5-spindle Lock Recessing Machine, built by the Ames Manfacturing Company for the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, 1857

Machinery for making wooden gunstocks, 1857. This is one of a suite of machines supplied in 1857 to the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, for the manufacture of rifled muskets. It was the first application into the United Kingdom of the American System of manufactures, named after developments in interchangeable manufacture practiced on a large scale for the first time in the USA. In the recessing machine a recess was cut in the wooden stock to accept the 'ock, the mechanism by which the gun was fired. The stocks were moved from machine to machine in order to cut the groove for the barrel, make holes and sinkings for other parts, and for trimming the surface of the stock to the correct shape. The five spindles of the recessing machine carried routing cutters of different shapes, which were brought into action in turn under the control of a metal template.