2 Gun-making in Gardone--the Craft System.

For hundreds of years after its inception, gun-making in Gardone, Italy, changed little. By contrasting the practices related below to those described subsequently in connection with the English and American systems, we can begin to understand the scope of the changes with which Gardone's gunsmiths had to cope.

The locking mechanisms forged in the shops of Gardone gunmakers in the 1780s were little changed from those of 300 years earlier. Figure 2.1 and Figure 2.2, taken from Diderot's Encyclopedia, illustrate the nature of the shops and kinds of tools and measuring instruments then in use. Although the shop depicted in the plates did assembly, shops that fabricated components would not have looked much different. There would be a forge to make small components and a crude drilling machine, but there would be no planer machines to do metal cutting. Hammers, chisels, and files were the principal tools, calipers and wooden rules the only measuring devices. Human muscle supplied the mechanical power.

[FIGURES 2.1-2.2 OMITTED]

Shops kept models of locking mechanisms from which the craftsmen worked, constantly comparing the component being manufactured with the model. Components were hand-forged, filed to shape, fitted together, and then hardened. The bulk of the work in these shops consisted in filing and fitting pieces. The assembly process was imprecise, a matter of repeated trial and error adjustment to get pieces to fit--essentially 100% rework.

Although models were far and away the primary means by which artisans communicated design intent, some designs were replicated in primitive drawings that were circulated among the masters. The engravings reproduced in Figure 2.3 are from the introductory plates of Vershiede Stucke Fur Buchsenmacher by Johann Christoff Weigel, probably the most widely circulated and influential gun design book of the span 1650-1750. The drawings are remarkable in that they carry no specifications or dimensions. Only design intent and functionality are communicated, the interpretation of the design by the master serving as the basis for constructing the mechanism.

[FIGURE 2.3 OMITTED]

International distribution of designs for gunsmithing dates to 1635, the year of publication of the first book of patterns by Phillipe Daubigny. The custom proliferated rapidly in France and, after about 1700, in Germany as well. It was the German books that exercised a strong influence in Italy's Brescia region. By the end of the first quarter of the 18th century the classical Brescian designs had been abandoned by gunmakers in favor of the new fashions then dominant in Germany and Austria. Brescian gunmakers adopted not only German gun architecture and external structure, but also German mechanisms.

Production involved the master, the model, and a set of calipers. If there were drawings, they indicated only rough proportions and functions of components. Masters and millwrights, being keenly aware of the function of the product, oriented their work towards proper fit and intended functionality. Fit among components was important and the master was the arbiter of fit. Apprentices learned from masters the craft of using tools. Control was a developed skill situated in the eyes and hands of the millwright.

A master's shop employed about eight people. Annual production was about 260 locking mechanisms. Although the pace of work was usually quite leisurely, the output of these shops could as much as quadruple during peaks of demand.

In contrast to gun barrel making shops, which were functionally focused and organized around five classes of workmen--forgers, borers, smoothers, filers, and finishers--shops engaged in the construction of locking mechanisms were product-focused. The work in the latter shops consisted in bringing the components together and obtaining the right fit. Everyone in the shop was involved in all five stages of the production process, which consisted of forging, filing, fitting, and polishing. As the principal activity, fitting, involved filing and fitting two or more components and polishing the composite workpiece, we see that the fabrication of components and their assembly were closely intertwined.

Given the organization and activity of these shops, what can we say about system variance? Note that the construction of locking mechanisms at this time involved only the use of hand tools and vises. There were no jigs to properly align or locate components. With no machinery to speak of, considerations of precision and stability are moot. Reproducibility accounted for all system variance, which was very high. With only calipers and wooden scales, and control completely in the hands of the craftsman, the standard deviation of error was as large as one-sixteenth of an inch.

With such high variance, one cannot think of the manufacture of a batch of nominally identical items together, only of making each individual item. And fit between mating components is impossible to achieve without having both physically present. Accuracy is achieved here through adaptability, that is, the ability of the craftsman to adjust the contours appropriately.

Note two important aspects of the process we have been examining.

* First, an assemblage of diverse components was required to fabricate and assemble a single product. The craftsman had to view the parts for each firearm independently of the same functional part for the next firearm. The concept of "identical parts" did not exist.

* Second, the measure of skill lay in degree of adaptability, that is, the ability of the craftsman, or operator, to adjust to a wide variety of conditions and the speed of adjustment necessary to obtain the required accuracy. The speed of adjustment between high-skill and low-skill workers could be as great as four to one.

The adaptability of the operator being so important, it was only natural that managerial response was directed towards improving skills and maintaining a skilled work force. Systems that developed adaptive skills flourished and the master--journeyman model survived for many centuries.

Inasmuch as adaptive skills are really contingent responses to a wide variety of work conditions, procedures cannot readily be transferred. Critical knowledge was mainly tacit, and a journeyman had to learn by observing the master's idiosyncratic behaviors. The master, who could solve the most difficult of problems, fashioned each product such that quality was inherent in its fit, finish, and functionality.

It should be noted that adaptability by craftsmen is needed because of the inability of a process to obtain adequate accuracy, precision, reproducibility, and stability. Thus, it is a response to a deeper problem. Fundamental process improvement that reduces system variance would reduce the need for adaptability, and thus the very skills of the master. But to reduce system variance below the craft system, it would be necessary to:

* devise tools that would lend greater control and, thus, precision to the metal cutting process;

* introduce more accurate measuring instruments so that one could obtain constant feedback on the state of the product and thereby strengthen adaptive response;

* simplify product designs to reduce variance associated with reproducibility, i.e., to allow different people to make a part in the same way.

A fundamental shift in the focus of technological attention is inherent in all these requirements.