Rides on Railways Part 10

There are a vast number of guns, or parts of guns, made in Birmingham, which bear the names of retailers in different parts of the kingdom. Even very fashionable gun-makers find it worth their while to purchase goods in the rough state from Birmingham manufacturers on whom they can depend, and finish them themselves.

This is rendered easy by the system. No one in Birmingham makes the whole of a gun. The division of labour is very great; the makers of the lock, the barrel, and the stock, are completely distinct, and the mechanics confine themselves to one branch of a department. The man who makes the springs for a lock has nothing to do with the man who makes the nipple or the hammer; while the barrel-forger has no connexion with the stock-maker or lock-maker.

The visitor who has the necessary introductions, should by no means omit to visit a gun-barrel factory, as there are a good many picturesque effects in the various processes, beside the mechanical instruction it affords.

The following is the order of the fabrication of a common gun:--

The sheets for barrels are made from sc.r.a.ps of steel and iron, such as old coach-springs, knives, steel chains, horse shoes and horseshoe nails, and sheets of waste steel from steel pen manufactories.

These, having been sorted, are bound together, and submitted first to such a furnace, and then to such a steam hammer as we described in our visit to Wolverton, until it is shaped into a bar of tough iron, which is afterwards rolled into sheets of the requisite thickness.

From one of these sheets a length sufficient to make a gun barrel is cut off by a pair of steam-moved shears, of which the lower jaw is stationary and the upper weighs a ton, of which plenty of examples may be seen in every steam engine factory.

The slip of iron is made red hot, placed between a pair of rollers, one of which is convex and the other concave, and comes out in a semicircular trough shape; again heated, and again pressed by smaller rollers, by which the cylinder is nearly completed. A long bar of iron is pa.s.sed through the cylinder, it is thrust into the fire again, and, when red hot, it is submitted to the welder, who hammers it and heats it and hammers it again, until it a.s.sumes the form of a perfect tube.

Damascus barrels are made by incorporating alternate layers of red hot steel and iron, which are then twisted into the shape of a screw while at white heat. The bar thus made is twisted in a cold state by steam power round a bar into a barrel shape, then heated and welded together.

These are the barrels which present the beautiful variegated appearance which gives them the name of Damascus.

The barrels, whether common or twisted, are then bored by a steel rod, kept wet with water or oil, and turned by steam. The process occupies from two to three hours for each barrel.

The next operation is that of grinding the outside of the barrel with sandstone wheels, from five to six feet in diameter when new, driven by steam. These stones chiefly come from the neighbouring district of Bilston; in four months' work, a stone of this size will be reduced to two feet.

The employment is hard, dangerous from the stones often breaking while in motion, in which case pieces of stone weighing a ton have been known to fly through the roof of the shop; unwholesome, because the sand and steel dust fill eyes, mouth, and lungs, unless a certain simple precaution is taken which grinders never take.

After grinding, a nut is screwed into the breech, and the barrel is taken to the proof house to be proved.

The proof house is a detached building, the interior of which is lined with plates of cast iron.

The barrels are set in two iron stocks, the upper surface of one of which has a small gutter, to contain a train of powder; in this train the barrels rest with their touchholes downwards, and in the rear of the breeches of the barrels is a ma.s.s of sand. When the guns, loaded with five times the quant.i.ty of powder used in actual service, have been arranged, the iron-lined doors and windows are closed, and a train extending to the outside through a hole is fired.

Some barrels burst and twist into all manner of shapes; those which pa.s.s the ordeal are again examined after the lapse of twenty-four hours, and, if approved, marked with two separate marks, one for viewing and one for proving. The mark for proving consists of two sceptres crossed with a crown in the upper angle; the letters B and C in the left and right, and the letter P in the lower angle. For viewing only, V stands instead of P underneath the crown, the other letters omitted.

After proving, the jiggerer fastens the pin, which closes up the breech.

In the mean time the construction of the lock, which is an entirely different business, and carried on in the neighbouring towns of Wednesbury, Darleston, and Wolverhampton, as well as in Birmingham, has been going on.

The gun lock makers are ranged into two great divisions of forgers and filers, beside many subdivisions.

The forgers manufacture the pieces in the rough, the filers polish them and put them together. In the percussion lock, there are fifteen pieces; in the common flint lock, eight.

By a process patented about eleven years ago, parts of a gun lock formerly forged by hand are now stamped with a die. The use of this invention was opposed by the men, but without success.

The barrel and lock next pa.s.s into the hands of the stocker.

The stocks, of beechwood for common guns, of walnut for superior, of which much is imported from France and Italy, arrive in Birmingham in a rough state. The stocker cuts away enough of the stock to receive the barrel, the lock, the ramrod, and shapes it a little.

The next workman employed is the screw-together. He screws on the heel plate, the guard that protects the trigger, puts in the trigger plate, lets in the pipes to hold the ramrod, puts on the nozzle cap, and all other mountings.

After all this, a finisher takes the gun to pieces, and polishes, fits all the mountings, or sends them to be polished by women; the lock is sent to the engraver to have an elephant and the word "warranted," if for the African market, put on it; a crown and the words "tower proof," if for our own military service; while the stock is in the hands of the maker off and cleanser, it is carved, polished, and, if needful, stained.

Common gun barrels are polished or browned to prevent them from rusting, real Damascus barrels are subjected to a chemical process, which brings out the fine wavy lines and prevents them from rusting.

All these operations having been performed, the barrel, the lock, and the stock, are brought back by the respective workmen who have given them the final touch, and put together by the finisher or gun maker, and this putting together is as much as many eminent gunmakers ever do. But, by care and good judgment, they acquire a reputation for which they can charge a handsome percentage.

For these reasons, with local knowledge, it is possible to obtain from a Birmingham finisher who keeps no shop, a first-rate double gun at a very low figure compared with retail prices.

Belgium and Germany compete with Birmingham for cheap African guns, and even forge the proof marks. Neither in quality nor in price for first-rate articles can any country compete with us.

SWORDS AND MATCHETTS.--The sword trade of Birmingham is trifling compared with that in guns. The foreign demand has dwindled away until it has become quite insignificant, and the chief employment is afforded by our own army and navy.

Nevertheless, good swords are made in Birmingham, which is the only town in England where any manufacture of the kind exists, although the blades often bear the names of more fashionable localities.

It is among the traditions of the Birmingham trade, that in 1817, when our Government was about to transfer its orders for swords to Germany, in consequence of the inferiority of English swords, a Mr. Gill claimed to compete for the contract; and that in order to show what he could do, he appeared before the Board of Ordnance with a sword, which he tied round his thigh, and then untied, when it immediately became straight. In the end Mr.

Gill was the means of retaining the sword trade in Birmingham.

Sword-grinding is worth seeing. Sword-makers find their princ.i.p.al employment in producing Matchetts, a tool or weapon very much like the modern regulation cutla.s.s, but stronger and heavier, with a plain beech-wood handle, worth wholesale from 6d. to 9d. each. They are used in the East and West Indies, Ceylon, and South America, for cutting down sugar-canes and similar uses. We take the name to be Spanish; it is used by Defoe and Dampier. We only mention the article as one of the many odd manufactures made, but never sold retail, in England.

STEEL PENS.--All the steel pens made in England, and a great many sold in France, Germany, and America, whatever names or devices they may bear, are manufactured in Birmingham. In this respect, as in many others of the same nature, the Birmingham manufacturers are very accommodating, and quite prepared to stamp on their productions the American Eagle, the Cap of Liberty, the effigy of Pio Nono, or of the Comte de Chambord, if they get the order, the cash, or a good credit. And they are very right; their business is to supply the article, the sentiment is merely a matter of taste.

There are eighteen steel pen manufacturers in the Birmingham Directory, and eight penholder makers. Two manufacturers employ about 1,000 hands, and the other seventeen about as many more.

We can most of us remember when a long hard steel pen, which required the nicest management to make it write, cost a shilling, and was used more as a curiosity than as a useful comfortable instrument. About 1820, or 1821, the first gross of three slit pens was sold wholesale at 7 pounds 4s. the gross of twelve dozen. A better article is now sold at 6d. a gross.

The cheapest pens are now sold wholesale at 2d. a gross, the best at from 3s.6d. to 5s.; and it has been calculated that Birmingham produces not less than a thousand million steel pens every year. America is the best foreign customer, in spite of a duty of twenty-four per cent; France ranks next, for the French pens are bad and dear.

Mr. Gillott, who is one of the very first in the steel-pen trade, rose by his own mechanical talents and prudent industry from a very humble station. He was, we believe, a working mechanic, and invented the first machine for making steel pens, which for a long period he worked with his own hands; he makes a n.o.ble use of the wealth he has acquired; his manufactory is in every respect a model for the imitation of his townsmen, as we shall show when we say a few words about the condition of the working population; a liberal patron of our best modern artists, he has made a collection of their works, which is open to the inspection of any respectable stranger.

The following description of his manufactory, which is not open to strangers without special cause shown, will be found interesting in a social as well as a commercial and mechanical point of view.

GILLOTT'S STEEL-PEN FACTORY.--In the first department, sheets of steel received from Sheffield are pa.s.sed through rolling mills driven by steam, under charge of men and boys, until they are reduced to the thinness of a steel pen, to the length of about thirty inches, and the breadth of about three inches. These steel slips are conveyed to a large roomy workshop, with windows at both sides, scrupulously clean, where are seated in double rows an army of women and girls, from fourteen to forty years of age, who, unlike most of the women employed in Birmingham manufactories, are extremely neat in person and in dress. A hand press is opposite each; the only sound to be heard is the b.u.mp of the press, and the clinking of the small pieces of metal as they fall from the block into the receptacle prepared for them. One girl of average dexterity is able to punch out one hundred gross per day. Each division is superintended by a toolmaker, whose business it is to keep the punches and presses in good working condition, to superintend the work generally, and to keep order among the workpeople.

The next operation is to place the blank in a concave die, on which a slight touch from a concave punch produces the shape of a semitube. The slits and apertures which increase the elasticity of the pen, and the maker's or vendor's name, are produced by a similar tool.

When complete all but the slit, the pens are soft and pliable, and may be bent or twisted in the hand like a piece of thin lead. They are collected in grosses, or great grosses, into small square iron boxes, and placed by men who are exclusively employed in this department in a furnace, where they remain until box and pens are of a white heat. They are then taken out and immediately thrown hissing into oil, which cures them of their softness, by making them as brittle as wafers. On being taken out they are put in a sieve to drain, and then into a cylinder full of holes, invented by Mr. Gillott, which, rapidly revolving, extracts the last drop of moisture from the pens, on a principle that has been successfully applied to drying sugar, salt, and a vast number of other articles of the same nature. By this invention Mr.

Gillott saves in oil from 200 to 300 pounds a-year.

The pens having been dried are placed in other cylinders, and polished by mutual friction, produced by reverberatory motion. They are then roasted or annealed, so as to procure the requisite temper and colour, whether bronze or blue. The last process is that of slitting, which is done by women, with a sharp cutting tool. One girl, with a quick practised finger, can slit as many as 28,800 pens in a day. They are now ready for the young girls whose duty it is to count and pack them in boxes or grosses for the wholesale market.

It has lately been stated by one of a deputation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the subject of the paper duties, that steel pens for the French market are sent in bags instead of arranged on cards to the loss of paper makers and female labour, in consequence of the heavy excise duty on card board.

BRa.s.sWORK.--Birmingham is by far the greatest producer of ornamental and useful bra.s.swork. In the directory will be found a list which affords some idea of the number and varieties of the bra.s.s trade, as all these employ a certain number of working hands, varying from two or three apprentices to many hundred skilled workmen. It includes bell-founders, bottle-jack makers, bra.s.s founders, bronze powder makers, bra.s.s casters, clasp makers, coach lamp furniture, ornament makers, c.o.c.k founders, compa.s.s makers, copper-smiths, cornice pole makers, curtain ring, bronze wire fender, gas-fitting, lamps, chandeliers (partly bra.s.s, partly gla.s.s), ecclesiastical ornament, lantern, letter-clip, mathematical instrument, bra.s.s and metallic bedstead, military ornament, bra.s.s nail, saddlers' ironmonger, (chiefly bra.s.s), scale, beam, and weighing machines, stair rod, moulding and astrigal, bra.s.s thimble makers, tube, bra.s.s and copper-wire drawers, wire workers and weavers, and many other trades less directly connected with bra.s.s.