Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1892 — Dust Test for Firearms. [ARTICLE]

Dust Test for Firearms.

One little known process to which small arms manufactured for the United States are subjected is the dust test, intended to subject the piece to the same dusting it would receive if carried by the soldier in a march across the alkali deserts of Arizona or Utah, or the sagebrush prairies of Montana or Wyoming. Troops are frequently compelled to tramp for hours through such clouds of dust that the heads of the leaders of a six-mule team can be but vaguely seen from the wagon, and the dust is so fine and penetrating that the soldiers’ guns and every garment soon become coated with it. The artificial production of a similar experience for an arm that might be adopted for military service is manifestly a very pertinent trial. This is accomplished by placing the rifle on a shelf within a closed box, so that the breach mechanism, which is closed, shall be opposite the mouth of the bellows; fine sand is then permitted to fall slowly across the blast of air, which thereby, in two minutes, the time of the test, drives the sand into any open joints, or into the depths of the mechanism, if it is much exposed. The gun is then removed and wiped carefully with the bare hand, also blown into and cleaned, just as a soldier who suddenly goes into action would do with a gun he has carried on a dusty march. The piece is then fired twenty shots. This test is then repeated, the magazine v being charged before exposing the gun to the dust; the cartridge and the gun are then wiped as before, and the gun again fired twenty rounds.—Boston Transcript.