December 7, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
II 
Shells and Their Makers 
By a Special Correspondent 
W'S <ave. indebted to the Ministry of Munitions for the necessary facilities for our special correspondent 
io compile this graphic storv of the birth of these messengers of death. We have also to thank the Ministry 
•0:f Munitions for the use of the photographs that appear on the preceding and following pages. 
w 
Rectifying a Base Plug 
HEN, armed with the necessary passes and 
mtroductions and under suitable escoi't you 
ire taken into the foundry just, by the luck 
)f the game, at the moment when the tap- 
hole is beinj; 
broken in the 
wall of the fur- 
nace-crucible, you 
i n d yourself 
assisting at the 
first readily in- 
telligible pre- 
liminaries of the 
making of a 
shell. You are 
also seeing one of 
those supremel}' 
beautiful things 
which a Brang- 
wyn, in paint, 
and a Meunier, in 
bronze, delight to 
lionour. The 
long low building 
is crowded with 
solemn black 
shadows, the soft- 
lighted surfaces 
of the immense ingots and castings, the laced girders, the 
travelling cranes and other giant gear, are a warm dun 
colour in the glow diffused from the chinks of the 
furnace doors. 
The Martian at Work 
One very definite picture reminiscent of nothing so 
much as Mr. Wells's Martians is worth recording — a crane 
suspending a cage from which protrudes an immense arm 
of steel a score of feet long with clumsy, competent hands 
and— yes ! a wrist-joint. The crane carries the arm to 
the bars of pig (of a prepared shape). The arm reaches 
out and picks up its burden of a ton or two ; then swings 
back to the open furnace. The giant hand thrusts in and 
a turn of the gross mechanical wrist slides the pig into the 
white of the crucible, where you can see the obstinate metal 
dripping — as a rasher drips on a grill. You scarcely 
note that a mere man in the cage works the Martian's 
devihsh black limb. The whole lurid scene is a significant 
setting for the birth of those sinister children of destiny, 
the shells. 
The grey-haired foreman at my elbow is not thinking 
how paintable, how fine a figure of a man he looks, in this 
sombre fantasia ; he is mainly anxious as to the quality 
of his expected ladleful of steel. He gives his orders 
harshly ; the last blow is struck on the crucible walls : 
and from the jagged aperture the swift blinding-white 
stream gushes out, dropping with an uncanny, silent 
splash into the steel clay-lined ladles that would hold a 
coroner's jury. Our foreman, blue-spectacled, peers down 
into the seething pool. The long gloomy cave of the foun- 
dry is gorgeously, gloriously aglow, the shadows, blacker 
by contrast, shifting restlessly in the deep recesses and 
dancing a danse macabre on the roofs and walls- — shadows 
of the movins: cranes, and of the expectant workmen nobly 
transfigured in the dominant glare of the molten stream of 
steel. 
Casting of the Ingot 
The crane swings the ladle out over the ingot moulds ; 
the team of stalwart figures guide the tap-hole over the 
mouth of the mould ; the lever opening the t&p is worked 
at the shouted command and the incandescent jet of 
metal does its work. And thus you have the ingot that 
forms the basis of the shell body. 
The ingot is, then, a casting. But cast steel must 
become wrought — must be worked upon and forged — 
by fire and hammer or press or roller before it can ao its 
appointed job. Perhaps these rough line diagrams 
wnich I made as the swiftest shorthand notes of my 
\arious guides' intelligent explanations will enable the 
reader to follow the interesting details of the work. 
They may claim to be accurate as far as they go, which 
is not too far to mystify the amateur. Their artistic 
shortcomings will, it is hoped, be pardoned for the 
sake of their honest intention. The information they 
may convey to the enemy is, it is considered in expert 
circles, distmctly slight. 
Armament Man's Chef D'oeuvre 
I heard the opinion expressed that the making of a shell 
was the most difficult feat in armament making; To the 
writer who saw single ingots of steel something near the 
size of the visible piers of Charing Cross Bridge, rolled 
and fused and machined into armour plates, giln-shields, 
keels, propellers and shafts of Gargantuan proportions; 
incredible unless seen and handled, this seemed b'/.t 
a pleasant exaggeration. But the evidence went far 
to prove it. The other work, it was urged, was, if colossal, 
simple and straightforward — men had here long learnt 
to be imdismayed by mere size. But at every stage of the 
shell's career there was required rigidly mathematical 
accuracy and again accuracy— as will appear. At ievery 
stage gaugings, testings, inspections : at every stage 
tricks or failures of materials and personnel to thwart 
the closest calculations ; at any stage a possible flaw 
which might convert the shell into an engine of death 
against our own folk, civilian or mihtary, instead of 
against the enemy soldiery. 
A Target Missed 
Leave the foundry for the shell-shop proper. Across 
that soft deep starUt blue that is best seen from the shelter 
of a dimly lighted building, sweeps the guardian beam of a. 
searchhght, reminding one that enemy visitations are at 
any moment apt to interfere with the schedule of the shop. 
My guide chuckled over the memory of one such visit 
when a straight string of a baker's dozen of bombs was 
dropped at right angles to a valley which held as many 
miUion pounds of capital in plant as one has fingers on 
both hands — and missed hitting sixpennyworth of it. 
Much depends on an angle, it would seem. 
Let us return to our ingot. Slightly tapered so that it 
may part readily from the mould, it holds at it stop such 
flaws and dross as may be in it. A portion of it— the 
discard — is therefore sheared away from the top. Still 
white hot it is guided by stout sweating feflows with 
immense pincers over the steel floors to the rolling mills. 
Here, reduced by successive passages through the mill 
to a bar of a little over the diameter of the finished shell, 
it is sheared into appropriate lengths. Each length is 
re-heated and passed under a mandril plunger which 
roughly hollows it to the shape of a neckless bottle. 
The Shell Family 
And here perhaps it will be as well to distinguish the 
various classes of shell. Ammunition is divided into 
fixed and ordinary. Fixed ammunition contains pro- 
pellant and projectile in one, such as the ammunition for 
rifles, machine and semi-automatic guns. As the gian 
calibre increases ease in handling dictates the use of a 
separate propellant charge. Shells also are distinguished 
by their method of explosion, whether by time, or by 
