FRENCH WORKING HARD AT SHELL-MAKING.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 348, 28 December 1915, Page 4

FRENCH WORKING HARD AT SHELL-MAKING.

The unremitting French artillery attack proceeding along the whole front is made possible by equally unremitting and intensive effort in the production of projectiles in works which, have been transformed by equipment with American machinttools and are working regularly 24 hours a day. • One of these great establishment? near Paris visited by an Associated Press representative by official permission makes more than 5,000 shells and a number of aeroplane motor? Projectiles and rifle parts are given the precision of a chonometer, and every operation is supervised and the result verified before it goes on to the next hand. The finished shell must not only stand a high hydraulic pressure, but it must give the proper ring. An expert in steel, isolated from the clang and hum of the factory, in an almist hermetically sealed hut, taps each shell as it is sent to him on a little troHey. Those which give out the proper ring are sent on, while the others go to the scrap heap. This is the final trial before loading. Shrapnel bullets are placed in the core of the shell by young girls, whose work is fully up to that of trained arsenal workmen.

The' average rate of production in the different factories is about three shells a day for each workman employed, but it varies greatly according to the machine used.