A New Factory

Apparently, he planned on going ahead in his new musket armory to build not only the U. S. musket, but militia rifles of an Enfield pattern. Yet the record is confusing, with the increasing severity of his illness incapacitating him from work. From the master bedroom at Armsmear overlooking the great expanse of nearly 300 acres of green valley he had reclaimed from the spring ravages of the Connecticut River, to his new buildings being added to the factory by the dyke, Colt falteringly ruled his armsmaking empire. Daily conferences with Major Hartley; with James Dean Alden, captain in the Light Guard and Colt’s personal secretary; with Hugh Harbison, secretary of the firm, kept affairs moving. While the fires of Mars glowed bright on the hearths of New England industry, work at the Colt factory was seriously hampered by Colt’s indecision.

Three large buildings totaling 160,000 square feet had been erected at the rear of the original pistol making buildings put up in 1854. Of Portland stone, they rose four stories, internally braced upon a novelty in construction, one of the world’s first buildings to use steel reinforcing. Actually, they were pillars of rolled wrought iron, made in four long troughs and riveted together along the side flanges. They stood until demolished by wrecking crews about 1956. About $100,-000 had been spent on construction plus an additional $300,000 for steam engines, production machinery, and special tools. Building the tools, which was done in Colt’s extensive pattern department where many great names of the New England gun trade first learned their craft, was hampered by an order from the War Department requesting Colt to turn out revolving pistols as fast as they could. This put every man on production work and there was no one left to build machinery for making muskets. The company had to buy machinery from other firms, such as American Machine Works in Chicopee Falls, but most important on the list of necessities was barrel rolling equipment. To make his pistol barrels, Colt used rough forged blanks approximately the shape of the barrel. To make his revolving rifles, he used blanks of cast steel bought from the steel suppliers, often foreign, such as Thomas Firth & Sons of Sheffield. But for making the long U. S. rifle muskets at the rate of a thousand a week he had to plan things differently and go into the primary barrel making business. This required rolls.
An iron barrel was welded from a flat chunky plate of iron, heated to sparkling forging heat and bent around a mandrel and welded along the lap. This length, perhaps three or four inches in diameter, round, with a hole in it, and a foot long, was called a “mould.” Heated to welding heat again with a cold mandrel inserted, the mould was passed between two workmen, holding tongs, on opposite sides of special grooved rollers. The grooves in the rollers were some six or seven, and of “cam shape” in profile; that is, they had a lift or change in dimension resembling a cam if cut through at that part. The rolls were water cooled internally and in constant motion when geared to the power source which was flume or steam engine belting. Their diameters were calculated to give circumferences equal to the finished length of the barrels.
This process had been patented in England by barrel maker Osborne who was shortly afterwards confronted by more than a thousand hand barrel makers with their blacksmith’s hammers in their hands threatening to tear down his Birmingham works. The rioters were dispersed, the barrel makers shifted to the pace of the new technology, and Osborne flourished. Barrel rolling became the accepted method of putting a hole in a long barrel before boring, reaming, and rifling.
Colt needed three sets of this machinery; England was the place to get it. He also planned to turn out a militia musket for private sale, because without the exacting full inspection of the Springfield musket he knew he could make considerable savings and yet get substantially the same retail price. The cast brass “heel plate” of the English pattern was cheaper than the more elaborately profiled iron U. S. butt plate, while the Enfield trigger guard was a one-piece brass casting including tangs for setting into the stock. The U. S. guard assembly, of machined iron, had a bow, trigger plate, two nuts to hold the bow to the plate, and required more finishing than the Enfield. Barrels were somewhat different. He proposed to get both Enfield barrels and barrels in rough form to finish up to Springfield rifled muskets, for he expected to obtain a contract for the Springfield type guns as well as engage in Enfield sales and service on his own.