Machines and Materials for the Springfield Armory

One of the authors whose books I edit is engaged in a very long term research project concerning the arms and equipment of the United States Cavalry. This calls for reading literally thousands of Ordnance Department letters. Today he sent me these two, saying they ought to be of interest to a "machinery guy." He's right — so I thought I'd share them with the other old iron fans.





The planer is self-explanatory, but I am left wondering what they used it for. At this point, in 1855, the armory made only small arms. This purchase likely had something to do with the new series of arms, the M18855 Rifle, Rifle-Musket, Pistol-Carbine and Musketoon adopted that year.

The list of materials is also interesting, as "Jessops" is a British company located in Sheffield. It has long been known that Springfield had to import all their steel, as nothing suitable for ramrods, bayonets and internal lock parts was made in the United States. It was also necessary to import the iron used for the barrels as well because the armory had abandoned hand-forged barrels and adopted barrel-rolling machinery. The American iron that was available to them was not uniform enough to work well with the new machines. This was a political hot potato because, needless to say, Congressmen from iron producing areas were constantly complaining that the armory should "Buy American" while the Ordnance Office was saying that they would be happy to do so — when American iron producers could meet their requirements.

I wonder if there is a family tree of the New England Whitneys to show how all those (how many?) 19th century mechanical geniuses were related and who worked for which factory. Might make an interesting book. I remember reading a young adult biography of Eli when I as around twelve years old. But as I got into studying old guns and machine tools, I ran into other Whitneys.

Larry

On the arms side, there are really only two... but Eli Sr. was quite old when his son was born and Eli Whitney Jr. was only a child when his father died. Between the death of Eli Sr., and Eli Jr. taking over the business, it was run by two of his cousins. In all, father and son, their careers spanned nearly 100 years. (Eli Sr. was contracting with the government for muskets in the 1790s while Eli Jr. didn't go out of business until the very late 1880s.) I don't know if the Whitney of Gage, Warner & Whitney was a recognizable relation. The name isn't all that unusual and all the NE Whitneys are likely distant relations.

99Panhard said:

On the arms side, there are really only two... but Eli Sr. was quite old when his son was born and Eli Whitney Jr. was only a child when his father died. Between the death of Eli Sr., and Eli Jr. taking over the business, it was run by two of his cousins. In all, father and son, their careers spanned nearly 100 years. (Eli Sr. was contracting with the government for muskets in the 1790s while Eli Jr. didn't go out of business until the very late 1880s.) I don't know if the Whitney of Gage, Warner & Whitney was a recognizable relation. The name isn't all that unusual and all the NE Whitneys are likely distant relations.

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But there is also the J. S. Whitney, superintendent of Springfield Armory, who was certainly deeply involved in arms production. I found a biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Scollay_Whitney

Reading further, I saw that Eli (cotton gin) had a father named Eli, but was not called Junior, and named his son Eli, who was called Junior. Then the bio of Eli Jr. said his uncle Eli Whitney and another uncle managed the Whitney armory after Eli (cotton gin) died in 1825. Like I said, there sure were a lot of Whitneys. I suspect that there may be an extra Eli in that tangle.

Larry

It is always interesting to see these terse 'specifications', from a time when suppliers and customers understood and trusted each other.

I note that the writer lapsed into the archaic 'fs' form for 'ss' when writing 'Mass.'.

Jessop's was probably William Jessop & Sons. An 1866 advert shows that they had depots in six US cities: NY, Boston, Philadelphia, St Louis, Cincinnati, and Providence.

William Jessop and Sons

There was another Sheffield Jessop, James, who was involved with Shortridge, Howell and Jessop, who were early makers of steel for larger guns and for boats. In fact they supplied steel for the hull and boiler of the paddle steamer used by Dr Livingstone's exploration of the Zambezi. The steel plate (sheet?!) used for the hull and the boiler was just 1/16" thick. Perhaps they didn't appreciate its susceptability to corrosion! More information here:-

Shortridge, Howell and Jessop

Apologies for the digression.

I am reasonably certain it would be William Jessop. Of those locations, Boston & Providence are almost equidistant from Springfield and would have been, in 1855, a short train journey. As far as I know, no one has ever examined the history of American arms making from the materials point of view. The subject is covered in a limited way in "Arms Making in the Connecticut Valley" by F.J. Deyrup but her book was a thesis dissertation done in the 1930s. It is very good, but was printed in a very small quantity (I think about 100 copies in 1938 and a 500 copy reprint in the 1960s). Outside the academic world, almost no one has read it although I'm pleased to say that the curator at Springfield certainly has. My own feeling is that the sources of materials answer a lot of questions... like who made the locks of American guns prior to the Civil War? To the chagrin of most American collectors, they are all imported, mostly from the Birmingham, black country lock-making towns. The whole myth of the frontier gunmaker hammering out all the parts himself is just that — a myth. The only American-made gunlocks were for the military, either in the national armories or by contractors supplying the government and, for those, much of the raw material had to be imported.

Hello, In answer to the original question of what they would use the large planer for...perhaps they were building arms making machinery at the armory as well as the arms. I know that the "inside contractors" at the Colt Armory were building production machinery there during this era. Tom from Mass.

parts said:

Hello, In answer to the original question of what they would use the large planer for...perhaps they were building arms making machinery at the armory as well as the arms. I know that the "inside contractors" at the Colt Armory were building production machinery there during this era. Tom from Mass.

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I think you may be right about that. The new 1855 series of arms entailed a good deal of new equipment and they certainly did build some of their own machinery. In fact, I have an 1870s letter from the armory to the Providence Tool Company saying they (the armory) had heard that PT had built a new breeching machine and could they borrow the patterns. In return for the loan, the armory offered to have a 2nd set of castings made for PT. There was a great deal of cooperation between the armory and the other major arms manufacturers.

With the 1855 arms, the armory also adopted the barrel rolling machines I mentioned earlier. I'd assumed they imported them from England (where they were invented) but it is very possible that they just built them in the armory. The basic design was well known as Asa Waters, in Millbury Mass., had British-built barrel rolling machines in the 1820s. When Waters ceased to be a government musket contractor the machines were sold to the State of South Carolina.

Oddly enough, I spent the day at the armory and discussed this with the curator. We have a long-term plan to try to identify what machinery the armory had as, for some reason, literally nothing in the way of inventories has survived (or at least has been found). They do have a collection of glass-plate photographs of machines that were taken out of production around WWI. For some reason, they photographed them before they were sold or scrapped. I haven't seen these yet but I've encouraged the curator to post them here in the hope some of our members can identify them.

They do have a collection of glass-plate photographs of machines that were taken out of production around WWI. For some reason, they photographed them before they were sold or scrapped. I haven't seen these yet but I've encouraged the curator to post them here in the hope some of our members can identify them.

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Tool porn...

Joe in NH

There are some links related to the Springfield armory on archive. org
I took a quick look at this one .
Marco Paul's voyages & travels : Springfield armory
by Abbott, Jacob, 1803-1879


Published 1852

https://archive.org/details/marcopaulsvoy00abborich

search link .
https://archive.org/search.php?query=Springfield Armory

Regards,
Jim

Greenwood and Batley were major early makers of specialized production machinery for the arms industry.The RSAF at Enfield also bought a quantity of equiptment from Robbins and Lawrence for the startup of interchangeable production.A comittee from Britain visited the US in the early 1850s and purchased examples of every kind of armsmaking machine,presumably to be copied.Regards John.