“I notice,” Hamilton said, “that all the steel here is stored in bars and rods.  Do you buy it that way, or have you a rolling mill in connection with the plant?”

“Buy it,” the other said immediately.  “You can’t run a rolling mill at a profit except on a large scale, and, anyway, this is too far from the source of supply.  We get our copper in ingots, but not our steel.”

“I notice,” the boy continued, fingering a long ticket attached to a bundle of steel rods by a wire, “that you say here, ’Do not disturb until report from laboratory is received.’”

“Certainly,” said the other, “every order as it comes in is tested.  We have two laboratories, a physical and a chemical, and not a scrap of material is used until it is found to be fully up to the specifications.  There’s no guesswork there, but the most rigid scientific tests.  That keeps any poor material from slipping through.

“Now,” he continued, “I’ll show you what happens to those bars.”

He led the way to a small building where the bars were cut into certain recognized lengths for the men at the drop forges to handle.

“This forging shop,” the manufacturer said, entering it as he spoke, “is where most of the metal parts of the gun are first roughly shaped, and this man is working on part of a cartridge ejector.  Watch him now,” he went on, following the action of the workman; “he takes a piece of steel out of the furnace behind him, lays it on the die, touches a lever, and the big drop-hammer comes down,—­once, twice.  He turns it over, brings the drop-hammer down again, once, twice, and the piece is shaped.  It has rough edges all round, of course, and so he takes it, while it is still glowing red, to a more exact die, and brings the drop-hammer down once, and turns it over, then brings down the hammer again once.  Now the shape is almost perfect but for that fringe of metal all round.  He picks it up, puts it on that die on this next machine close by his hand, touches a lever, and a knife, exactly the shape of the die comes down, crunch! shaving off the iron clean all round, and there is your forging done, and all with the one heating.  Of course it isn’t finished off, but you can see for yourself that the rough work is done, and all in the space of a few moments.”

Hamilton found it hard to tear himself away, for while the principle was the same, all the different forges were turning out different parts, and it was a fascination to the boy to see those glowing lumps of steel come out of the furnace and with the few strokes of the drop-hammer, fall a few seconds later, the shaped part of a rifle.  Some of the machines were making receivers for the stock, the largest piece of metal, and other small parts like the trigger or the hammer, while still others were preparing the barrels of the gun for drilling.

“It is not likely to occur to you,” said his guide, “that it would not do to let all those various parts cool off by chance.  For example, in winter they would cool more rapidly than in summer, and those near the door more quickly than those in the inner part of the forging house.  That would make them of varying hardness.  So, in order to make sure that they shall be the same, all those pieces you have seen being made are annealed.”