The Manufacture of Big Guns for the Nation's Defense (1915)
The scenes in this very interesting picture show fourteen and sixteen-inch guns principally because, with the exception of the death-dealing machine guns, they are practically the only types now wanted. The United States has a new sixteen-inch monster but the fourteen-inch guns have been the largest up to a short time ago. The first scene shows the rough turning of the fourteen-inch tube. The milling tools scrape off pieces of steel as if they were wooden shavings. The following scene shows the motor-driven gearing on a big lathe for turning the fourteen-inch guns. A general view of a fourteen-inch tube, to be made into a 45-calibre gun forty-five feet long, with a bore of fourteen inches, prefaces scenes showing the huge piece of steel turning over and over while it is being trued up. The placing of the hoops or packets on the tube is shown, followed by a view of a furnace and a steam hammer where the "tray" for the breech end of the gun is hammered into shape. Boring the gun must be done so accurately that one one-thousandth of an inch variation will be detected. The shrinking of the jacket onto the tube of a four-inch gun is especially interesting. The jacket is heated for eleven hours to 800 degrees Fahrenheit. It is then lifted out of the furnace and lowered over the tube. It is then cooled by a water spray which contracts the jacket. Sixteen tons of wire are wound around a fourteen-inch gun and there is a tension of about fifty thousand pounds on the wire during the winding. Twining the tunnions, boring powder chamber, preparing the breech block, gauging and opening the breech-block of a sixteen-inch gun are only a few of the additional scenes. The weight of a sixteen-inch gun is one hundred and thirty tons. The scenes were taken at the United States arsenal at Watervliet. N.Y. This sixteen-inch gun shown has just been rebuilt and is to be shipped to Panama.
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GenresDocumentary
Short
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