The Works Of Messrs. Schneider And Co.

98 MESSRS. SCHNEIDER AND CO.’S WORKS. rough-forging certain pieces which are afterwards finished by hand. The smaller steam hammers are used for forging pieces which, owing to their shape and dimensions, have to be heated in the furnaces instead of on open fires, and which are more economically worked under a steam hammer than by hand. There are ten furnaces, six of which are provided with boilers heated by the waste gases. A part of the plant serves for the manufacture of drop forgings; this method is resorted to every time a series of similar pieces has to be manufacturée!, as they can be produced in this way with but little excess of metal, thus reducing con- siderably the cost of subséquent machining. There are 75 A laboratory for the mechanical testing of forged pieces is constant! y in operation for ascertaining their quality. It has charge also of all the official tests prescribed by the Navy, War Department, and railways. Boiler Shops.—In the boiler shops (see Figs. 254 and 255, Plate XLIX.), marine and stationary boilers of every type are manufacturée!, as well as locomotive boilers and locomotive work of all kinds ; turrets and platform mount- ings for guns; copper piping, and so fortli. The annual output exceeds 2,000 tons of finished work of iron or steel, and 300 tons of copper and brass. The shops are provided with a large number of powerful overhead travellers., which Fig. 261. Large Machine-Tool Shop for Marine Work. hancl forges distributed among the steam hammers. The hand forges that take the largest pièces, use a steam hammer when necessary, the same hammer being able to serve several forges by alternating the heats. The annual output of this shop is about 4,000 tons of fors’ing's, which number several hundred thousands. As a rule, ail these pièces are of steel, which has almost super- seded iron in the manufacture of forgings for marine engines. For locomotives, however, many pièces of the mechanism are still made of iron, and one of the furnaces is almost exclusively used for welding the iron necessary for the manufacture of such pièces. There are also in this shop, furnaces for annealing steel pièces, and a special plant for tempering small-calibre guns which, up to the present, have been forged in the Construction works. command the whole extent of the buildings. Smaller travellers, worked by hand, serve the tools by carrying plates from one to the other. For the érection o£ marine bollers there are two 50-ton mechanical travellers, and two others of 20 and 10 tons for the érection of locomotive bollers. The riveting machine is provided with a special 2 5-ton trav eller. Among the more important tools in the boiler shop may be mentioned a press for bending firebox plates for loco- motive bollers ; this has been in use for many years. A second press, very much larger and of greater power, was put down 15 years ago for stamping the largest plates used in the manufacture of steam bollers. An arrange- ment of crânes, worked by hydraulie pressure, enables a rapid handling of the plates from the furnaces to the