Owing to the complexity and minute mechanism of these weapons almost a hundred different machines are needed, some of the milling machines taking a large selection of cutters upon one spindle. Indeed, in many parts of the works one notices the men changing their tools for others of different size or application. Some of the boring machines work two barrels at the same time, others can drill three barrels or polish a couple simultaneously. But there are hundreds of minute operations which need to be done separately, down to the boring of screw holes and cutting the groove on a screw-head. Many labourers are employed upon the lock alone. And every portion is gauged correctly to the most infinitesimal fraction, being turned out by the thousand, that every separate item may be interchangeable among weapons of the same make. Look at the barrel which came grey and dull from its first turning now as it is dealt with changing into bright silver. Here it is adjusted upon the hydraulic rifling machine which will prepare it to carry the small-arm bullet (.303 inch). That one of larger calibre is rifled to fire a small shell. Further on, the barrels and their jackets are being fitted together and the different parts assembled and screwed up. We have not time to follow the perfect implement to its mounting, nor to do more than glance at those howitzers and the breech mechanism of the 6-inch quick-firers near which our guide indicates piles of flat cases to keep the de Bange obturators from warping while out of use. For the afternoon is waning and the foundry still unvisited. To reach it we pass through the smith’s shop and pause awhile to watch a supply of spanners being roughly stamped by an immense machine out of metal plates and having their edges tidied off before they can be further perfected. A steam-hammer is busily engaged in driving mandrils of increasing size through the centre of a red-hot forging. The heat from the forges is tremendous, and though it is tempered by a spray of falling water we are glad to escape into the next shed. Here we find skilled workmen carefully preparing moulds by taking in sand the exact impression of a wooden dummy. Fortunately we arrive just as a series of casts deeply sunk in the ground are about to be made. Two brawny labourers bear forward an enormous iron crucible, red-hot from the furnace, filled with seething liquid--manganese bronze, we are told--which, when an iron bar is dipped into it, throws up tongues of beautiful greenish-golden flame. The smith stirs and clears off the scum as coolly as a cook skims her broth! Now it is ready, the crucible is again lifted and its contents poured into a large funnel from which it flows into the moulds beneath and fills them to the level of the floor. At each one a helper armed with an iron bar takes his stand and stirs again to work up all dross and air-bubbles to the surface before the metal sets--a scene worthy of a painter’s brush. And so we leave them.