IMPROVE-. MENTS IN CONSTRUCTING AND APPLYING ARMOUR PLATING TO SHIPS, VESSELS, AND FORTS
Year: 1862

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Percy Graham Buchanan West-
macott at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition,
on the 24th February 1862.
I, PERCY GRAHAM BUCHANAN WESTMACOTT, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Civil
Engineer, do hereby declare the nature of the Invention for "IMPROVE-.
MENTS IN CONSTRUCTING AND APPLYING ARMOUR PLATING TO SHIPS, VESSELS, AND
FORTS," to be as follows:-
This Invention has for its object improvements in constructing and applying
armour plating to ships, vessels, and forts.
For these purposes armour plates are composed of iron or steel, or of
both iron and steel; the metal is made into the forms of rings or endless
bars, which are shrunk one on the other, until the desired dimensions
and forms are obtained. The bars of which the rings are composed may
be produced by rolling or hammering or otherwise, and they may be shaped
and welded into rings, or the bars or rings may be rolled endless in like
manner to that in which tyre iron and other rings, cylinders and endless
forms are now sometimes made, or they may be otherwise constructed, .the
mode of producing the rings or endless bars not constituting any part of my
Invention. The outer and inner surfaces of the rings which come in con-
tact with each other may be plain or they may be made undulating, so-as
when shrunk together to present greater resistance against being slit or driven
apart.

page_text: It is not essential in all cases that each and every ring of which a plate
is composed should be shrunk on to the preceding ones, as the shrinkage of
an outer ring may sufficiently compress a ring within it to secure it to the
other portions of the plate, and when desired plates or other forms of iron
or steel may be shut in and held between rings shrunk one on the other and be
the means of fixing the armour plating.
The rings used in constructing a plate may when desired be of different
depths from front to back of the plate so as to extend on one side or on
both sides of the plate beyond the other rings of which the plate is composed,
and thus present facilities for fixing the plate to others, and to the framing or
other parts of the structure to which such armour plates are applied. When
making armour plates with port holes or embrasures through them, this is most
readily done by employing central rings formed of the desired shapes of the
holes, and then by shrinking thereon other rings to obtain the dimensions of
plate required.
The employing rings or endless bars shrunk on each other in forming armour
plating admits of the metal of each ring bar or part of an armour plate being
better worked than similar metal rolled or hammered in large masses, and the
thick plates are manufactured cheaply, as compared with the cost of forging
or rolling plates of similar thickness each in one piece as heretofore practised.
Armour plating constructed according to my Invention may be attached to each
other and fixed and applied to structures more advantageously than armour
plating manufactured as heretofore and without being weakened by holes passing
through the resisting surface of the plate.