doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Are you a fan of old Beretta SxS?

Well, the short answer is that economically & physically Italy could not produce it own tube steel bars pre-WWI.

Jim wasn't convinced or converted by my theory on the sourcing of the Belgians on availability of rough bored tubes. But he might be swayed by the underlying currents of Italy's steel woes. In brief, Bagnoli, Piombino, Portoferraio and Terni Italy's major steel production centers. The Terni Steelworks Company was founded on March 10th, 1884 and was a hydro-power(waterfalls) facility, and later electrical, as Italy had little coal. It was a facade and was propped up with national monies and produced costly, poor quality steels from imported pig iron. A gunsmith would not have used poor quality steel in his tubes, even if it was cheap. Low quality & bad name allowed Armstrong(some portion of Armstrong, Whitworth & Co.) to build an armament facility(near Naples?) by 1902 that used Elba's ore. Terni did have a 100 ton hammer, one of the largest at the time. Both Krupp and Vicker's had a stake in the steel market in Italy and in 1905 a Krupp steel process plant was built as a source for steel plates. A year later Vickers amalgamated with Terni for some venture till an abrupt halt in 1922. There were some patent issues with Harvey & Midvale on plates up till WWI.

Now there were some small blast furnaces in the Val Trompia region but Terni either had very small ones or none at all. The ore was mined on the Isle of Elba and then sold to Britain. Then Italy either traded for or purchased pig iron and I would guess that Vicker's involvement began here. Italy suffered from not having an integral cycle steelworks(all stages from ore to steel are completed in one general locale). In 1899 a facility named Portoferraio was built was 2 blast furnaces. A couple years later in 1904/1905 Naples was correcting their financial house and constructed the Piombino facility. By this time Italy had zero coal and imported 75% from England and 25% from Germany. 5 years later an integral cycle steelworks was constructed at Piombino in the Tuscan region but I don't think they would have worked out the kinks till after WWI and probably in the late 1920s when Italy seemed more in control of raw materials as well as quality control.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Raimey has a great background in metallurgy, and also the research tenacity of a bulldog. He's working on an article about Beretta's history regarding the barrels on their side by side guns; looking back over the past 100 years or so.

His comments above really go to the sourcing of steel, but we're also very interested in better understanding how much finish processing Baretta actually did in Gardone in order to mount completed tubes to their guns.

Clues to that question could be found in the kinds of process machinery Beretta had or didn't have on-site...or maybe old catalog entries from the 1940's. If you have any info to share, especially about the period just before and after WWII, please post here or email me at jimbode@nctv.com

thanks

I don't know that my pool of knowledge in metallurgy is that deep, but I do know how to stack atoms. Anyway, it seems that the powers that be in Italy in the last 1/4 of the 19th century wanted Italy to be self sufficient in arms, armament, etc. So the government propped up steel making facilities like Terni, which was a poor location regarding logistics and steel oriented concerns. Commendatore Vincenzo Stefano Breda(expired on 1.03.1903) was a very influential Viennese fella in addition to being an engineer at an armament facility, government funded, in proximity of the Terni steel facility, which had zero British machinery and relied heavily on the Belgian Cockerill concern with some other French & Swiss additions. The forging portion being almost totally Belgian so I would assume Beretta's early frame to be of some Cockerill steel variant. There must have been a Beretta-Breda-Terni sourcing triangle but I'm not sure just yet and I don't know that early on the Breda is that of Machinefabriek Breda/Ernesto Breda & Company(Milan), not sure of the founding date(1886? name change -from Bamat & Co., Cerimedo & Co.). Ernesto Breda was some cousin of Vincenzo Stefano Breda. Both Krupp & Vickers saw an huge opportunity to separate the government from their monies and Midvale & Bethlehem Steel were in on the act also but Krupp & Vickers made out like bandits and circa 1907 all including Fiat(founded 1899) required a new infusion of government cash. Government cash which poured in with the facility opened and closed at times and out poured poor quality steel that they exported and dumped on someone. I'm sure on occasions a lack of raw materials forced them to close their doors until supplies were replinished. Considering the difficult times of the 1930s, it may have been post WWII till all got their affairs in order.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Information is mounting that the Ateliers Jaspar(Joseph Jaspar), Soci�t� Anonyme, Liege, of Albert Jaspar was instrumental in the early Belgian milling machines and borers, possibly prior to the purchase of Pratt & Whitney machines and for sure cheaper seeing a Jaspar model for external turning was say 1200 Francs while the P&W was 5000 Francs. Albert Jaspar more than likely was about the source for machines tools in Liege. One of his staples was a 3 tube boring machine, which looks to have utilized a carriage where the tubes were fixed and then engaged into the square head borer. I don't know if this machine made it to Italy or if it was the means by which the early tubes were made & sold to the Italian makers. An image would prove educational I'm sure.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse