, to the neglect of rare and valuable opportu-
nities. On the other hand, then, it is only just that
when, as in the present instance, the War-office has
exerted an extraordinary amount of firmness and
activity in pushing forward the manufacture of these
magnificent pieces of ordnance, it should get the
credit for an amount of progress almost incredible
with such a weapon and in such a space of time.,
Not the least obstruction is ever placed in the way
of an occasional visitor to the Armstrong factories
seeing the finished gun. In fact, a man would no
more derive information from an inspection of the
long, slim, intelligent-looking piece than one who
had never seen steam machinery could make a pair
of paddle engines from a mere glance into the
engine-room of the Great Eastern.
It is in the forge shops that the long stages of
manufacture commence—where men labour at works
to which those of the Cyclops were mere jokes, and
in which at first the visitor stands aghast to find
himself involved in such a raging little world of
furnaces and steam hammers—where the glare is
blinding, and the noise, smoke, dust, and clatter
tremendous and unceasing. In one corner is a
little hammer, possessed apparently by ten devils
in steam, and which incessantly beats with a terriAe
reverberation upon a Small round disc of copper ;
in another is the tube of a gun, through a compli-
cated arrangement of water-pipes passes, to keep it
cool while the red-hot trunnion pieces are fitted and
shrunk on. In one part stands a row of short iron
tubes, about approaching which the visitor must be
careful in the extreme, for dim as they look they
are nearly all red-hot, and the air in their vicinity
scorehef like a blast from an oven. In other places
men work with a battering-ram of iron, striking
violently against the cud of something sticking out
of a furnace, the blows on which make the glowing
brickwork leap and tremble, and threaten to let
loose the mass of flame that roars within like thun-
der. On every side, in clouds of steam and chok-
ing dust, through the thick gloom of smoke, or
labouring faintly in the white glare from ardent
furnaces, men are seen busy, while every now and
then these furnace doors fly open, and the crane
draws forth a seething mass of metal, hissing and
.sparkling like a fire king, lighting up the factory
with its brilliant whiteness, and leaving a train of
glowing particles behind. Careful must the visitor
be to give these dreadful masses a wide berth, as
the workmen, protected by leather and their
faces shielded by crape masks, drag them past
to where the steam hammer thumps the reluc-
tant pile of metal into a rough semblance of its
future form, when, after roaring and sputtering
under a stream of cold water, it is wheeled off to
undergo another of the many stages by which it ad-
vances slowly towards completion. These and a score
of other similar operations, too numerous to more
than glance at, are the chief things which strike the
visitor on first entering an Armstrong factory, and
it is only after a time that he dimly perceives the
object of each work and sees what it means and leads
to. Let us commence at the beginning and suppose
that the manufacture of 25-pounder guns is going
forward. In one corner of the factory is a very long
but narrow furnace, in which are placed, as fast as
they are wanted, bars of the finest wrought iron,
some two inches square and 40 feet or so in length
In the manufacture of the 100-pounder Armstron,
gun bars of not less than 90 feet would be required,
In front of this furnace is a roller, the diameter of
which is meal to the rough-made tube of a 25-
pounder When first rolled. Directly one bar is
heated to a low white heat it is wound out through
an aperture in the door of the furnace slowly and
closely over the roller. When the whole bar is
thus coiled up as close as possible the roller is
turned on end, and the coil (termed a No. 1 coil) at
once knocked off. In this state, and havidg much
the appearance of a flattened corkscrew about three
feet long, it is rolled away to a large furnace, where
in ten minutes it is heated to a bright white heat,
placed on one end in an iron cylindrical case under
a steam hammer, and flattened down and welded
with tremendous blows till only about 2 feet G in.
long. Three of these tubes make a complete 25-
pounder gun.
As fast as the short lengths of tuba are finished
they are wheeled away into the turning shop—an
immense place, where, though everyone is busy,
the light and quiet are a relief after the sombre
glare and dreadful uproar of the foundry beyond.
Here the short lengths of No. 1 coil are bored in•
side and turned on the outside to within 1-10th
of an inch of their proper diameters, in order
that the minutest flaw, if any should exist, in
the weldina, may be 'discovered. When all is seen
to be perfectb they are again returned to the foun-
dry, and two lengths of tube placed, with their ends
touching in a jet of flame from a blast-furnace,
where, when sufficiently heated, they are welded
together by blows from the irrn battering-ram we
have already mentioned as worked by men against
the furnace in so strange and rude a manner. Three
.1•10. 1 coils thus joined make the tube of the gun ;
nut an immense amount of labour has still to be ac-
complished before it takes the field as the most
per-
fect piece of
ordnance the world has yet seen. Over
the
junction of the first and second tubes, near where
the trunnionsbeen rolled, welded, eeiersae, a second coil or tube, which has
similar turned, and finished in a pre-
ciselytube while in a mannerbright to the first, is placed on the
redil heat, and so shrunk on.
Over this again comes the coil, a shorter, mas-
sive belt of forged iron, which the trunnions are
fixed, and. while this is shrinking
pipes we have alluded to on the Rater
a jetln this manner through
the
tabe itself to prevent its heatir',
the tube of the gun is finished, but the breech has
yet to be attached. In the first, second, a.ndh
ird
coils we have here mentioned the, fibre of the
°
iron is 1 iid transversely round the gun, but w't.l,lth'-'d
e
breech piece, which has to bear the whole backward-
concussion of the explosion, such an arrangement of
the fibre would yield to the fir:4 shot. The breech,
therefore, is formed of several pieces of wrought
iron, shaped like course wedges or the staves of a
barrel, with the fibre of the iron running longitu-
dinally to the gun, and all of which are welded
and wedged together in one tubular mass under
the steam hammer. This, like the No. 1,2, and 3
.coils, is similarly turned down, rough finished, and
shrunk on to form the breech while red-hot. Out-
-side this again are two double mils of wrought
'lron, rolled on with their fibres at right angles with

that of the breech piece underneath. In this way,
then, having at the breech and trunnions a triple
coat of rolled metal, the tube is finished, and
looks like a long and very thin cannon from which
the muzzle and breech has been cut off. While in
this state its outside is turned down to its precise
size, and the whole gun given over to the mea-
surers, who, with an exquisitely fine instrument,
termed a micrometer, measure each part with ma-
thematical accuracy. Any portion that deviates
more than the 3,000 th of an inch from its exact
size is condemned, cut out, and replaced. In this
state it for the first time leaves the forging room
and passes to the finishing shop, where turn-
ing lathes, boring and rifling machines, with
many others of eccentric forms and unknown uses,
abound in all directions. Here the gun is first
placed on end in the boring machine—a very beau-
tiful and powerful piece of mechanism, which bores
down vertically into four guns at once. Each gun
' is bored twice, and each boring occupies no less
than six hours. The first time the gun is bored

out to within 1-1000th of an inch of its proper
diameter; at the second turning it is finished.
When the boring is ascertained to be perfect to
withix half a hair's-breadth the rifling is begun
. .

forthwith. This is, of course, a very simple part
of the operation, the gun or tube being merely laid
horizontally in a turning lathe, and the rifle
grooves cut in it, one after another, in the course of
about five hours. In the Armstrong gun there
are 40 close fine grooves, each of a peculiar angular
shape, about 1-Bth of an inch deep, the pitch or
turn of the rifling being slight—no more than one
complete turn in 10 feet 6 inches. The next pro-
cess is to cut a square hole or " slot," asit is called,
in the upper side of the breech, corresponding to
where the touchhoie of an ordinary gun would be,.
and to turn a deep fine-threaded screw in the open
breech at the end of the gun, or, as we may still
continue to term.it, the tube. At this stage of the
manufacture, if nothing had ever been explained to
the visitor, he would see at a glance the whole
priaciple of the gun, and when shown what is
termed the " vent piece," would even be able to fit,
load, and fire the piece with ease. The powerful
hollow screw which fits into the breech at the back
is worked backwards with most perfect ease and
rapidity with a common weighted handle. Thus,
when about to be fired the powder and conical shot
are introduced into the breech of the gun through
the hollow screw, and deposited in the chamber.
Behind these the" vent piece" of steel faced with
copper is dropped in from the opening above,, and
thus forms the breech of the gun, which a single
turn of the screw wedges up and keeps immovably
in its place behind the charge. When fired the
screw is turned back, the vent piece removed, the
chamber of the gun sponged out through the hol-
low screw, the powder and the conical shot are
again placed with the vent piece behind them, the
screw closed up, and the gun fired in a single
minute. As a matter of course, the touchhole is
through the vent piece down into the chamber of
the gun, with which it communicates by means of
a common friction tube. The fitting of the vent
piece, in order to prevent all escape of the explosive
force, is a matter on which almost the entire effici-
ency of the gun depends, and therefore it is regu-
lated to a degree of nicety wh'Aeh seems almost use-
less, till the reason for such rigid exactness is
known. All of them, therefore, are made alike,
each vent piece for each class of gun being precisely
similar in form, size, and weight. Thus a vent
piece made for one 25 or 40 pounder will fit indis-
criminately all other guns of the same calibre in the
service. The exactness of the copper ring which
faces these vent pieces, and fits into the end of the
rifled barrel, is also a matter of chief moment. It
is the manufacture of this ring which occupies the
little steam hammer with the incessant uproar we
have mentioned, so that it is always the first object
to attract attention on entering the forge-room. The
gun thus fitted with its breech piece and screw is
complete as a piece of ordnance, and has only to be
sighted for its long range, and stained to that deep
rich tint which makes it look so well, and shows so
beautifully the fibre of the iron winding round and
round the gun up to the slender muzzle. This
staining operation is soon effected by painting over
the metal with a mixture of lime water and acid,
and leaving it in a moderate oven to oxidize. The
slight brown rust is then wiped off and the gun
polished to the tint of a new finely-twisted barrel.
The screw handle and vent piece are tinted of the
richest purple steel colour.
The operation of " sighting" for the long range
is a far more delicate and important matter, for we
need scarcely say how much of accurate firing de-
pends on this. The common sight for ordinary short
range is placed in a line from the back of the breech
to above the muzzle. The long range is affixed to
the right hand side of the breech of the gun on the
right trunnion and on the right hand side of the
muzzle—to counteract in some measure by this line
of sighting the tendency which the gun has to throw
its ball to the left of the mark. This deviation to
the left, however, is common to rifled cannon of
every kind which have the pitch of their screw
turning in that direction, and vice versa. The sight
is a perforated one, and of such extreme delicacy
as to enable the most minute object to be covered
at almost any distance. In fact, nothing which can
he clearly seen is too small to be aimed at, and to
be aimed at by the Armstrong gun is to be hit.
Thus, then, so far have we given our readers an
outline of the main features connected with the
manufacture of this as yet unequalled gun. At the
commencement of the present financial year (not
quite 10 months ago) the Government, or rather, as
we may more properly term it, the War-office un-
dertook that 100 of these pieces of ordnance should
be completed before 1860. Already, owing to the
untiring energy of Sir Benjamin Hawes and others,
this number has been trebled. What may not be
hoped this year from the combined efforts of the
War-office, from the increased experience, resources,
and indefatigable activity displayed by Sir William
Armstrong, by the managers of his Elswick works,
and by Mr. Anderson, the manager of the most
important factory of all at Woolwich ? But already
have we far exceeded the limits we assigned to
ourselves at the commencement of this article, and
still much more connected with the gun that is of
interest to our readers remains to be told. How
can any judge of the efficiency of a piece of ord-
nance till they are informed of its cost, its weight,
its durability, its range and accuracy as compared
with those of the artillery it is intended to super-
sede ? These are matters which cannot be stated,
much less explained, in a few words, and, that they
may be laid before the public in a manner which
will at least enable them to form an opinion for
themselves, we must defer continuing our remarks
to another occasion.—limes.