563 



GUN. 



GUN. 



51 



ment of the 18th century. Button, in his ' History of Birmingham ' 

 (pp. 78, 79, of the edition of 1781), relates that, according to tradition, 

 King William III. was once lamenting that guns were not manu- 

 factured in his own dominions, but that he was obliged to procure 

 them, at great expense, and with greater difficulty, from Holland ; 

 when Sir Richard Newdegate, one of the members for the county, 

 who happened to hear him, observed that genius resided in Warwick- 

 shire, and that he thought his constituents would answer his majesty's 

 wishes. The king being pleased with the remark, the member posted 

 to Birmingham, where the pattern was executed in such a manner as 

 to give entire satisfaction. Large orders were immediately given, and 

 these were so frequently repeated that, to quote Button's quaint 

 expression, the manufacturers never lost their road. From notices in 

 Macpherson's ' Annals of Commerce' it appears that about 1787 the 

 manufacture was prosecuted with great activity for the supply of 

 foreign markets, the manufacture of Birmingham guns for the African 

 market being estimated to give employment to between four and five 

 thousand persons. By one of the strange perversities of taste, of 

 which many examples may be found in the history of manufactures, 

 guns marked " London " were long preferred to those marked " Bir- 

 mingham," notwithstanding the well-known fact that Birmingham 

 was the chief seat of the manufacture. The Birmingham manufac- 

 turers were thus induced to stamp their goods as if made in London ; 

 and when, in 1813, a bill was brought into the House of Commons to 

 compel every manufacturer of fire-arms to mark them with his real 

 name and address, they took the alarm, petitioned against the bill, and 

 instantly subscribed a large sum to defray the expense of opposing it, 

 urging that they made the component parts of the London guns, which 

 were, in fact, only put together and marked in the metropolis. The 

 bill was defeated, and shortly afterwards the Birmingham gun-makers 

 were allowed to erect a proof-house of their own, and to mark their 

 guns, after being subjected to the proof required by the Board of 

 Ordnance, with a distinguishing stamp. Holland, in the work referred 

 to at the close of this article, gives gome curious information respect- 

 ing the extent of the gun-manufacture of Birmingham, both during 

 the protracled war in which England was involved at the commence- 

 ment of the present century, and more recently, when English 

 artisans have been employed to meet the demands of foreign states. 

 From his statements, founded upon authorised returns, it appears that 

 more than two-thirds of the fire-arms made for the Board of Ordnance 

 were supplied from Birmingham, and that the stands of arms fabricated 

 there forthe British government in the years 1812 and 1813 amounted 

 respectively to 288,741 and 320,643. During the period of greatest 

 activity it is said that the Birmingham manufacturers produced a 

 musket per minute, which is not an extravagant assertion, seeing that, 

 supposing the work to be carried on for sixteen hours every day in the 

 year, Sundays excepted, the number produced at that rate would be 

 300,240, or rather under the number supplied to the government alone 

 in 1813. The contract price at that time was 36. a gun ; but with 

 the peace came a great falling off in the demand, which led many gun- 

 smiths to abandon the trade, and caused a great reduction of price. 

 In 1830 the Birmingham gun-makers contracted with the French 

 government for the supply of 140,000 stands of arms at the price of 

 about 28 francs, or rather under 23. per gun, and even that price, 

 Holland states, was considered liberal. It has been repeatedly stated 

 by M'Culloch and others, that between the years 1804 and 1818 

 Birmingham supplied to government and- the private trade nearly 

 5,000,000 fire-arms; and Barlow, quoting from authentic documents, 

 Knows that between 1803 and 1S16, the number of fire-arms received 

 and issued by the British government amounted to 3,227,716 musketa, 

 118,103 carbines, 27,895 rifles,and 203,266 pistols. In 1813 our allies 

 alone were furnished with 500,000 muskets. 



The mot essential part of a gun is the barrel, or cylindrical iron 

 tube, closed at one end, in which the explosion of the gunpowder is 

 produced, and through which the kill or shot is projected. The 

 interior of the barrel, which is technically called the bore, is in the 

 musket a perfect and smooth cylinder, but the exterior is made slightly 

 conical ; that in, roughly proportionate at each point to the disruptive 

 force of the gunpowder, thicker at the breech, or closed end, where this is 

 greatest, and tapering to the muzzle where it is least. The very severe 

 trials to which the barrel of a gun is exposed in use, and the fearful 

 results which attend its bursting, render it in the highest degree 

 important to use none but iron of good quality in the manufacture, 

 and to work it in such a way as to render the chance of failure as 

 remote as possible. 



Military muskets generally, and the cheaper descriptions of other 

 guns, have their barrels formed of tenacious soft iron, which is wrought 

 or rolled into the form of flat bars, called skelpt, each of which is suffi- 

 cient to form a single barrel. The length of a skelp U usually about 

 three feet, and the breadth about four inches at one end, where also it 

 has increased thickness or substance to form the breech of the barrel, 

 but gradually tapering to about two inches and a half at the other end, 

 which is to form the muzzle. Until about the year 1811, skelps v.vn 

 usually manufactured by means of the forge-hammer ; and as cdii i.l. i 

 able skill was required to ensure tli regular gradation from the thicker 

 to the thinner end, the workmen employed in forging them were able 

 to command good wages. In the above year, however, in consequence 

 of a strike among the skelp-forgers for what was considered an exorbi- 



tant advance of wages, a method of fashioning them by rollers was 

 introduced, it occurring to the inventor, according to Babbage's account, 

 that if the circumference of the rollers between which the bar-iron 

 was rolled, were to be made equal to the length of a skelp, or of a musket 

 3arrel, and if also the groove in which the iron was compressed, instead 

 of being of the same width and depth throughout (as in the ordinary 

 manufacture of bar-iron by rolling), were cut gradually deeper and 

 widef from a point on the rollers, until it returned to the same point, 

 then the bar-iron passing between such rollers, instead of being uniform 

 hi width and thickness, would have the form of a skelp." The experi- 

 ment succeeded, not only in effecting a great saving of labour, and 

 rendering the manufacturers independent of the refractory workmen, 

 but also in producing skelps of superior quality. " The pure metallic 

 particles," according to Holland's account of this invention, for which 

 a patent was obtained by a Staffordshire ironmaster named Bradley, 

 " being compressed by the rollers both edgeways and flatways at the 

 same time, cohere more closely together ; nor are the skelps so liable 

 to veins or flaws as those which are edged up in a less hot state under 

 a forge-hammer." The barrels made of them are said also to turn 

 clearer and sounder than those forged by hand. 



In the old method of welding the skelps into barrels, the thicker 

 end was first heated to redness, and then hammered upon a groove or 

 hollow cavity in the anvil until the edges were turned up. A mandril 

 being then inserted in the concavity between them, the edges were 

 turned over and welded together by the hammer. By the repetition 

 of the like process upon a length of two or three inches at a time, the 

 skelp was gradually converted into a tube or barrel, each of the lengths 

 thus separately welded being exposed to two or three welding opera- 

 tions, with alternating high and low heats, the latter being intended 

 to correct defects occasioned by the former. Several attempts were 

 made to substitute the action of machinery for this tedious and 

 laborious process, in one of which, patented in 1811 by Messrs. James 

 and Jones, and described by Holland, the power was applied by a 

 series of automatic hammers. Little, however, was done in bringing 

 any such process into operation until a combination was formed among 

 the welders, similar to that above referred to among the skelp-forgers, 

 and which, if successful, would have caused the completion of a large 

 contract which was then being executed to be attended with a very 

 heavy loss. A method which had been patented some years before by 

 one of the contractors, but which had not then been brought into 

 satisfactory operation, was resorted to under this difficulty, and the 

 result was, that barrel-welding by rolling machinery soon, in a great 

 measure, superseded the old process; and the manufacture of iron 

 tubes of lighter character, suitable for gas or water pipes, by a similar 

 process, was subsequently commenced. ' Babbage, whose account of 

 the introduction of this process we have quoted, observes that the 

 combining workmen, were thus permanently reduced to a lower rate of 

 wages, and that as the new method of welding was far less injurious to 

 the texture of the iron than the old, in consequence of the iron being 

 exposed only once, instead of three or four times, to the welding heat, 

 the public derived advantage from the superiority as well as from the 

 economy of the process. Babbage does not mention the name of the 

 person to whom the introduction of this improvement is due; but 

 Greener, in his account of the same circumstances, attributes it to tho 

 late Mr. Clive, who was an extensive manufacturer of iron for gun- 

 barrels, and states that the jealous opposition of the trade to hia 

 innovation led the Birmingham gun-makers to combine not to use 

 his iron. 



The most recent and authentic account we have seen of the modern 

 improved method of barrel-welding is that communicated by Mr. 

 Lovell, director of the royal arms manufactory at Enfield Chase, to 

 Dr. Ure's ' Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines," under tho 

 title ' Fire-Anns,' where this method is said to have entirely super- 

 seded that of skelp-welding by hand. From this article it appears 

 that, instead of being fonned of skelps forged nearly to the intended 

 length of the barrel, barrels are now made from flat bars of thoroughly 

 refined iron, cut by shears into slabs ten or twelve inches long, and 

 weighing from ten to ten and a half pounds, or less, according to the 

 kind of barrel to be made. " These slabs, after being cut from the 

 bars, are heated, and, to adopt Mr. Lovell's language, ' bent in their 

 whole length, by means of conveniently grooved bending rolls, until 

 they assume the form of rough tubes,' their opposite edges being 

 brought to meet without overlapping. These tubes are then laid upon 

 the hearth of a reverberating furnace, and brought to a full welding 

 heat ; and as soon as the edges come to a semi-fluid state, they are 

 taken out and passed between grooved rollers, the grooves of which 

 are rather smaller than the exterior of the tube. By this means the 

 tube is perfectly welded from end to end, and if the heat be properly 

 managed, and the juncture kept clear of dirt and cinders, the iron will 

 become perfectly homogeneous in every part, without any appearance 

 of the seam where the edges come together. The tubes are repeatedly 

 heated, and passed through gradually decreasing grooves in the rollers ; 

 and to preserve their tubular form and ensure regularity in the bore, 

 or internal dimension, during the welding process, they arcs ta.ki'U out 

 of the furnace and applied to the rollers, by means of a mandril con- 

 sisting of a long iron rod considerably smaller than the bore, but 

 having at the end a short steel treblett made exactly the size that tho 

 barrel is intended to be. By a simple contrivance it is arranged that, 



