Crosscut Saws Haggis Collectible Firearms
Chain saws and other machines may dominate forestry, but the human-powered crosscut saw still has a basic appeal. Pushed and pulled through the trunks of trees, its jagged blade can handle any job, that is, until the person operating it runs out of gas. Making a crosscut saw is an exact science that dates back centuries. At this factory, they make these saws the old-fashioned way, mostly by hand. It's a nod to a time when these saws were at the forefront of history, helping to clear the way for railways and settlements. With guillotine blades, a worker first trims a steel rectangle along the lines measured and marked onto it. The trimming gives it a distinctive taper and establishes the correct dimensions. This particular saw is a one-person model, so it's about 3 feet long. Using a punch cutter, the worker carves gullets in the steel. These are the valleys between sawteeth, through which sawdust and debris are cleared. He cuts one gullet every inch. He then cuts the teeth, three between each gullet. This pattern is known as the great american tooth. It's designed to cut medium to hardwoods across the grain without snags. He hammers each tooth to bend it and alternates the direction of the bends-- one up, the next down. This is called setting the teeth. And the result is protruding teeth that cut more efficiently. He files each tooth, working from the bottom up to the tips and sharpens those tips to a point. It takes about a half-hour to give this steel blank its crosscutting edge. A worker then connects the blade to a power source. He centers a stencil of the company logo on the saw... And then applies liquid electrolyte to the exposed metal within the stencil. He turns on the power, and the electrolyte conducts the current to burn the logo into the metal. A computerized router carves a piece of beech into the pistol-shaped handle. This software-driven tool also drills holes for installing the blade. The computerized system is quicker and more precise than manual carving. An employee then cuts a slot in the handle to fit the saw. He sands the edges of the handle until it's smooth. He then inserts the crosscut saw blade into the handle. It's a tight fit, but to more solidly entrench it, he drills through the holes in the wood handle to make corresponding holes in the metal blade sandwiched within it. He inserts screws into the handle, securing the blade to it. He tightens the screws as much as possible. And this one-person saw is now complete. A two-person crosscut saw is crescent-shaped and longer to cut through bigger trees. The teeth are also more substantial with deep pitches between them. Sawdust will be expelled through these deep pitches, so there's no need for gullets in this particular cutting edge. Once the teeth have been cut, a worker places socket fittings on each end of the saw. He pounds in rivets to secure the fittings to the blade. These fittings will be used to install a different kind of handle known as a fist grip, which is more suitable for a two-person saw. It's essentially a wooden dowel that just slides into the socket fitting. It has taken about an hour to make this crosscut saw. Wielded with force, it will cause mighty trees to fall, proving that this low-tech tool can still cut it on the jobsite. Haggis is scotland's national dish, made from minced lamb and beef, encased in beef intestine. While quintessentially scottish, historians believe haggis actually originated in ancient greece and eventually made its way northward with the romans to britain. Haggis is traditionally served with mashed potatoes and turnips-- what the scots call neeps and tatties-- along with a glass of scotch whiskey to wash it down. At the haggis factory, the production process begins with beef fat. They put it through a mechanical chopper, and a guillotine blade slices it up. The chunks of fat go into a large cook tank. They fill the tank with water and simmer the fat for 2 1/2 hours. Then, using a strainer, they drain the cooked fat and put it in a tub. Then they empty the tub into a mincer. Next, they chop up lamb lungs. Haggis recipes sometimes also use heart and liver. They simmer those in a cook tank, as well, for 2 1/2 hours. Using a strainer, they drain and remove the cooked chopped lungs and transfer them to a tub. They now take dried, shredded onions and rehydrate them with some stock from the cooked meat. They pour the onion and stock mix into the tub with the cooked lungs... Then empty the whole thing into the mincer to join the ground fat. Next, two different grinds of oatmeal-- medium and coarse-- to give the haggis just the right texture-- not too stiff, but not too loose. The consistency is key, which is why the grind proportions are a closely guarded company secret. Also a top secret-- the composition of the spice blend they now add. All the company will divulge about this seasoning is that it includes salt and pepper. The oatmeal and spice blend now join the other ingredients in the mincer, and there you have it-- the finished haggis mix, ready to be stuffed into casings. In keeping with tradition, the company encases its haggis in beef intestines. After a thorough cleaning, the intestines are stored in salt. Before use, they soak in cold water overnight to desalinate. This also softens them up until sufficiently pliable for the stuffing process. On the filling line, workers slip an intestine over what's called the stuffing horn. Then, with a knee, activate a lever that triggers the machine to pump out a set amount of haggis mix. On this run, they're preparing the one-pound size. They close the casing on either side with a thick aluminum staple. Now they spread the haggis out on cooking trays and pierce each casing to let air escape as the casing shrinks during cooking. The temperature inside the steam oven is 230 degrees fahrenheit. The haggis cooks for one hour, during which the casing shrinks and forms into a ball shape. Once the haggis come out of the oven and cool, workers cut them apart. Each haggis goes into a printed plastic bag, then into a vacuum sealer. The machine draws out 99.9% of the air before sealing the bag. This vacuum-packing process extends a 7-to-10 day shelf life to 4 weeks. The packaged haggis now drop into a tank of hot water. The bags instantly shrink and thicken by 25%, making them significantly more durable. Haggis may date back to ancient greece, but it's certainly changed with the times. This company also makes a one-minute microwavable version, a canapé format, and even vegetarian haggis... Far beyond what robert burns could ever have imagined. The term "collectible firearms" refers to antique guns and top-of-the-line new guns made in the traditional style. These firearms are mostly handmade by skilled craftsmen, using centuries-old techniques. This quality workmanship translates into top-notch performance. This company in england has been manufacturing rifles and shotguns since 1835. It still uses the same traditional gun-making methods, only now with the help of modern-day computerized equipment. Even with that technology, it's still arduous work. Making just one gun takes, depending on the model, up to 1,250 hours of labor. In the factory's machine shop, under a shower of lubricant, a computer-guided tooling machine shapes a solid-steel bar into a hollow tube with a rectangular plate, called a lump, on one end. This tube will become the barrel of a shotgun. Here, you can see the progression from bar to tube, but it's still somewhat rough, so now a highly skilled barrel maker manually files the tube to obtain exactly the right roundness. This traditional process is known as striking the barrel. With his expert eye, he checks his work by observing how light and shadows fall on the barrel. Now he lays two barrels side by side in a fixture and connects their lumps with pegs. He lays a strip of silver solder along the joint and binds the adjoined lumps with steel wire. Then he brushes on flux, a chemical which prevents steel from oxidizing and helps molten solder flow into the joint. He now loads this end of the pair of barrels into a small furnace. Within about 20 minutes, the fiery heat, peaking at a temperature of 1,650 degrees fahrenheit, melts the silver solder, which flows into the joint. The barrels are now bonded. Next, he lays a thin strip of steel, called a rib, in the gap between the joined barrels. This time, he uses flux made of pine-tree resin, which works better than chemical flux when soldering with tin. He immobilizes the rib with steel wedges and wire then, using a hand torch, melts tin solder to fix the rib between the barrels. After removing the wire and wedges, he cleans off the flux and excess tin with abrasive paper, revealing a seemingly seamless double barrel. Now he mounts the double barrel on a fixture and coats what's called a lapping rod with oil and an abrasive powder. He moves the rod back and forth within the barrels until their inside is ground to within a fraction of an inch of the required diameter. This process also smoothes the interior of the bore to a mirror-like finish. The barrel maker then polishes the outside surface to a shine. Meanwhile, the action body, the part that houses the gun's mechanics, has already been roughly shaped. Now the final machining in a bath of paraffin to wash away the metal debris. In a process called spark erosion, copper electrodes of varying shapes erode the steel to create the required slots, holes, and recesses. Quite the transformation from what started out as a solid piece of steel. It's critical that the action's 60-plus intricate components will fit together with ultimate precision. Once again, nothing beats the traditional method. The actioner blackens the component with a smoke lamp. Here, he's fitting the trigger plate. He positions it in the action, taps a few times... Then removes it. The black soot marks left behind indicate where the plate needs to be filed down. He repeats this procedure again and again until the plate fits perfectly. He does this with each and every one of the action's components. Using the same marking method, he also files the lumps on the barrel to fit to the action perfectly. They hook onto a cross pin and serve as a hinge on which the barrel pivots against the action. He also marks and files the face of the barrel so that it fits perfectly with the face of the action. Such flawless precision is the hallmark of top-of-the-line firearms. The shotgun's action is finished, but there are still two main components to come. The lock is the firing mechanism. The stock is the gun's wooden butt end that you steady against your shoulder to shoot. Once those components join the others, the whole shotgun will be complete-- lock, stock, and barrel. Some double-barreled shotguns have two triggers-- one per barrel. Others have a single trigger which fires each barrel alternately. Depending on the style of the gun, the two barrels are positioned either side by side or one over the other. The gun's firing mechanism is called the lock. A double-barreled gun has two locks-- one for each barrel. Each lock consists of a plate with 14 components. They've all been machined by the factory's computer-guided tooling equipment. An expert craftsman assembles them by hand. To test the lock, he uses a cocking key to simulate what happens when you pull the trigger. The key depresses two spring-loaded sears that release and drives a tumbler forward, striking a firing pin to fire the gun. The locks are installed on both sides of the action body, just above the trigger. In the factory's stocking shop, another craftsman lays a template for the gun's stock onto a piece of turkish walnut, traces, and then saws out the shape. The wood appears quite ordinary now, but wetting it a bit shows the rich grain, which an extensive finishing later on will bring out. Just like the actioner before, he uses a smoke lamp to fit the action to the head of the stock, the soot marks telling him where to shave the wood with various chisels. This meticulous process takes more than 40 hours because he first has to strip the action of all its parts, then fit the main body into the stock, then reassemble the action piece by piece, fitting each and every one into the wood separately. Now, using a tool called a drawknife, he finalizes the stock's shape. By the time he finishes, the block of walnut has gone from this to this. A finishing specialist now applies linseed oil mixed with a hardener and polishes the wood many times over until the wood is lustrous. In the factory's engraving shop, decorative work is underway on each lock plate. An engraving artist first draws the design on paper, then on the plate in pencil. She then uses a sharp tool called a graver to cut the design into the metal plate. This process, while painstaking, requires minimal pressure. The graver is made of either high-speed steel or tungsten carbide, extremely hard metals which cut into steel quite easily. Later on, they'll highlight the engraving with black ink and varnish the surface to prevent tarnishing. Now the action and lock plates undergo a heat-treatment process that hardens the steel so that it won't wear out over time. This process leaves colors on the surface. On luxury guns like these, customers typically request designs or markings in gold inlay. After disassembling the barrels, the craftsmen inlays, in this case, a barrel number. After cutting the number, he undercuts the edge of it so that the gold he then beats into the number will lock in place. Then he files the gold inlay flush with the surface... And smoothes off the excess with an abrasive stone. Every gun goes out to an independent authority for extensive firing tests. The gun returns certified with proof marks. The very last operation is a chemical treatment to protect the steel barrel from rusting. The steel reacts to this chemical process by turning from its natural silver color to black. Because these guns are not mass-produced but handcrafted, with each and every component custom-fit to the neighboring component, parts from one gun are never interchangeable with those of another, even if they're the same model. It takes approximately 1,000 working hours to produce a single gun, so customers placing an order typically wait at least a couple of years until delivery.