Arizona republican., 1904-01-03
MAKING A SHOTGUN.

The stock and forearm reach the
factory from the sawmill. cut in the
bare outline of the part to be made.
The wood is chiefly of American grow
tn, black walnut Dredominating, and
the best grades go naturally to the gun
factories. 1t is seasoned sometimes for
three years. The first lathe it reaches.
which cleverly compels the cutting tool
to follow any sort of irregular pattern
by means of a revolving model that
automatically guides it. Completely
shapes the gun stock as you
see it. After. that, other lath-
es attend to the digging out
of the bed for the lock- plate, inserting
the proper holes and notching the Sits
for the magazine. mountings, lock and
tt-plate. The smoothing down of
the roughened surface and subsequent
polishing and vanishing are all ma
chine done, but the checking is dex-
terously filed out by line by young wo-
men.
1t is enticinely claimed for some guns
that the sportsman needs only a screw
driver with which to take the arm
apart for cleaning and repairs. This
speaks well for simplicity. It has taken
upwards of twelve hundred operations
TO make an entire gun of about ninety
five parts,of which most are contained
in the receiver To make these parts
special machines or, more accurately,
in many cases special tools to ft ma
chimes, have been devised by each fac
tory The steel comes in from the
! factory like the wood from the mill,
roughly shaped to its purpose The
( FORCES grab these pieces when at
white heat. pound them into submits
sion and better shape for the work
ahead. and pass them along to the ma
chine room. These machines are many
and varied, and are in charge of men
who become expert in their particular
( line; and when the milling and edging
| the boring and threading, the growing
and polishing have each had its turn
at those pieces of metal, they go by
/ tray and boxfull to the assembly room.
Many shotgun barrels are bored
throgh the solid rods that are received
/ by the factory somewhat over the
right length and diameter; bored by
powerful machines that carry their
keen tools through the thirty to forty
odd inches of steel as one might an
auger through a two-inch plank bored
perhaps by what is called a chucking
machine. driving from four to six cut
]
the proper caliber, with final bore
for absolute trueness, that stops about
three inches from the muzzle when
a special tool shaves the remainder so
as to diminish the size of the muzzle
by about 33-1000ths of an inch. and
! that is called the choke. These are the
barrels that have no fancy figures on
! their surface nor in the catalogues;
| and if your barrels are beautifully
marked with a curling, interlacing
tracery, they were made by a very
different process, and those delicate
lines are the evidence of foreign man
! Ufacture and the acme of metal work
ing for lightness and strength, and not
the chemical action of some mysterious
acid upon ordinary gun steel as many
suppose.
Narrow sheets of iron and steel piled
in alternate layers are welded into a
solid bar which is drawn down into
rods about a quarter of an inch square.
These rods are twisted, rope-like six
teen to twenty turns TO every inch in
length, laid together in sets of threes,
with the twists in opposite directions,
and then squared, and then welded in
to ribbons in widths from one-haIf
inch up. The ribbons are coiled about
a mandrel to the required diameter and
welded into a seamless tube. The en-
tire process, particularly at this stage.
requires great skill for the correct
contour of the barrel as well as the
evenness of the figure, depends upon
the hammering. 1t is by the different
alterations of iron and steel i'll the
piling and the subsequent twisting that
the different figures in the barrels are
| produced, the white marks are the
iron, the dark steel.-W. BAshley III
| January Outing