The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1898-07-28
GUNPOWDER FOR OUR NAVY.
The New SmOkeless Kind Is Soon to
BE Used - How Ii Is
Manufactured.

some account. 1t is the means TO an
end. Gunpowder drives the shot that
the man behind the gun aims at the
enemy, and enables him, if he be as
skillful as most of the marksmen in
the United States navy are, to demolisll
his target, whether it be bird or a man
or ship or fort.
Ordinary gunpowder, the kind one
buys in store, is mechanical mixture
of rs parts of saltpetre, Is parts of char
coal and 10 parts of sulphur. The prop
critics such a mixture possesses may be
altered to any desired extent by chang
ing these proportions; the method of
treatment also modifies the character
of the resulting powder, and the size
and shape of the grain likewise infu-
ence the action of gunpowder.
To manufacture gunpowder quanti-
ties of each ingredient are thoroughly
mixed in the proper proportions, in a
machine called mixer; the compost
ton resulting from this is known as
green powder. Green powder must be
subjected to the incorporation process,
an extremely dangerous one, for ii ia
in the incorporating room that nearly
all powder mill explosions occur.
The green powder is put into a tub,
where heavy runners of three or four
tons weight grind it into a homogene-
Gus mixture. After incorporation the
mill cake" as it is called, is crushed
between gun metal rollers, then it is
subjected to different treatment, ac-
cording to the kind of powder to be
produced, whether grain, pebble or
prismatic. Granulated powder is the
ordinary grain gunpowder of COM
merce. Pebble powder, or giant pow
der, or blasting powder-for all three
are practically the same-is quite like
grain powder, except that each grain is
of the average size of a pebble. Pris-
matte powder is the kind used in our
service to drive shot home, therefore
a short description of it may not be I'M
interesting.
The powder charges for guns of the
United States navy are made up of hex
agonal prisms of brown gunpowder.
Brown gunpowder contains usually
about 50 parts of nitre three parts of
sulphur and IS parts of underburned
charcoal, which accounts for the choc-
| olate color of the powder. Prismatic
powder passes through the same proc
ess as other powders, only the grains
are pressed into prisms by hydraulic
machinery instead of being separa ted
| and glazed. The prisms thus formed
| are one inch high and threequarters of
an inch on the sides; there is round
hole, half an inch in diameter, through
the middle of each heXagon.
Powder charges for all our guns not
| using fixed ammunition with metallic
cartridges are put up in wooden serge
cartridge bags, the prisms forming the
charge being carefully piled up in lay
ers of the diameter of the chamber of
the gun, one on top of the other, SO
that the holes in the piles will be coin
| cident. Brown prismatic powder ig-
mites slowly; it is, therefore, necessary
to put into each cartridge prism or
two of quick-burning black powder in
the center of the bottom layer, next to
the breech plug. BY this means the
flame is quickly distributed through the
entire charge. Each full charge in its
bag is kept in copper cylinder with re-
movable heads. The cylinder is passed
| from the magazine of the ship up to
| the gun, where the ends are removed
and the charge pushed into the gun
| chamber. All the powder charges in
service en- board our ships are brown
prismatic, though smokeless powder is
being tried, with view to its adoption.
Smokeless powder is so called because
when exploded it produces no smoke.
| AS matter of fact, however, a light,
| thin, transparent vapor is usually seen,
but it quickly disappears. Smokeless
| powders, from the nature of the in
gradients employed in making them,
leave no residue when exploded, the
| products of the combustion being gas
eous, whereas in ordinary gunpowders.
| whether black or brown, the products
| are partly gaseous and partly solid. the
solid parts being visible in the deposit
| left in the bore of the gun, in the bits
OF fire blown out of the muzzle at the
time of discharge and in the thick.
heavy smoke that hangs about, obscur-
ing the view.
The composition of the smokeless
powder used in our navy is not known
| except that guncotton is the principal
ingredient; in all powders of this class
some high explosive like guncotton,
| nitroglycerin, the picrates or a combi-
| nation of those is employed as base.
The smoFeless powder made at Newport
for our navy is a hard, lustreIess SUBJ
stance of light yellowish color. 1t is
put up in the form of sticks resembling
vermicelli in size and appearance; that
for the large caliber guns looks like
| macaroni, having a cylindrical hole
through the stick. The largest size
stick is about three-eighths inch in di-
emeter with a hole through it about
! one-siXth inch in diameter.
| Smokeless powder is extensively used
abroad, nearly every foreign country
having some powder peculiar to itself.
| The one with which we are most ia
mliar is the English cordite. The guns
recently purchased from the Armstrong
firm, in England, and mounted on board
| he New Orleans nSa por1ita in ka;