The St. Charles herald. [volume] (Hahnville, La.) 1873-1993, 1917-04-14

| weight apiece-and put into the FORCES,
and when they are white hot they arc
dropped into a hydraulic machine
which both pierces and shapes them
and from which they emerge, after q
pressure of $50 tons, in the shape of
nine-inch shells.
That Is the first operation out of
more than a score Of quite separate
| operations. Then the rough carcass Is
"centered," its nose is bored, its cav
ity Is bored, and the screw-thread is
milled In the cavity, the beautiful
"sink-and-wave" channels are cut in
to 60, the base plug is fitted (and no
mortal power could unscrew that base
plug once it is screwed in), the inside
is polished and vanished and the var
nish dried, the base is faced"
Then comes the copper-band bust
ness, which resembles in its finish the
jewelers. craft. The copper band is
jammed on by incredible main force, but
after 1t is on it Is treated with the
most astounding finesse, and the shell
leaves that series of operations gleam-
Ing with its cut and carved bangle.
You see 1t next in the painting room,
where everything and everybody is of
a yellowish-brown color and where
there is not such q thing as brush ex-
cept the floor sweeper. The paint is
| sprayed on to the shells as they hang
In rows and thus the painting is ac-
complished with an evenness, a pre-
cision, and a celebrity which would IA
tally shock house-painters. A few
yards further, and the shells are dried
in gas-heated cupboards and out Of
these cupboards they are waited into
an ordinary railway wagon and they
disappear from the factory forever.
They are not yet truly shells. They
are only shell-cases. They travel every
where to be filed. Therefore you do
not witness either the beginning of the
work (the steelmaking) or the end of
it. The metal, as far as you are con-
cerned, springs from one mystery and
vanishes away into another.
Men Able to Endure More.
have catalogued by no means all
the operations, and have given no
hint of the important differences in
the two nevertheless similar processes
for nine-inch shells and for six-inch
shells. 1 have offered only a general
indication, and space will not permit
more. 1t should be added that some
of the operations are done exclusively
by men (such as forging) and some
exclusively by women (such as paint
ing) and some equally by men and
women. For example, there are four
bays" Of nose and body-boring ma
chimes, two bays for each sex. I was
told that in the briefer operations de-
handing close concentration the wom-
en- rivaled and perhaps excelled the
men, whereas In the long, tedious op-
erations fnot demanding physical
strength the men easily beat the wom-
en-, whose attitude was apt to be: "Oh,
bother! I've had enough Of this ex-
asperating dullness!'
Another aspect of the colossal or
ganism is the checking and testing
aspect. If you examine this long
enough you will become obsessed by
1t, so that you will arrive at the stage
of thinking that the manufacture of
shells consists chiefly in checking and
testing. Every shell, as soon as it has
cooled from the redhot condition, is
provided with its biography, which it
bears on card In its cavity. Every
where on the walls are tabular state
ments which are continually being add
ed to. At every corner stand girls
and men writing down figures in note
books.
! Every shell is gagged for all its d.
mensions. 1t is also weighed, for a
shell may be right in dimensions and
yet wrong In weight, in which case
1t won't do. Every gauge is periodi-
cally tested by experts in the gauge
testing room. And certain percent
age Of shells, when they are almost
finished, are deliberately sawed to
pieces again, and samples of their steel
turned into bars of given diameter,
and these bars are fractured-or rath-
GA PuiiC0 Ia tWO-Uy LudCutucS VI a |
given power, and the quality of the
steel thus laid bare for inspection. In
the frecturing room on shelves are |
thousands Of fractured bars With their |
jagged ends exposed, and in them you
can see how steel differs. Under the |
terrific influences Of the pulling ma
chimes the finest steel behaves rather |
like stale bread. .,-sf f's
Finally, in addition to the factory |
tests and the government tests within
the factory, there Is the government |
outside test, for which some shells go
into. the sacred bondrooIn, where no
unhallowed person may enter and
whence the chosen shells are removed
FOR realistic trials In distant Spots
When that rs over all has been done
hat can be done to furnish the ar
clergyman with an utterly reliable
shell-case.
Product Of Creative Brains.
And lastly there is the esoteric as
,ect and unless you have eyes to see
his aspect you will never get the
National Projectile Factory In a true