Pratt & Whitnety Lincoln Milling Machines
The Armory developed and installed a production system for the Model 1903
in little more than two years.1 Extensive purchases of machinery in 1902 and of
fixtures made from Armory drawings in 1903 upgraded and expanded the Armory's
production capability without radically changing the basic manufacturing methods
that had been used for the Krag. The two rifles were, after all, similar in many
ways, and a great deal of the existing production technology could be retained.
There was a continuing increase in the use of automatic machines, multi-spindle
machines, and profiling machines; but much of the equipment ordered was "similar
to" or "the same as" machines already in place. By far the largest
purchase in 1902 was an order for 124 Lincoln milling machines. The emphasis
on milling and special-purpose milling fixtures did not change.2
We know more about the operations on the 1903 Springfield than about the historical
production of any complex mechanism. For some reason, historians have so far
paid little attention to an amazing source of technical information, the incredibly-detailed
and well-illustrated studies by Fred Colvin and Ethan Viall, associate editors
of American Machinist. Their series of published articles in 1916 and
1917, prepared at the request of the Ordnance Department, were ostensibly to
assist private contractors if they should have to make the 1903 Springfield during
World War I (a practical impossibility given the lack of precise production drawings
and the need for thousands of special jigs, fixtures, and gages). A special issue
of American Machinist and a separate publication, United States Rifles
and Machine Guns: A Detailed Account of the Methods Used in Manufacturing the
Springfield, 1903 Model Service Rifle..., followed the serialized articles.3
The Springfield Model 1903 Rifle
Like other manufacturers with in-house talent in machine design and their own
machine shops, the Armory sometimes built a machine "from scratch" or
used elements of an old machine to make an entirely different one. In almost
every case, the designers worked with available or newly-introduced technology,
combining known forms and adding incremental innovations to meet the special
needs of particular operations. Industries which break down their manufacturing
processes into minute subdivisions and make heavy use of special-purpose equipment
are most likely to generate a large number of incremental innovations. One
interesting example in the 1916 Armory was an "old Ames profiler ...built
over" as a single-sided broach for work on the trigger slot of the Model
1903.4This machine played a useful
role in the production system, and its manufacture must have been less expensive
than the purchase of comparable new equipment.
CONSERVATIVE INNOVATORS
AND MILITARY SMALL ARMS: AN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE SPRINGFIELD ARMORY,
1794-1968, Michael S. Raber, Patrick M. Malone, Robert B. Gordon, Carolyn
C. Cooper, Raber Associates, 81 Dayton Road • P.0. Box 46, South Glastonbury,
CT 06073, (203) 633-9026, August, 1989 [unpublished], p, 270, 272.
Proposal of January 10, 1902,
and contract with Pratt & Whitney Co., December 21, 1903, RG 156/1382.
Introducing new types of machinery could cause disruption of a manufacturing
system; unless the potential gain in efficiency was clearly worth the disruption,
a manager might decide to replace an old machine with one just like it or add
extra machines of a type already in use. For a technical discussion of the similarities
between the Krag and the Model 1903 designs, see Stuart Otteson, The Bolt
Action, pp.29-42.
American Machinist,
1916 and 1917; Colvin, 60 Years, pp. 183-187. Colvin was primarily responsible
for the analysis of metal-working processes on the Springfield, while Viall wrote
the sections on the making of its wooden parts. Arthur Ormay produced the detailed
drawings: there are 2337 figures, only a few of which are photographs. The entire
study, with complementary materials as addenda, has been reprinted as Manufacture
of the Model 1903 Springfield, Wolfe Publishing Co., Prescott, Arizona,
1984.
Colvin and Viall, pp. 164-165.
See also "Manufacture of Krag-II," p. 330, for a description of "an
automatic machine designed in the shops, which drills simultaneously from each
end" of the receiver.
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