Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 142, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1903 — Why Armor Plate is Costly. [ARTICLE]

Why Armor Plate is Costly.

The general public has always been mystified at the extremely! high price paid for armor plate. According to the Iron and Steel Number of the Scientific American, the most important item is the great length of time required for the successful manufacture of a plate; for, on an average, every plate is being constantly worked upon in fnraace, forge, machine shop, or annealing and tempering department, for a continuous period of nine months. Other causes of high cost are: the large number of separate operations, the frequency with which the great masses must be transported, and the distances over which they must be carried in their journey from one department to another. To illustrate the vast scale on which an armor plate and gun steel works is laid oat and the distances to be covered from shop to shop, we may mention that the whole establishment of the Bethlehem Steel Works extends in od6 direction continuously for a length of a mile and a quarter, and that the forty or fifty handings and transshipments, which occur in making a single Ernpp plate, take place in and between such building 3as the open-hearth structure, which is 111 feet wide by 1,950 feet in length; the machine shop 116$ feet in width by 1,375 feet in length; the armor forge, 850 feet in length; and a face hardening department and an armor-plate machine shop, I both of which are but little less in size. Further elements of expense are the large percentage of losses { which is liable to occur, the high 1 first cost of the extensive plants that must be laid and the fact that new and improved methods of manufacture may at any time render the p'ant more or less obsolete. The greater cost of the Krupp armor is largely compensated for by its much greater resisting qualities, which make it possible to give equal defensive qualities for 20 to 25 per cent less weight of armor. „