WIRE-TWIST IRON. 453 



terms, it is very usual for our dealers in guns, as well as sports- 

 men, to make little or no distinction in their application. We 

 do not, however, wish to find fault with our hardwaremen for 

 the exhibition of such ignorance, when real, as they have but few, 

 if any, sources from which they can obtain such information as 

 would set them right on these subjects. There are, nevertheless, 

 some importers as well as traders in guns among us who do know 

 better than to impose upon their ignorant customers in the shame- 

 ful manner in which they do, as they are well aware of the differ- 

 ence in cost, workmanship,, and quality, between a genuine stub- 

 twist and a wire-twist, and they should not boldly assert the one 

 to be as good as the other, when they know what they say is false 

 in every particular. Such conduct is very culpable, and more so 

 when they are fully aware that the weapons they are selling are 

 imperfect and often really dangerous to use. 



WIRE-TWIST IRON. 



This is the next quality of iron used in the manufacture of gun- 

 barrels, and the mode of making the bar of wire-twist is thus de- 

 scribed by Greener : " Alternate bars of iron and steel are placed 

 on each other in numbers of six each : they are then forged into 

 one body or bar ; after which, if for the making of wire-twist bar- 

 rels, they are rolled down into rods of three-eighths of an inch in 

 breadth and varying in thickness according to the size of the bar- 

 rel for which they are wanted ; if for Damascus, invariably three- 

 eighths of an inch square. When about to be twisted into spirals 



