Word: powder
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...Keep your powder dry" is a sound military rule; it is also what makes powder manufacturing a risky business. Last week Western Cartridge Co. told of an unorthodox but effective and less hazardous method of making smokeless powder under water...
Under older methods, nitrocellulose (made by treating cotton or wood fibers with nitric and sulfuric acids) is forced through "macaroni" machines, chopped into grains of various sizes. This smokeless powder is necessarily handled dry in many stages of its manufacture, and in large quantities...
...ball powder (so called because the grains are spherical rather than rod-shaped) is formed chemically, not mechanically. It need be dry and dangerous for only a short time. Nitrocellulose, immersed in ten times its bulk of water, is liquefied by various chemicals, among them ethyl acetate, much used in nail polish. The liquid nitrocellulose rises to the surface of the water as a creamy lacquer. Stirring breaks it into globules, like olive oil in salad dressing. Other chemicals keep the tiny pellets separate. Speed of stirring determines the size of the grains of powder...
...glimpses of the amateur statesman Polk conspiring with (and getting double-crossed by) Mexican General Santa Anna, who was supposed to sell out Mexico for $30,000,000. When war came, Polk was all but crushed by his Presidential burdens. Says DeVoto: "Deliberately carrying twin torches through a powder magazine ... he made no preparation for either war. . . . He did not know how to make war or how to lead a people." Result : "Time after time the extemporized organizations broke down. . . . Millions of dollars were wasted, months were lost." But at last "the first modern industrial war somehow . . . succeeded...
...chasm bridged only by a rope suspension which could carry nothing heavier than jeeps. (Belden had one.) General Stilwell ordered everyone to strip unnecessary paraphernalia so as to be able to walk. In the weeds a pile of elegant rubbish grew-steel helmets, pink brassieres, whiskey bottles, tins of powder, notebooks, overcoats, rich Mandalay silks...