Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1895 — Quebec’s SmarBlacksmith. [ARTICLE]

Quebec’s SmarBlacksmith.

Washington Star“Ordnance experts all over the world will be very much interested jn the experiments being conducted by Francois Allard, a Quebec blacksmith, who appears to have succeedin hardening aluminum so as to permit of its use in the manufacture of cannon,” said Col. E. F. Bateman, a retired English officer, at the Ebbitt. “Allard is the same genius who rediscovered some years ago I the lost art of hardening copper, I but it is too expensive a process to admit of such metal being practically used. Recently he made a small cannon of tempered aluminum about thirty inches long, and with a bore five inches in diameter. From this he repeatedly fired a charge of a pound of powder without injuring the piece. The most remarkable part of these tests was that the metal of the barrel was only a quarter of an inch thick. There is no telling what a revolution will be brought about in the manufacture of big guns if Allard’s future experiments in this line turn out as well as those already made.”