Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

284 BRITAIN AT WORK. at the factory it would be described as a “ dirty ” floor because anyone may walk on it in their ordinary boots. The “ clean ” floors, on the contrary, are usually as black as coal. They are, at any rate, as black as powder can make them, but none dare tread them except in the regulation slippers, tormerly the mixing-house was not regarded as a danger building, and its floor was consequently not decreed to be “ clean.” Now, however, it is so by reason of an explosion that occurred in a mixing-house whereby four men lost their lives. The FILLING CARTRIDGES. cause of the accident is unknown, as are the causes of most such accidents, those alone able to tell being usually killed. One witness’of the explosion was about thirty yards away. He felt a concussion of the air behind him and his hat was blown off as by a strong wind. On recovering his hat he returned to the scene of the ex- plosion. The walls of the mixing-house were blown down and the inside was in flames. A man all alight rushed out of the ruins. Buckets of water were thrown over him, but he soon expired. Three other men were found among the debris. A powder van, at the time of the explosion, with a canvas covering, was standing in front of the mixing-house to be loaded with charges for the mills. The horse took fright and galloped off with the van in flames. Fortunately, it took a direction away from the powder houses ; fortunately, too, no powder had been loaded into the van. From the mixing-house the “green charge” is taken to the incorporating mill. Here it undergoes a process designed to combine the different ingredients as intimately as mechanical means can combine different substances. It is spread out evenly upon a circular iron bed, “ liquored ” with about two pints of water to diminish the chances of ignition, and subjected to the crushing- force that two iron edge runners of four tons weight each, revolving eight times to the minute, may be imagined to exercise. This pulverising goes on for from two to eight hours, according to the quality of powder desired to be made. No one need be in attendance here, and no one wishes to be, for the operation is the most dan- gerous in the factory; but now and then a man goes in to oil the machinery and to damp the charges. Above each bed is a water-tank, so adjusted that any force from below, such as an explosion in the bed would occasion, makes it and all the other tanks in the group tilt over and discharge their contents right upon the powder. From the incorporating mills—of which, by the way, there are fifty at Faversham— the powder, now a dark grey or brown colour, is taken to the press-house and pressed by means of hydraulic power between copper plates into cakes about an inch thick and as hard as sandstone. This gives a certain texture to the mixture, and lends to the homogeneity already acquired in the incorporating mill. These hard cakes are next broken into pieces with wooden mallets and put through a set of breakers that reduces the pieces to the size of a walnut. I he operation that finally reduces the size goes by the name of “ corning,” and consists of putting the pieces of cake through gun-metal rolls. Glazing, stoving, and dusting are the remaining processes. In glazing, the powder is tossed about or