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INTRODUCTION During the half-century period covered by this volume, great changes took place in the manufacture of arms in the United States. In its early years of production, Springfield Armory wascapable ofproducing only three muskets per day. Most of the work involved in the fabrication of muskets at the national armories and by private contractors wasaccomplished by hand. The barrelswere hammered out from bar iron, formedinto tubes around a mandrel, and their seams closed by hammer welding, all done at high temperature generated by a forge. Only the rough-drilling ofthe bores and the grinding ofthe barrels' outer surfaces were assisted by water power. They were still hand-finished. The other metal components were similarlyforged by hand from bar iron and steel, were shaped by hand filing, and then were polished. Machines were invented that accomplished much of the coarse hand work, and some were installed in the public and private manufactories following the War of 1812. The earliest of these water-powered machines performed the crude hammering and forging functions and were capable of removing a great deal of the excess wood from the rough-sawed stock blanks. The separation of labor into specialized skills also occurred at this time. Although Eli Whitney has been erroneously credited with initiating the manufacture of interchangeable parts, he should properly be credited with the separation of labor into the many specialized tasks involved in the manufacture of a musket. Instead of a single worker fabricating an entire musket, some workers were specializedin hammer forging bar iron into barreltubes, other workersbored the barrels, others ground the outer surface, others tapped the breech end for the breech plug, and still others fitted this plug and finish-filed and polished the barrels. The separation of labor was given further impetus by the contract systemof arms procurement. In order to produce the thousands of muskets called for in these contracts, the relatively small private contractors turned to shops that specialized in the fabrication ofcertain components, such asbarrelsor locks. This gave rise to the system of subcontracts prevalent today. The separation of labor could only be successful ifthere were a certain degree of uniformity in the parts produced by this method. The creation of an assembly (the musket) and its various subassemblies (such as the lock and barrel) from parts made by many people is only possible if each component of those subassemblies isclose enough to a given standard to allow the components to be hand filed and fitted together. This need for standardization gave rise to improved standards of gauging and inspection for judging the uniformity of each component . The more uniform each component could be made, the less time was INTRODUCTION required in the fitting and finishing of the subassemblyand in the final assembly of the finished musket. Commissary General of Military Stores Callender Irvine attempted to introduce the production of muskets with interchangeable components at the national armories during the War of 1812. The demand for muskets occasioned by that war and the state of the art of arms production at that time prevented this. Production of much-needed muskets could not be allowed to suffer while the precise gaugingand manufacturingmethods required to produce interchangeable components were introduced. However, in late 1815, as Irvine lost his authority over the production of arms to the Ordnance Department, a few Model 1812 muskets were produced at SpringfieldArmory containing locks without assembly marks in their internal components, suggestingthat these components may have been interchangeable. Later machines were capable of producing large quantities of uniform screws, of drilling and tapping uniform holes for them, of more precise grinding and polishing, and of inletting the stocks for metal components. These machines represented the investment of large amounts of capital by both government and private enterprise. Their use in the production of arms required even greater specialization of labor and resulted in greater uniformity of the components produced. The rifle shops at Harpers Ferry Armory produced the first significant quantity of shoulder arms with interchangeable components in 1824. Jonathan Hall strove for five years to produce the first thousand patent breechloading rifles at that armory.The second thousand rifles required two years to complete, and it wasn't until 1831 that a more or less steady flow of these rifles was produced at Harpers Ferry Armory. The Hall breechloading arms made under U.S. contract by Simeon North from the early 1830s also had interchangeable components. Throughout the 1830s the regulation service muskets made at both national armories and...

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