The morning times. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1895-1897, 1895-11-17
BUILDING The Big guns
Wonderful Process TO Be Seen at
the Washington Navy Yard.
ENGINES OF DESTRUCTION
How They Are Constructed From
Huge, Rough Masses to the Fin
t,,hed Implement of Naval War.
Shoot Shells That weigh l,loO
Pounds.

= often as one hears the expression,
81 got money to burn" no one, per
BE has made the application direct To
III Sam himself, yet every time he shoots
Er . 80 OF those monster thirteen-inch guns
it in exactly 5000. 1t is very debut
ful whole cost OF the battle of Lake
Err jximated this mere bagatelle for
our led uncle when he is in the pyro-
tech. -lood in times OF piping peace.
t. : the voice OF one Of these thunder
ers is sensation uf a lifetime. Two years
ago, wien the first thirteen-inch gun was
firer Indian Head, the aborigines Of
that Ia ii averred that they heard the crack
of du,..s and religion was Widespread until
trey yestgated the cause of the stu
d = boom. Since that time there have
b. about a dozen of these monsters at
work al Indian Head shatterilg the atno-
sphere, blowing into the viscera OF the earth,
ana smashing twelve, fifteen, twenty. and
even thirty inches of iron plate, and the
smoke of the money he burns has been as
incense 10 the nOstrils of Uncle sam, VINO
for years has been smelling the irresistible
naval conflict afar off.
Turrc are greater guns IN the worlu
than tn. lhirteeI-inch, but Lieut. Mason.
In charge at the proving grounds, believes
that there is no thirteen-inCh gun any
where on the seas or on land that IS
better engine of horrent war than the
thirteen-incher of the American Navy.
English ships and Italian ships can boast
of seventeen-inch guns, but they haven
vet made much noise in the world. Eng
land has two seventeen-inch guns less than
she had when the Camperdo WI rammed the
ROYAL Victoria and sent her and her
milliOn-dullar battery to the bottom or
the Mediterranean. There are seventeen
ufTaWn mil IfNaFrgr n
di Laurier Lepanto, and Dandal0 and on
the English Sans Pareil, Renown and
others.
In the American Navy there are thir-
teen-inch guns on the Indiana, Massachu-
eetts and oregon. There are four Of these
roarers on each Of these vessels and there
will be four on each of the battleships.
Some of the guns for these last named
vessels are now bein e completed at the wash
ingtoD navy yard, where all the finishing OF
the guns is done. While il is true that the
rough material OF the guns is obtained from
and cast at the big foundries that get the
government contracts for that purpose the
gun IS as much the work of the experts at
the navy yard as the statue is the work OF
the sculptor.
There are more than half hundred things
about one of these big guns Of special in
terest, each one OF which is a subject in
itself The gun projected has therefore a
history and one worth reading.
The first one was made under the admin
istration of Secretary of the Navy Her
bert, in pursuance of the plan of making
formidable the Navy Of the United states,
and getting the old republic alongside OF at
least power like Italy, the shadow OF the
great Roman empire. 1t is expected, OF
course, that in time with more money
bigger ships and bigger and more numerous
guns the old song of Rule Britannia,
=, mill la is1a MOI
and that the "Star Spangled Banner" will
take the place now held by the Union
Jack This may he drea m or prophecy,
but il is cherished at the Navy Department.
The genesis of a gun is about as follows,
whether it lie six-inch- or of any caliber up
TO the thirteen-inch: When they decld mat
they want new gun the experts in the
ordnance department make the dra wings,
which are sent to the steel makers, who are
asked to bid on the rough castings. The
plans and Specifications, as the architects
saw, are of SO minute q description that
there can he no misunderstanding between
the steel makers and the government. One
of the stipulations is that the forgings shall
be of the very best material, .he quality
being known as open hearth steel
BEGINNING THE GUN.
When the Department and the steel men
are agreed the rough castings are sent
70 tle washington NAVY ldiu, MhSit euc
process of really making the gun is begun
and finished. When the pieces reach the
navy yard they are all off size, and are
about twenty in number. They are all
made to glow again with the intensest fire,
are turned and lathed and filed and cooled,
and, in fact. so many things re done with
them that the poet lauteate of America
has missed his opportunity by not taking
yhis as q subject, which, while not as senti-
mental as schiller's Lay of the Rell,'
is capable of a higher and more heroic
treatment.
The enormous and weighty things which
60 TO the navy yard in the rough are the
tube of the gun, which is forty feet in
length and about twenty-five inches In
diameter over all; the jacket, which is
about one-third the length OF the tube and
about six inches in thickness and ten hoops.
The jacket is put on first and then thehoops
In succession, so that when the gun is com
plete the greatest diameter at the breech
Is forty-nine inches and the greatest dlame-
ter at the muzzle twenty-one inches.
This means that at tie breech the cir
conference is one hundred and fory-three
inches, or nearly twelve feet. and that the
tnuzzle measurcm ent is slxty-threeinchesi In
circumference, or about five feet The Jacket
and the hoops are put on in such way as