Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

WHERE GUNPOWDER IS MADE. churned, so to speak, among graphite, and thereby takes on the gloss we are ac- customed to see it with. Stoving is to drive off the moisture, and dusting is really sifting, whereby the powder, now in different sizes, is separated into classes according to size. It is thereafter packed into small canvas bags or canisters or barrels—all specially made—or taken to the cartridge-filling houses to be loaded cartridge cases. Although there are explosives made dangerous than gunpowder, and a inch of gunpowder is capable of exerting on ignition, by the gases it instantaneously generates, a pressure all round of thirty tons to the square inch. No wonder those that know it best tamper with it least! Yet with all the precautions we have seen taken in powder factories, pieces of iron, stones, and even lucifer matches have been found of gunpowder. It would be and edifying to know by what got there. also carried on This is done the safeguards the powder houses. into more cubic at by we in barrels interesting means such substances Cartridge filling is Messrs. Hall’s works, women, and under all have seen adopted in The part they play is purely mechanical ; nothing is left to their judgment by ' reason of the perfect appliances used in the process, which, though interesting, no description apart from diagrammatic illus- tration boxes, special There all the different kinds of artificers required to keep the machinery in order and quick to detect flaws during the frequent in- spections to which the whole works are periodically subjected. W. B. Robertson. could render intelligible. Canisters, and barrels, which hava to be of a nature; are made on the premises- are also smiths and millwrights, and PACKING GUNPOWDER.