Ballistite is a speciality at Ardeer, and is rapidly displacing the other smokeless powders for sporting purposes. Its admirers claim that it is stronger than any other, cleaner in the gun, perfectly smokeless, and entirely unaffected by heat or dampness. It can be soaked in water and fired without loss of efficiency. Since the professional pigeon shots have largely adopted it, and the weekly scores in the sporting papers show the majority of kills to its credit, the shot-gun fraternity, so numerous in England, have taken to it en masse.

Ballistite is made in three forms: in cubes for cannon, in minute rings for rifles, and in square flakes for shot-guns. As first made and dried, it is a light brown elastic paste. This is run through steel rollers which are heated to 120 degrees till it becomes as thin as tissue paper and transparent. It is like thin, elastic sheets of silky horn. Then it is cut up in cutting machines into grains of various sizes for rifles or shot-guns, as the case may be.

These processes are most ingenious and mechanically interesting, and occupy several large mills by themselves. In all are the thermometers and the shoes. The machinery in nearly all cases represents original inventions, either conceived in Ardeer or invented by Mr. Nobel, who was the originator of smokeless powders. Absolute cleanliness reigns. Dust is never allowed to collect, and the small quantity of sweepings from the leaden floors are daily burned.

The subsidiary departments are full of interest. "India" and "Siberia" are two magazines where the company’s explosives and others from all sources are tested through long periods under high heat and severe cold respectively. India of course the more dangerous, and before entering it your guide climbs a ladder on the embankment which surrounds it and peeps through a three-inch hole to read the thermometer projecting from the roof of the house inside. India caught fire in 1895, and would have harmed nothing but itself had not some over-eager firemen gone inside the banks and attempted to extinguish the fire.

In the explosion which occurred two were killed and two other employees injured. To avoid a repetition of this occurrence a huge sprinkler now rises in the centre of the hut, by means of which at the first sign of fire the whole interior can be deluged from a safe distance. A thermo-electric tell-tale also runs from India to a laboratory.

In the packing houses the cartridges are packed by girls into five-pound cardboard boxes, which in turn are grouped in fifty-pound wooden cases. These cases are taken in hand-cars to the magazines and thence to the beach, the railways running into the sea.

Shipping at Ardeer Beach

The cases are transferred to boats and loaded into the company’s own steamers, which carry them to all the Channel and neighboring ports for shipment all over the world. There are also sample magazines, an Armoury containing all ancient and modern small arms; a shooting range, with its attendant officers and experts, where the explosives for rifles and shot-guns are carefully tested; laboratories, and contributing departments of all kinds.

Remarkable freedom from casualties
Having now inspected the factory in all its interesting entirety, you are confronted with a statement so extraordinary as to be almost incredible, viz., that despite the manufacture by the ton of all these deadly explosives; Ardeer is one of the safest factories that you could possibly be in. In the whole period of its existence, about twenty-five years, the entire loss of life by accidents, including the sad occurrence of February 24^th, has been only twenty-one.