INSIDE AN ARMAMENT FACTORY.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 8, 29 January 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

INSIDE AN ARMAMENT FACTORY.

A fascinating sight it is to watch the first stages in the manufacture of the big guns which are proving so formidable and successful in the Great War. A solid ingot of steel, some fifty feet in length and weighing about one hundred tons, is employed in the making of a 13.5 in. gun. After being forged and then allowed to cool, so that it may be toughened for the heavy work that has to come later on, this gigantic bar of steel is pressed into cylindrical shape by the most powerful hydraulic press invented, which exerts a pressure of anything between 5,000 and 10,000 tons to the square inch. This machine literally presses the solid steel into circular shape, after which what is known as tho trepanning operation is carried out —namely, drilling a .largo hole—the bore —from end to end,' a process which has to be performed with the utmost exactitude. Xext the inside of the gun—that is, the bore—is rifled.

The most wonderful sight, however, is the next stage—the hardening process, when the rough weapon is heated to dazzling white heat and plunged into a huge well full of oil. If ha operation takes place in the night-time, the sight of this huge, glowing bar of metal being lowered apparently into the bowels of the earth, to the accompanhient of leaping tongues of flame given off by tho burn'ng oil. may be likened to a scene from Dante's inferno. The guu is then left to cool in the oil-bath, out of which it comes hardened, toughened, and tempered. Then follows the wire-winding operation, to make the weapon stronger and impart to it some measure cf elasticity. This wire-winding is an operation which is much the same in principle as the whipping on the handle of a cricket bat. In this case, however, the whipping takes the form of strong steel ribbon, which is wound round the body of the gun Every 12in. and 13.5 in. gun actually has about 120 miles of this steel ribbon wound round it.

Many other processes have to be gone through in regard to fitting the gun with mechanism, etc., which it is impossible to give in detail here. Some idea, however, of th 3 labour involved in the manufacture of one of these big guns may be gathoied from the fact that from start to fin;.??, the time occupied is over tweUo months.