[Illustration:  RIVETTING on boilers]

[Illustration:  Facing boiler blue flanges]

The Exhibitions consist of two main sections, one of which shows actual samples of munitions made by women, and the other of photographs of women doing work on apparatus or processes that could not be shown.  A complete Clerget engine, for instance, was lent by the Air Board to illustrate the final assembly of the numerous parts of these engines being made wholly or partly by women.  In the same way, many parts of complete Stokes Guns, Vickers Machine Guns and Service Rifles were exhibited.  The exhibits were divided into fifteen groups.  The first group dealing with engines for aircraft.  The second group showed engines for motor cars, tanks, tractors, motor buses, motor lorries and motor vehicles.

A separate group consisted of a variety of accessories for internal combustion engines, including air pump for the Clerget engine, which is completely manufactured and assembled by women, largely under women supervision; and magnetos, a very important and accurate industry, before the war largely in German hands, of which women now undertake the entire manufacture.

The fourth group dealt with steam engines, including details of locomotives, high speed engines, steam winches, and steam turbines.

The next two groups dealt respectively with guns and components and with small arms.

The next three groups included gauges, drills, cutters, punches and dies, trucks, jigs, tap pieces and general tool-room work.  The gauges included plug, ring, cylinder and screw gauges to the closest degrees of accuracy, which in practice are verified by the rigid inspection of the National Physical Laboratory.

A fair illustration of the accuracy that is habitually required in a large volume of work is to be seen in the final gauging and inspection of a screw gauge for a fuse, in which the women inspectors were described in the catalogue as examining these screws by an optical projection apparatus, magnifying fifty times, with the help of which the inspector notes the defects in size and form, and the necessary corrections.

The cutting tools included sets of cutters for the manufacture of shells, as well as twist drills, reamers, milling cutters, gear cutters, screwing dies, taps and lathe tools.  Some of this work is of high accuracy, and a set of solid screwing dies has the particular interest that almost all the operations are carried out by women after they have been in the shop for a fortnight.  The general tool-room work included an exhibit of seventy-one punches and dies for cartridge making.  Another set of dies was shown for small-arms ammunition, and specimens were also exhibited of chucks, die-heads and other work.

Two other groups dealt with the metal fittings and wooden structural parts of aircraft, and to see girls work on these is intensely interesting—­anything more fragile looking and more beautiful than the long uncovered wing it would be difficult to find.  A notable feature of the metal group was a number of parts that are marked off from drawings by women working under a woman charge-hand, and themselves making their own scribing-templates when necessary.  Many examples of welding work were also shown.