American Rifle - Alexander Rose [46]
Impressed by his own armorers’ enthusiasm, a few months later Wadsworth offered Hall a contract to build one thousand rifles at Harpers Ferry in his own self-run Rifle Works. In making the offer to set up shop at faraway Harpers Ferry rather than at Springfield—a more natural home for Hall—Wadsworth and Bomford’s strategy was to use him as a Trojan horse to subvert Superintendent Stubblefield’s fortress from within. As a private contractor answerable to the Ordnance Department, Hall would not be subject to Stubblefield’s writ and would provide a useful counterweight to his reign. Upon hearing the news, Stubblefield correctly suspected an intrigue but could do nothing but make his hatred of the interloper apparent from the moment he showed up. The feeling was mutual. Hall, outspoken and stubborn, and Stubblefield, jealous and threatened, fought over absolutely everything, from the allocation of raw materials to the choice of postmaster for the town.43
Stubblefield liked to blame the armory’s chronic deficit on having to subsidize the Rifle Works, but Hall himself cost the government very little (while snitching to Washington that Stubblefield’s unwillingness to allow competitive bidding raised the cost of materials by up to 20 percent). His pay, after all, was just $60 (about $920 in today’s dollars) a month, but to supplement this modest wage, Hall arranged to receive a royalty of $1 (i.e., $15) for each rifle manufactured.44This was nowhere near enough to retire on, but Hall had high hopes of eventually obtaining contracts for tens of thousands of rifles, which would set him up very nicely, especially if he could bring the price of each gun down.
It was Hall’s responsibility to build the machines that would enable this scale of economy and identicalness of form, but even he, in his jubilation, underestimated just how arduous this task would be. Interchangeability on paper sounded easier than it actually was. Take such a simple object as a screw. To manufacture it in quantity requires a thorough understanding of such technical matters as its pitch diameter, thread angle, crest, root, pitch, and flank. Traditionally, each craftsman had made his own screws; only in the 1770s had Jesse Ramsden conceived a lathe that cut a fine pitch—crucial for making the kind of precision screw necessary for the construction of steam engines and machine tools. Gunsmiths, however, still relied on their own preferences and made small batches when necessary, none of which were perfectly identical to those preceding or succeeding. The variety of available screws rendered Hall’s efforts to make them interchangeable using a specialized screw-lathe a thankless task, particularly after Bomford, in an expensive attempt at thriftiness, ordered that the available stocks of screws be used up before making new ones.45
Though Hall’s mechanics could use one another’s screws (by hammering them in, if necessary, when the boss wasn’t watching), employing a screw that was not precisely machined for its hole or nut resulted in metal fatigue, considerable loss of holding force, and uncertain strength. For everyday uses it still might suffice, but in a gun, subjected to immense physical forces and burning-hot temperatures, such convenient workarounds could lead to a short life span—for both weapon and shooter.
In early 1823, confronted by this and other daunting obstacles, Hall came close to resigning his position, citing his maudlin reflections “upon the excessive