3-053-451 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ashantee Expedition: making the bullets at Woolwich Arsenal, [London], 1873. View of '...preparations in the Laboratory of the Royal Arsenal for the expedition to the Gold Coast of West Africa...[There are] ingeniously-contrived machines for manufacturing buck-shot by pressing and punching them out of cold lead, instead of casting them in moulds...Nine million cartridges for the Martini-Henry rifle have been ordered...Our Illustrations of the breechloading-cartridgemaking machinery represent four processes: first, that of the lead-squirting machine to produce the coils of lead which are to be cut into bullets; secondly is shown the front of a bullet-punching machine, in the first operation; thirdly, the same machine in the second operation; fourthly, the front of the machine in which the bullet is softened by warming it, while the plug, to aid its expansion when the shot is fired, is pressed into the base of the bullet. This breechloader-rifle ammunition is for the use of the British troops, while the buck-shot, to be fired from old-fashioned smooth-bore muskets, will do very well for the Houssas [Hausas] and Fantees [Fantes] in our service'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.