We pass on to the next lathe where a still larger forging is being turned externally, supported on specially devised running gear, many different cutters acting upon it at the same time, so that it is gradually assuming the tapering, banded appearance familiar to us in the completed state. We turn, fairly bewildered, from one stage of manufacture to another. Here is a gun whose bore is being “chambered” to the size necessary for containing the firing charge. Further along we examine a more finished weapon in process of preparation to receive the breech-plug and other fittings. Still another we notice which has been “fine-bored” to a beautifully smooth surface but is being improved yet more by “lapping” with lead and emery powder. In the next shed a marvellous machine is rifling the interior of a barrel with a dexterity absolutely uncanny, for the tool which does the rifling has to be rotated in order to give the proper “twist” at the same moment as it is advancing lengthwise down the bore. The grooves are not made simultaneously but as a rule one at a time, the distance between them being kept by measurements on a prepared disc. Now we have reached the apparatus for the wire-wound guns, a principle representing the _ne plus ultra_ of strength and durability hitherto evolved. The rough-bored gun is placed upon a lathe which revolves slowly, drawing on to it from a reel mounted at one side a continuous layer of steel ribbon about a quarter of an inch wide. On a 12-inch gun there is wound some 117 miles of this wire! fourteen layers of it at the muzzle end and seventy-five at the breech end. Heavy weights regulate the tension of the wire, which varies for each layer, the outermost being at the lowest tension, which will resist a pressure of over 100 tons to the square inch. We next enter the division in which the gun cradles and mounts are prepared, where we see some of the heaviest work carried out by electric dynamos, the workman sitting on a raised platform to keep careful watch over his business. Passing through this with interested but cursory inspection of the cone mountings for quick-firing naval guns, some ingenious elevating and training gear and a field carriage whose hydraulic buffers merit closer examination, we come to the shell department where all kinds of projectiles are manufactured. Shrapnel in its various forms, armour-piercing shells, forged steel or cast-iron, and small brass cartridges for the machine-guns may be found here; and the beautifully delicate workmanship of the fuse arrangements attracts our admiration. But we may not linger; the plant for the machine-guns themselves claim our attention.