Arms & Armour

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Christopher Spencer: the manufacturing

technology of his repeating rifle

David Williams & Peter Smithurst

To cite this article: David Williams & Peter Smithurst (2004) Christopher Spencer: the
manufacturing technology of his repeating rifle, Arms & Armour, 1:2, 165-182, DOI: 10.1179/
aaa.2004.1.2.165

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/aaa.2004.1.2.165

Published online: 18 Jul 2013.

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 Arms & Armour, Vol. 1, No.2, 2004

Christopher Spencer: the manufacturing

technology of his repeating rifle

David Williams* and Peter Smithurstt

*Professor) Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering)
Loughborough University and tHead of Curatorial Department and
Keeper of Weapons) Royal Armouries) Leeds
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Following a description of its methodologyJ the paper begins with a discussion of

Spencer's career and contributions to firearms and manufacturing technology and the
relationship of his work in the design of breechloaders to those of othersJ including
Jennings. The detailed design of the mechanism of the Spencer repeating rifle is reviewed
with respect to its manufacturabilitYJ identifying changes between the design produced
in volume and the original and some subsequent patent applications. ThisJ and an
examination of weapons in the reserve collections of the Royal ArmouriesJ demonstrates
that previous patent coverage is likely to have forced Spencer to take a radical step in
the design of his breechloader - the rotating guide required to move the cartridge from
the magazine held in the butt of the rifle to the breech - and this step required the use
of the most up to date manufacturing technology of the time, primarily the index miller
of Frederick Howe. The review also shows that there was a significant design change in
the extraction mechanism to both simplify and strengthen the mechanism. One of the
weapons in the Royal Armouries collection appears to be the only known example of the
Lane extractor. Another weapon shows surprising quality issues - particularly the level
of internal surface finish - that perhaps reflect the level of quality requirements of the
time but give useful indications of the manufacturing processes and machines used.
I am an American. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut -
anyway, just over the river, in the country .... I went over to the great arms factory
and learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; learned to make everything:
guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labor-saving machinery. Why, I
could make anything a body wanted - anything in the world, it didn't make any
difference what; and if there wasn't any quick new-fangled way to make a thing, I
could invent one - and do it as easy as rolling off a log. (Mark Twain, A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889)

Introduction

The middle years of the 19th century were a key period in the development of
both the breech-loading firearm and manufacturing technology, especially the

2004 The Trustees of the Armouries

 166 David Williams and Peter Smithurst

milling machine. Christopher Spencer - a 'Connecticut Yankee' very like the

one invented by Mark Twain - was at the centre of these developments as a
young man, he later invented one of the most important production technologies
of the 19th and 20th century, the automatic screw machine. This paper examines
Spencer's rifle, designed when he was 26, to see what we can learn about his early
exposure to manufacturing.
The discussion in our paper is at the boundary of both the field of technology
of firearms and that of the history of technology, particularly industrial archaeol-
ogy. It addresses part of the history of interchangeable manufacture, the ability to
create machines the components of which can be interchanged - swapped -
without adjustment, and machine tools particularly as applied in armouries. One
of the major issues in industrial archaeology is increasing our understanding of
how and when machines were applied. The discipline has tended to focus on the
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preservation of buildings with less emphasis on what goes on inside them; the
buildings remain, much of the machinery has long gone or may have been exten-
sively modified with time. Also, the written records on machines and innovations
are unreliable so there is now a concentration on evidence from the artefact or
object made by such machines, especially those artefacts that can be accurately
dated. Military firearms are therefore of considerable interest. The manufacture
of military firearms also drove the evolution of one of the most important metal
working machine tools, the milling machine and also, because of the large
numbers of different small components required including screws, other impor-
tant machine tools such as the turret lathe and screw machine and, as we will see,
their successor the automatic screw machine (Woodbury 1960; Rolt 1965: 173-
80).
A key methodological step in the study of this area was taken by Edwin
Battison in 1966 when he studied the superficial surface features, the grooved
features or 'witnesses' created by the tools used in the manufacturing process,
of the dismantled components of a Whitney musket, particularly the tumbler
(a critical complex geometry lock component), hammer screw and side nails
(screws) to indicate that these small components were made using the process of
hollow milling or the related process of clamp milling (Battison 1966). These
simple processes are variants of manually driven milling processes used by
gunmakers since at least the mid-18th century. He also noted that the locks of
Whitney's first batch of muskets are marked with a number, showing they are not
interchangeable and that they had to be matched to other components. Battison
used artefact analysis to infer the processes used to create them; industrial
engineers use similar techniques when they reverse engineering competitors'
products by examining them to infer the processes used to create the product.
In the 1980s Robert Gordon extended Battison's approach of examining the
superficial tool marks on artefacts by attempting to duplicate these marks in the
laboratory to both practically and more scientifically determine the processes
used to create the marks (Gordon 1988a; 1988b). He applied this to the Hall and
other later rifles such as the Pattern 1853 Enfield to add more to our understand-
ing of who contributed to the development of the techniques of interchangeable
production.
 Christopher Spencer: the technology of his repeating rifle 167

Extending the approach of Battison and Gordon we can develop the method-
ology of examining the artefact to address whether we can learn anything from
the macroscopic form or geometry - the shape of the object - and its com-
ponents as well as learning from its 'microscopic' or surface features. There can
be interactions between the way a component is designed to function as part of
a mechanism and how it is made. Some areas of the component are critical but
some can be modified in design so that they can be made more easily. Identi-
fication of these features and relationships is essentially the domain of the
mechanical engineer, the designer and constructor of machines and mechanisms.
The mechanical engineer must consider the function of the device and the form
of the components and mechanism that gives rise to that function as well as the
processes and machines that are used to create the form.
This paper therefore reviews the evolution of the Spencer repeating rifle -
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along with the Jennings, Volcanic and Henry series of weapons, one of the most
innovative rifle designs of the 19th century - using weapons in the reserve col-
lections of the Royal Armouries to explore the techniques used in its manufacture
and issues in the realisation of its design. This study helps us understand the
approach taken by the inventor, Christopher Spencer, in the early years of his
career. He was 26 when the rifle was patented in 1860. As we have said it is of
particular value to understand this because many manufacturing innovations
were made in mid-19th century US gun making, particularly in the techniques
required to produce breech-loading rifles in considerable volumes. Some 60,000
Spencer rifles and carbines saw action in the American Civil War. Spencer's later
contributions were primarily in manufacturing technology. As Gordon has
observed, the Hall rifle was perhaps the most complex mass manufactured object
made in the United States in the first half of the 19th century, but the Spencer
rifle must have been as challenging in the 1860s. This paper is a companion to a
paper examining the Hall rifle (Williams 2004).

Spencer's contributions to technology

Christopher Miner Spencer (1833-1922) was perhaps one of the most versatile
US inventors of the 19th century making both significant innovations in the
design of firearms and in machine tools for mass production. He is probably best
known through the repeating carbine and rifle which bear his name and which
are often credited as one of the decisive weapons in the Union armoury in the
American Civil War. Indeed, some would say it was this weapon that ensured
victory. This rim fire metallic cartridge magazine or repeating rifle was perhaps
the first step in the evolution of the modern military rifle (Schreier 1981). The
development of the firearms technology of Spencer's rifles is excellently reviewed
in Marcot (1983). What is less well known is that Spencer was also a prolific
designer and innovator of machine tools, especially those used in repetitive
manufacturing operations. Of his 40 patents granted in the United States
between 1859 and 1907, only 12 related to firearms and these predominantly
were granted in the 1860-73 period. The remainder were mechanically
 168 David Williams and Peter Smithurst
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Figure 1 Spencer's automatic screw machine.

orientated, including in his latter years some that were applicable to self-propelled
vehicles. In manufacturing machinery he was responsible, with Billings, for the
development of the board drop hammer for forging (Roe 1916: 175) and more
importantly for the single spindle screw machine or automatic lathe (Roe 1916:
175-7) for making small 'repetition' parts such as screws.
Spencer's machine 'the Hartford Automatic' (figure 1) was based upon a
standard Pratt and Whitney lathe with a number of tools held in a turret, but was
modified to allow automatic operation by the addition of a cam shaft to drive the
tooling and, most significantly, adjustable cams to control the relative motions of
the machine. The machine therefore could be set up to make different parts
using the adjustable cams - the 'brain wheels' of the machine - and once the
machine was set up it could run without any intervention from an operator -
one of the early steps to programmable automation. Joseph Roe, an early
historian of machine tools enthusiastically endorsed Spencer's contribution saying
'The importance of this invention can hardly be over-estimated. It ranks with
Maudslay's slide-rest [for lathes] ... ' (Roe 1916: 176). This field captured his
interest through much of his life. From 1873, the date of his first screw machine
patent, he was continually working to improve it and his very last patent, issued
in 1907, is a further improvement to his brainchild.
Spencer was working at a time when firearms and the method of their
manufacture were on the threshold of their greatest technical revolution. He was
an accomplished engineer and firearm designer. One would expect, therefore,
that his firearms were designed not only to function effectively but also for ease of
manufacture. This paper looks at the 'Spencer', from the point of view of its
manufacture and attempts to understand how this was accomplished.
 Christopher Spencer: the technology of his repeating rifle 169

Spencer, the man

Born in Manchester, Connecticut, Spencer spent his early career at the Cheney
Silk Mills (Williamson 1972: 58). He appears to have interrupted his time at the
silk mills with an apprenticeship with Samuel Loomis and periods with N P Ames
and at the Colt Armory, these latter being two of the most significant locations
for the development and application of up to date manufacturing technology at
the time (Lewis 1978). He returned to Cheneys' in 1857 or 1858 rising to the
level of Superintendent and making a number of patented innovations in spooling
machinery (Lewis 1978; Grant 1995: 39). While working with the Cheneys he
began experimenting on a repeating firearm and, following the patenting of the
design in 1860, started the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company with the backing
of the Cheneys. The guns were subsequently manufactured at a plant in the
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Chickering Pianoforte building in Boston and by the Burnside Rifle Company of

Providence, in this case with a three-dollar royalty for each rifle.
As Spencer said himself :
Mr. Charles Cheney was quick to see the advantage of a repeating gun in the hands
of the Northern troops, and prevailed upon me to put my patent into his hands for
one month furnishing money to pay for a model ... procuring from the Sharps Rifle
Company the barrel, lock and such parts as we could utilize. I engaged an expert
gunmaker in Worcester to make the parts'. (Grant 1995: 39-41)

This was L Wheelock of Hartford (Lewis 1978).

With the end of the Civil War Spencer left to join Sylvester Roper to make the
Roper Repeating Rifle. Following this in 1868 Spencer allied with C E Billings,
a former Robbins and Lawrence mechanic, to form the Billings and Spencer
Company at Amherst, Massachusetts. While working with Billings, Spencer
made a special automatic lathe for turning sewing machine spools and this gave
him the ideas that he included in the automatic screw machine (Rolt 1965: 176).
After building the machine in secret in a rented workshop above the Chushman
Chuck Company, Spencer launched with others the Hartford Machine Screw
Company in 1876 to make threaded fasteners with the machine. This enterprise
was less than successful and failed, however Pratt and Whitney made the machine
under licence for many years. Later Spencer designs of automatic lathes, includ-
ing three spindle automatic lathes were also very successful machines (Grant
1995; Rolt 1965; Williamson 1972).

Other players and patents

The Spencer Repeating Rifle Company was liquidated in 1868 and significantly
the assets were purchased by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
Winchester via other earlier acquisitions also owned very significant patents
in repeating firearms including the use of an under-barrel tubular magazine,
the rising breech block and its locking mechanism. The patented under barrel
magazine entered Winchester ownership by a tortuous route; it was included in
the Walter Hunt patent of 1848 which was subsequently assigned to George
 170 David Williams and Peter Smithurst

Arrowsmith who, with his employee Lewis Jennings, created the Jennings' rifle
(Williamson 1972: 9-16). The Jennings' rifle was purchased by Courlandt C
Palmer who employed Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, formerly of Robbins
and Lawrence, to experiment on it, the ultimate consequence of this relationship
were the core patents of the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company subsequently
acquired by Winchester and which became the key to their success.

The evolution of the milling machine

The period between 1840 and 1865 saw an extremely rapid evolution in machine
tool technology, especially in the milling machine. In milling a rotating multi-
point cutter is used to cut a static work piece held on a driven table. This is in
contrast to turning on a lathe where a single-point tool is used to machine a
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rotating work piece. By 1855 the straightforward manufacturing or plain miller

had emerged, this machine, essentially based upon the lathe, had many applica-
tions in gun making especially when it was used with form tools and allowed the
rapid generation of many component parts for firearms. A form cutter is a shaped
cutter that will generate complex geometry in a single cutting pass. However, as
Woodbury says, 'the versatility of the universal milling machine had to await the
genius of Joseph R Brown of Brown and Sharpe in 1861. However ... it is this
period of groping that is of greatest interest in a study of the nature of technical
innovation' (1960). During this period the machine designers were seeking a
machine design that would allow them to make many different shapes of com-
ponent. The universal milling machine (figure 2) was first invented to allow the
machining of grooves in twist drills to replace the slow and expensive process
of filing them by hand. One of the major uses of twist drills at the time was
the drilling of percussion nipples required for weapons for the American Civil
War. Brown's machine was however intended to be much more versatile and
this versatility has been demonstrated over the ensuing century and a half. There
were however a number of complex precursors to this relatively simple and
flexible design. One of them was the index miller (figure 3) designed in 1850 by
Frederick Howe while working with Robbins and Lawrence (Woodbury 1960:
38). The work of Robbins and Lawrence, one of the most important of the
machine maker gunmaker businesses is described in Smithurst (2002: 66-76).
Howe incidentally suggested to Brown the problem of the machining of twist
drills while he worked for the Providence Tool Company. The Providence Tool
Company of course manufactured the Burnside and the Peabody rifles.

Reviewing the Spencer design

When we review the rifle we should recognise the level of integration - the
number of technologies drawn together - in the design. Although it was not the
first magazine loading repeater the Spencer was the first breech-loading metallic
cartridge-firing rifle specifically designed for military use (Schreier 1981).
An initial look at the Spencer allows us to describe the main features of the
mechanism (figures 4 and 5). It is a rim fire cartridge breechloader where
 Christopher Spencer: the technology of his repeating rifle 171
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unOWN &: SIiAR-l'l:'S UtUVRSAL l.ULLIN(]- MACUJHl:.

BUCK & HICKMAN

Are nOW SOLE AGENTS for
Tho MOl'se Twist Dt'i11and Machine Co.
The Pl'att & Whitney Maclliue Co.
Tile 81'0\1111& Sh,LPpe Manlll'aetlll'ing Co,
1'110 E, Horlon & SOil Chuck Co.
I~~ilWOlkSt~~~"A~~'~s E~1~tF'X~~~1~[~I~d
~~~!~hl1l'NIVERSAL
MILLING MACIIlNES.
~:~g~~gs~lihit~~~n~~:~f.j~Jrll~l~dg ~a,;:::ii
Uc"~.\~I'I?llTl~llill/i:~,~~~k
Redactloll In Prices.

Also Agcnls ler hrkcr's and Stephens' Pa(cnl Vices, Cushman Chucks,
Westcott Chucks, Stanley Rulo aud Level Co.'s Plaues, ete" etc.
ALL KINDS O~' AMERICAN j; ENGLISH TOOLS SUPPLIED.
280~1, WIlI'J'ECIIAPE[, ROAD, LONDON, E.
Bond for Catalogues Poat FrcoQ on Application. Figure 2 The universal milling machine.

Figure 3 The index miller.

 172 David Williams and Peter Smithurst
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Figure 4 The Spencer.

Figure 5 The Spencer-action opened using the under lever to expose the rotating guide (A)
and its integral falling block (B) with percussion slide.

cartridges are held in a tubular magazine held in the butt. A rotating guide piece
(A) acts to feed cartridges from the magazine to the breech and includes a falling
block mechanism similar to that of the Sharps (B) that closes the breech and
includes an integral percussion slide that transfers the action of the hammer to
the rim of the cartridge. Both the rotation of the guide piece and the movement
 Christopher Spencer: the technology of his repeating rifle 173

of the block are actuated oy an under lever. The rifle also includes an extractor
and ejector mechanism. A separate back action lock is fitted in the manner of the
Sharps carbine. Note that the components of the design are labelled in the
following figures.
A more detailed look at the mechanism particularly to establish the manufac-
turing process for the rifle and to establish whether manufacturing was considered
in the design either to enable construction or to simplify manufacture allows us to
make the following comments:
The use of the external lock dramatically simplifies the construction of the
overall mechanism, but does require the integration of the percussion slide
into the rotating guide.
The rotating guide piece is an extremely complex component integrating a
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number of mechanism functions and has double curvature surfaces (C) that
match their corresponding features in the receiver. Critically the double curva-
ture surfaces are of different primary radius of curvature. The contact surfaces
are both curved in the direction of rotation and crowned in the perpendicular
direction.
The centre of rotation of the mechanism (D) is at its most extreme point.
The primary guide to the motion of the action of the falling block mechanism
is a cylindrical pin (E), which acts to maintain the accuracy of the motion.
This much simplifies the manufacture of the mechanism. A compressed coil
spring causes the block to rise.
The early extractor mechanism appears not to have been strong enough for
the service requirement.
The pin at the centre of rotation of the action is small when compared to the
scale of the other features.

Comparison with the realised design with the original patent 27,393 of 6
March 1860 (good images, key patent drawings and models are shown in Marcot
1983: 15 and McAulay 1987: 94, 110) highlights the following reflecting
both design evolution and perhaps a hiding of the design intent by patent
preparation:

There have been radical changes in the geometry of the rotating guide piece
including a change of its centre of rotation in the original design from the mid
point of a cylindrical guide piece to the extreme point of a segment in the final
design.
The falling block mechanism is not present in the patent drawing and model.
A step in the rotating guide closes the breech and a bolt actuated by an under
lever locks the action. The revised mechanism is more robust and accurate
and appears close to its final form in the patent 36,062 of 29 July 1862.
Intermediate designs of the falling block are also known (Marcot 1983: 17).
The overall receiver has been redesigned to make it much shorter conse-
quently simplifying its construction and reducing the amount of inletting
required in the woodwork.
 174 David Williams and Peter Smithurst

The ejector spring is shown as a single leaf external to the action in the patent
drawing and model but is realised as an enclosed 'V' spring in the final design
and the 1862 patent.
The body of the 1860 patent model is an assembly with a side plate that can
be removed to expose the action. This construction also allows the inside of
the body to be readily machined by an index-milling machine.
Viewing the early patent drawings and model and the subsequent realised weapon
together highlights the complexity and level of integration of the design and the
complexity associated with its manufacture - especially when compared to other
contemporary designs like the Sharp, based solely on a sliding falling block. We
should now consider why this complexity, representing a significant step in the
evolution of firearms technology, might have arisen.
One of Spencer's key design decisions was to use a tubular magazine located in
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the butt. This requires a large rotation of the rotating guide (approaching 90
degrees) to bring the new cartridge to the breech. This is in contrast to the small
rotation (of the order of 20 degrees) required in an action that feeds a cartridge
from an under barrel magazine. This approach was probably required because the
under barrel approach was protected by the patent of Hunt and its successors.
This constraint makes the mechanism more complex to design and very much
more complicated to manufacture. The design of the falling block with the coil
spring action and cylindrical guide pin is pleasing and inexpensive to manufacture
when compared with other approaches such as using prismatic (square-sided)
slideways, like those of the Sharps, using other surfaces of the components.
Spencer's later repeating shotgun design of 1881 includes an under-barrel maga-
zine indicating that he understood the limitations of his design and the merits of
the under-barrel solution in the creation of a simple mechanism. This gives some
support to the assertion that the complexity in the first design was required to
work around the claims of a competitor's patent.

Evidence from the weapons in the Royal Armouries reserve collection

A number of weapons were examined including early rifles in excellent condition

and a well-preserved later (higher number) carbine. Some of the rifles were fitted
with a magazine cut-off, allowing them to be used as single shot weapons. The
photographs in this paper are primarily of an excellent condition early rifle;
the revised extractor included in figures 6 and 12 is from the later carbine. The
following comments can be made:
There is a significant incremental change in the design; the later carbine has a
much-modified method of extraction (see figure 3).
The components of the early action are not numbered. This is in contrast to
the later action and the action shown in Myatt in which all components of the
action appear to have matching numbers (1989: 112). Components with match-
ing numbers in an action indicate that these components have been chosen
to fit in individual mechanisms or have been finished by fitting to create
the mechanisms. Such mechanisms are not interchangeable. This suggests
that both actions are unlikely to be constructed interchangeably.
 Christopher Spencer: the technology of his repeating rifle 175
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Figure 6 Actions showing the early (upper) and a later (lower) variants of extractor design.

Some of the action bodies (see figure 7) show evidence of stringers in the
surface of the finish machined and colour case hardened action. Stringers are
metallurgical defects where an inclusion, usually an impurity, in the original
material is caused by the manufacturing process to break into a line or string
of smaller inclusions. These clearly show that the action bodies are forgings
as the stringers follow the forging deformations and they more importantly
indicate the relatively poor quality of the starting material.
The magazine is not on the centreline at the breech, it is offset, probably to
allow the separate lock to be fitted.
Unusually the hole that guides the spring of the block breaks through to the
adjacent slot allowing dirt ingress and potentially spring binding on the edge
of the slot.
The bar (F) is the 'percussion slide' that acts to transfer the impact of the
hammer to the rim of the cartridge.
The disassembly of the weapon confirmed the complexity of the rotating guide
and confirmed that there appears to be no clear functional requirement for the
crown on the curved surfaces of the guide piece.
 176 David Williams and Peter Smithurst
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Figure 7 Stringers in the action body.

The rotating guide, its manufacture and the manufacture of the

corresponding features of the action

As previously stated Spencer appears to have created the rotating guide in order
to circumvent the Hunt and other patents. In the evolved design Spencer chose
to allow the rotating guide to pivot on a pin held in two 'ears' (G) of the action
body. The one-piece body is much more robust and more likely to be able
to withstand hard use in a military environment than the earlier assembly. He
also cleverly integrated a simple spring, returned falling block mechanism and
percussion slide into the rotating guide. As a consequence of these decisions he
had to make a complex component essentially formed from two circular segments
 Christopher Spencer: the technology of his repeating rifle 177

of two different radii, the dimensions of the radii chosen such that one (H) falls
below the barrel to guide the motion of the action and support extraction and one
m chosen to allow both feeding of the new cartridge and the closing of the block
and magazine as the action closes. This requires the rotating guide to have a
step in its radius and also requires the corresponding female feature within a
one-piece action to have two different radii, this adds significant complexity to
the manufacture of this component.
Constructing the stepped rotating guide component would have required
multiple set-ups on a milling machine. Different set-ups would have been
required for example to make the holes and cut outs and more particularly have
required the use of an indexing capability to make the segments of two different
radii. An indexing mechanism allows the rotational motion of one of the axes
of the machine to be accurately controlled so that angles can be generated consis-
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tently. Fortunately, as we have already observed, such machines were recently

available as the early (pre-universal) index milling machines designed 'for the
trade' by Frederick Howe and made by Lincoln and/or Robbins and Lawrence
and were built 'in considerable quantities in the 1850's and later' (Steeds 1969:
74; Woodbury 1960: 38). Particularly the work can be held in a fixture, a work
holding device that can rotate about a vertical axis and be positioned at a number
of different angles by an index plate below it. Steeds observes that machines
'almost identical with this were still in use at the US Armory Springfield in 1900'
(Steeds 1969: 74).
As indicated above, making the rotating guide is complex, however the manu-
facture of the corresponding features inside the action is even more so. The key
features to be constructed are the two curved surfaces, one a larger diameter than
the other with a centre of curvature that is within the action component. This
particularly makes access by a side and face-milling cutter difficult - the most
straightforward way of making the small radius. Even using this technique cutting
the larger radius would still be problematic because of the step in radius. How-
ever if the component was mounted in the vice of an index milling machine such
that the centre line of the machine rotation was at the centre line of the pivot pin
hole or centre of rotation of the mechanism it would be possible to generate
curves using an end milling cutter within the component to match the curves on
the rotating guide. However if this milling cutter was a square ended cutter as a
result of the one path it would generate a double curved surface within the
component effectively cutting a larger radius at the leading point of the cutter
than at the side of the cutter - in this way it would create the inverse of the
crowned surface seen inside the action on the rotating guide components. The
curvature could be modified by the cutter end geometry chosen but would always
generate the inverse crown. The geometry of the inverse crown leads us to
suggest this method of manufacture. The matching crowned curvatures (K shows
an example) (figure 8) on the rotating guide would have to be constructed using
form cutters to generate the curvature required on each segment, which was usual
practise. This inference is perhaps why it is difficult to explain the function of the
crowned surfaces on the rotating guide; they may be solely required to allow the
manufacture of the matching feature.
 178 David Williams and Peter Smithurst
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Figure 8 The crowned curvatures on the action body.

Other contemporary weapons of this time do not have the requirement for
the complex rotary action, the internal features within their action bodies are
therefore those that can be made primarily by slotting - the use of a reciprocat-
ing single-point tool. Tooling marks show that the internal plane faces of the
Spencer action were finished by slotting.
One of the weapons in the reserve collections shows pick up marks (L) (figure
9). Pick-up marks are the witnesses left by material build up on the edges of a
cutter causing it to cut oversize in an irregular way. These are at first sight similar
to those you might expect from a conventional milling cutter, however in order to
make the slot with a milling cutter it would be required to have its arbour at the
pivot point at the finish of the cut. This cannot be achieved with the present
design of action - it could be achieved if the pivot holes were in a separate
sub-assembly, this however would add complexity and reduce the robustness of
the design. It would also not be possible to make the larger diameter portion of
the matching component in this way. These marks may have been made by a
roughing rather than a finishing process or by pick up on the flutes of an end
milling cutter or slot drill causing it to cut oversize on the leading face and to
leave this witness in the finished component. This later hypothesis may explain
the curvature of the witnesses. This pick-up effect is likely to be further exacer-
bated by inconsistent material - the stringers in the action suggest that the
material is likely to be of variable quality. It is of interest to speculate why this
action body was not scrapped as being of unacceptable quality. This may reflect
a reluctance to throwaway a component with this level of added value or more
likely that the fault is in a hidden area of the action. Such weapons were
sometimes sold at a reduced price.
 Christopher Spencer: the technology of his repeating rifle 179
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Figure 9 Machining marks inside the action.

Discussions have suggested that more up to date methods of generating the

surface would be to use special purpose curved broaching methods. Like milling,
broaching uses a multi-point cutter but in the broaching process the depth of cut
taken by consecutive teeth increases. Broaches are frequently used to open out
shaped holes where a tapered broach is forced through the hole, each tooth of the
broach increasing its size in a similar way to a coarse file. Although commonplace
today and used in the manufacture of revolver frames in the 19th century,
broaches were not widely used in workshops before the early 1900s.

Change in the design of the extractor and the Lane extractor

Figure 6 shows the change in the method of extraction from a lever mounted at
the edge of the action to pick up the cartridge rim to a lever within the slotted
feature of the rotating guide. Marcot and Lewis in their reviews of the firearms
technology of the rifle show that Spencer and his colleagues struggled with the
extraction of fired cases from the weapon Marcot 1983; Lewis 1978). An early
prototype used a saw tooth edge extractor and Spencer's 1862 patent shows
another design. There are four well-known variants of extractor for the Spencer:
The early blade extractor as shown in figure 6 (upper);
A later variation of this invented in 1864 by an enthusiastic hunter Edward
Stabler, which adds a torsion coil return spring to assist the action of the
extractor blade (Marcot 1983: 84) (Stabler also invented a magazine cut-off
for the rifle to allow it to be used as a single shot weapon);
 180 David Williams and Peter Smithurst

A smaller 'short knife' extractor (Lewis 1978);

What is known as a modified Lane extractor driven by a simple coil
compression spring (Marcot 1983: 127).
The extraction mechanism shown in figure 6 (lower) is the only known example
of the original torsion spring Lane extractor. Until this specimen was 'rediscov-
ered' by the authors, no examples of this design (covered by US Patent 60910,
1867) were thought to exist (Marcot 1983: 127). Lane was a Spencer employee.
The Lane solution on the Royal Armouries carbine makes a dramatic difference
to the manufacturability of the action and more importantly significantly
strengthens the breech by removing a slot. The first design of extractor, the
spring assisted extractor and short knife variant have to fit within a narrow slot
cut in the action (M) at the side of the breech (figure 10). The small size of the
extractor is a consequence of the need to fit within the space and the need to
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minimise the size of the cut required to receive it and the consequent weakness.
The modified Lane extractor - a simplified variant of the extractor on the car-
bine - was subsequently adopted. These changes were probably aided by better
understanding of extraction or more consistent production of ammunition later
in the life of the design (see Thomas 2002 for an extended description of the
Spencer ammunition).
The cavity for the modified extractor mechanism in the rotating guide was
made by an end milling process and the depth is very badly controlled (N)
(figure 11). Because of its geometry this slot is likely to have been constructed on
an index miller, the results of the cutting process suggest that whatever tooling
was used was not stiff enough to resist the vibration introduced by the cutting
process. We can infer that this unique action was made as an experimental or
prototype weapon without the emphasis placed on consistent production one
would expect with series manufacture.

Conclusion

The middle years of the 19th century were a key period in the development of
both the breech-loading firearm and manufacturing technology, especially the
milling machine. As a young man Christopher Spencer was at the centre of these
developments. We have indicated that patent coverage may have forced Spencer
to take a radical step in the design of his breechloader and this step required the
use of the most up to date manufacturing technology of the time, primarily the
index miller. One of the weapons in the Royal Armouries collection is the only
known example of the Lane extractor for the Spencer rifle and another weapon
shows quality issues that perhaps reflect the level of quality requirements of the
time.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Trevor Downham for discussions on the
potential techniques used to create the features of the Spencer and Amit Chandra
for his work attempting a computer-aided design representation of the process.
 Christopher Spencer: the technology of his repeating rifle 181
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Figure 10 The undercut in the action to receive

the extractor.

Figure 11 The revised extractor design

showing the poorly formed slot.

This paper has also been much improved by conversations with Clifford Bryant
on the presentation of this and other similar engineering material to an 'arms and
armour' audience.

Disclaimer

While the authors have made every effort trace the owners of copyright of
figures I and 3 they will be happy to rectify any error or omission.
 182 David Williams and Peter Smithurst

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