Q. Give some general directions for the care and preservation of guns and gun-carriages.
A. All guns and carriages should be elevated and traversed to their full limits daily. Ordinarily a gun and carriage should be painted at least once a year. However, climatic conditions may vary this rule. Sperm-oil, cosmic or light slushing oil should never be applied to a surface that has a suspicion of grit, moisture, or rust upon it. Brass gearing should have a thin film of sperm-oil or synovial oil on it. All oil-holes and recoil-cylinders should be examined daily at the beginning of drill. Special attention should be given to grease-cups on disappearing guns to see that they function properly. Retraction-ropes should be kept oiled and cleaned. No part of the carriage should at any time be allowed to rust, and if the carriage is to remain unused for short intervals, all bright and bearing parts should be covered with a thick coat of light slushing oil or cosmic. If the carriage is to remain unused for long intervals, the cosmic should be mixed with 25 per cent of resin. The mixture is well adapted for the purpose, but must be renewed from time to time. The rollers and roller-paths should be cleaned and covered with slush oil, and the space between the dust-guard and base-ring should be filled with waste or oakum to keep out dust, and wrench-holes inside base-ring should be plugged tightly with fitted wooden blocks.
To oil bore, use is made of an ordinary counter-brush secured to the end of a rod and provided with a half-disc of wood to keep the brush against the bore. By this means any required thickness of the mixture may be applied. The brush-rod is, for the rifles, fitted with a socket for connecting it with the special sponge-staff. For mortars the brush is supplied with a special handle. As a rule, the cosmic and resin mixture can be sufficiently removed from the bore for firing by using the scraper alone, this being a semicircular disc of iron.
Q. Describe throttling bars.
A. Bars of steel bolted on the sides of recoil cylinders. (The bolt heads can be seen on the outside of the cylinders.)
The piston head is slotted to receive the bars as shown in Fig. 31, and the bars are thicker at one end than at the other, this varies the amount of oil that can pass through the piston head slots and therefore the pressure keeps uniform.
CARE OF GUNS AND CARRIAGES.
(Extract from War Department, 1905.)
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