MAKIING 15in. GUNS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2663, 7 January 1916, Page 3

MAKIING 15in. GUNS

7,000-T()N SQUEEZES

We have seen to-day- (writes the ''Daily .Mail's" special correspondent from Leeds, under dato Novomoer 11) guns and snells in thousands, tens of thousands, and .is'yet we have seen but a tithe of ail tlio great numbers that are now lying in tlio shell yards of northern towns, where whole populations are busy night and day on that great work—sliells and guns. Many people will remember having Been _in Duoim or Burton or other browing towns great stacks of barrels, row upon row, tier upon tier, covering acres of ground and reaching as higli as a cottage or higher. To-day we have . seen stacks of these, hot of barrels, but of shells stacked and piled just as those barrels are, and each well-nigh as big as a barrel. Guns, too, we have seen in heaps. Some lay like * liugo tapering tree-trunks piled one on "the other; smaller ones lay in neatly packed •squares, regular as a Canadian farmer's wood pile. You could climb oil the pile and stand on thirty or forty gun barrols. Others, of course, i wero mounted and all ready for sending away. Every Briton and friend of Britain who saw thoso heaps must feel the glow of a great comfort. . The gun problem'?' The shell problem? Well, hero was the ausivor. A little late, perhaps, but truly a tremendous answer. And not merely a selfish answer. Imagine with what pleasure I noticed on gun after gun in one shop to-d&T tho quaint letters of a language which showed only too plainly that their destination is to be Russia, These guns will not be the first by a long way that have been contirbuted by our munitions makers of late to helpers more needy than ourselves. 1 60ft. Barrels of 15in. Guns. Yesterday we saw much of the lighter work of munition making, cartridges, shells, fuses, primers', and the' rest — work in which women play a great part. To-day we saw the heavy side—real man's work. > Wo have been looking • down the 60ft. barrels of loin, guns, guns into which you can put your liead, and down which a man at the other end holding- an electric light seems distant and tiny. ''Gee!" .said our American after looking down one, "but you half expect to'see the 'next train for Hammersmith' dash out of yon tube." It liad reminded him of London's underground railway. . Down this great gun, with a light at'tho far end, you saw its beautiful rifling tapering slowly along the barrel. /Every ridge and groove shone bright as silver till all seemed merged together in the distant perspective, in a glittering pin-wheel of light. - Here in such' a gun as this, finely esact to the finest 'dimension, outside and in, lay the final result of titanic labours. \ We had seen these: labours . from almost the. start. First, the smelting furnace outpouring its liquid fire, which splashed aiid hissed like water, though it was finest steel. Thon the moulded ''ingot,", which, gripped by giant claws, is carried away and' passes "through heatings and relieatings in order toundergo many maulirigs and thumpings and squeezings'from hammers and from presses that squeeze it with •a 7000vton squeeze. ■ To see a red-hot trunk of steel big as the biggest oak tfee being punched and kneaded, cut and shaped and hollowed as though it were so much potter's clay, is •: ono of the sights of even this wonder age. And suddenly the whole • thing, red-hot ,■ scores of tons, may. be whisked high into; the ' air' from- outof-'its ; vertical■ furnace (GOft. or more high) and 'lowered right into an' oil bath reaching 70ft. deep below the- earth's surface. The . subterranean rumblings and gurg-' ' lings and the sparks ; and the smoke ( ' You get a pocket Vesuvius' with the- ! oil-bath tempering of a 15iu. gun. | Perhaps the firing of one .is as awe- < some. Quite' a modest-sized gun—a 1 simple 4in.—which was fired for us in ! another part of the yards, made a most unhallowed din at close quarters, and crashed great chunks' of steol out of a . slab of armour plating. What .would one of those loin, projectiles which wo. had seen earlier—oft. high and nearly a ton' weiglifc-r-liave done with it? ' .

_The 'Wellington City Council have vac-, ancles for a few permanent firemen, - ; The Store for travelling, requisites, m. clnding Bags, Bugs, and Trunks, is Herb. Price's, Willis Street.—Advt. Entries for Messrs.' Dalgety and Co.) Ltd.'.s. Waikanae stock sale are advertised this morning. .Messrs. W. and G. Turnbull are holding a sale of. general farm stock at the Waipoua Yards, Masterton, on January 12. Messrs. - Dalgety arid Co. are holding a stearin? sale at Sirs. G. 8./ Hudson's residence. Orangi Kaupapa Koad, .Northland; on January-10.- ' . Kntries for the Dannevirke Show close with the secretary. Mr. P. C. Stubbs, on January 26.