None Interchangeable Parts

[thomas aagaard]

When ever the there is a topic on the enfield the issue of interchangeable vs none interchangeable come up.

Now I would say I understood the issue on a theoretical level already but last autumn I got hold of a musket, that was made from parts of 3 musket. It gave me a new insight into how badly parts from one gun would fit on another gun.

And just to show the difference I made this short video.

On this video I got first a P1853.
Then a M/1839 Suhl musket

And finally what most would likely call a French M/1822T. Sold to Denmark in 1848 as a smoothbore percussion musket and then rifled in 1861.
It is made up of parts from 3 different guns. Mostly 5679, one small part from 8666... and relevant to this, the hammer is from 3218.

The difference in how well the parts fit is obvious. And This would be something the armorer would have to spend a good deal of time on... Where had the parts been interchangeable then any private would be able to change the hammer.

 

[redbob]

When the British finally bought into the concept of mass production, they referred to it as The American Method.

 

[thomas aagaard]

They hired James H. Burton from the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to help set up their production lines.
from wiki.
"in June 1855, Burton accepted a five-year contract as Chief Engineer of the Royal Small Arms Manufactory in Enfield Lock, England. Here, Burton was responsible for setting up new production machinery purchased in the United States, much of it from Ames."

 

[Craig L Barry]

As strange as it might sound, there was considerable sentiment in England during the mid-19th century that the American system of manufacture by use of machinery was inferior to their system of manufacture by specialized hand craftsmanship. Specifically that anything made by hand by skilled craftsmen was superior to the same article made by machinery. And further that machine manufacturing was only necessary because the Americans lacked the centuries old trade guilds which supplied the skilled labor component. Of course, this did not turn out to be the case at all.

Anyone who has ever worked on handmade military arms of the mid-19th century knows what it can be like trying to "fit" the parts necessary to restore functionality to these arms.

There is an anecdotal story recorded by a Civil War Union soldier stationed in Northern Virginia outside Washington. This was in either his memoirs or a letter home, where he had an Austrian M-1854 rifle (Lorenz) and unfortunately the cone broke off in the bolster while he tried to remove it. He had to march back into Washington, DC to take it to an armorer to replace the cone and put the rifle back in serviceable condition. There was no part on hand which would fit it, so the armorer had to re-thread the bolster to accept the standard US (5/16 x 24) replacement cone. This lack of standardization with parts would wreak havoc on more complicated repairs in the field, as you might imagine.

 

[thomas aagaard]

I can see where the idea is coming from.
If quality control is not done well, then Something mass produces can easily be only average.
If a mistake was made in the first place when the production line was set up you might have a part that don't fitted well. Sure all the replacements are the exact same, but they all don't fit well.
Also machine might over time loose its precision. Things gets loose or simply gets worn. And this is not spotted then it will get worse over time.
Where if things are made by hand, then the individual item should be well fitted.

Then there where the whole issue of machines being a direct threat to their craft... and livelihood. So they had good reason to try undermine the trust in machine-made items.


Another issue is how we define quality. My best friend is originally a civil engineer specialized in industrial production. As he pointed out seen from a production standpoint a McDonalds burger is likely the best burger in the world. The burger you get in Texas it likely the exact same as you can get in Japan or South Africa or on a US military base in Afghanistan.
But I would think most agree that there are better Burges out there when looking at what is actually in it, taste size and so on.

 

[Jeff in Ohio]

You'll find in some recent good reference books the calculation of cost made by the British government as the American System was set up at the government Enfield facility, and it turned out that the machine made interchangeable arms were cheaper, even adding in a share of the cost of the initial set up of the facility.
I think it was known to the Gun Trade by the start of our War that machine made was cheaper - but there was the time and expense of setting up the American System factory and machinery in the first place.
The American market wanted to buy hundreds of thousands of Enfield Model 1853 rifle-muskets as soon as possible at high prices. The Birmingham system which used individual workmen and workshops already in place could start making those arms TODAY and so that's what happened....our American War was the "Last Hurrah" of the hand fitted Birmingham system, and all thoughtful gunmakers knew it at the time.

 

[Jeff in Ohio]

Another issue is how we define quality. My best friend is originally a civil engineer specialized in industrial production. As he pointed out seen from a production standpoint a McDonald's burger is likely the best burger in the world. The burger you get in Texas it likely the exact same as you can get in Japan or South Africa or on a US military base in Afghanistan.
But I would think most agree that there are better burgers out there when looking at what is actually in it, taste size and so on.

I think your engineer friend should have called McDonald's burgers "the most consistent in the world" rather than "the best in the world," but what can we expect from an engineering type person, eh?