Ming Zuo

Chapter 77 Reality Problems
After the new year, the whole Zuozhuang people are more motivated.

The Chinese wish for a son to become a dragon has never changed since ancient times.

Years later, without Zuo Menggeng's organization, the villagers spontaneously built a school.

Brick kilns are readily available.

It was originally used to burn refractory bricks, but now it can also be used to burn ordinary bricks and tiles.

The recruits of the first brigade and the general rear brigade were tossed every day, but the progress was visible to the naked eye.

Zuo Menggeng was responsible for teaching officers and students new knowledge in literacy and mathematics, and these people went down to teach the recruits of the two battalions.

Every three to five, the recruits will also have an exam competition.

A good learner is rewarded, and an officer who learns badly is disgraced.

This kind of atmosphere makes everyone feel novel and enjoy it very much.

Seeing that everything was developing smoothly, Zuo Menggeng was troubled by troubles.

"Qianzuo, we tried the gun tube, but it didn't work."

Yang Gui and others frowned and reported bad news to Zuo Menggeng.

"Why not?"

Weapons are related to the future and combat effectiveness of the army. Zuo Menggeng was the most nervous and rushed to the firearms factory.

The gunsmiths who were in charge of making the barrels were all here at this time, each with their heads downcast, like eggplants beaten by frost.

"Qianzuo, this gun tube... we can't get through it."

The person in charge of the firearms factory is Xu Dagan, a gunsmith for decades.The craftsmanship did not say, everyone was convinced.

He held an unfinished barrel in his hand and showed it to Zuo Menggeng.

Zuo Menggeng took it over and looked at it carefully.

The tube wall made of stainless steel looks full of texture.I believe that the soldiers will feel at ease when they hold it in their hands, and they will not be afraid of being bombed.

But Xu Dagan's words puzzled Zuo Menggeng.

"Why can't you drill?"

Xu Dagan took another thing, and it was a drill bit.

"This gun tube is made of steel, and the drill is also made of steel. We can't get in even with all our strength."

Zuo Menggeng was stunned, and immediately slapped his forehead, dumbfounded by this question.

How were musket barrels made in the Ming Dynasty?
It is made of two pieces of red-hot wrought iron, wrapped with an iron stile in the middle, and then smashed by a craftsman with a hammer.

After smashing, although there is a hole in the middle, the diameter is too small to be used as a barrel.Therefore, it is necessary to expand with a drill bit to make it reach a compliant diameter.

Finally, the inner wall of the barrel must be polished smooth before it can be used as a musket.

Because the drill is made of steel and the barrel is made of wrought iron, the hardness is different. Although it is still slow by hand, it can be drilled slowly.

Now that the smelting house has made a steel barrel, the gunsmiths have a steel drill, but they can't start.

Zuo Menggeng thought happily about coming up with a steel barrel, which could save the weight of the musket and improve the quality of the musket.I just didn't expect that the craftsmen had nothing to do with such a barrel.

Now I can't even expand the inner diameter of the barrel, so I don't even need to think about the rest of the rifling.

So is there any other way to make existing drills work with steel barrels?

Under the current conditions, no.

The best way is of course to use mechanical force to increase the speed of the drill bit to complete this process.

But where did Zuo Menggeng go to get the machinery with the required rotational speed?
No steam engine or internal combustion engine.

As for the hydraulic drive...

Zuo Menggeng didn't even have to try it, he just rejected it.

No matter how the hydraulic drive is made, the mechanical kinetic energy cannot meet the requirements of drilling the barrel.

On the other hand, the kinetic energy provided by the hydraulic drive is not stable, and it is easy to drill the barrel crooked.

Seeing that Zuo Menggeng was also stumped, Xu Dagan carefully mentioned: "Qianzuo, in fact, the wrought iron gun barrel is enough. We don't corrupt, don't skimp, and use enough materials, and the gun barrels we make are no problem. "

A word to awaken the dreamer.

Only then did Zuo Menggeng realize that it was his own demon barrier.

He just wanted to maximize the performance of the weapon as much as possible, but he forgot that with today's firearm technology, it was enough.

In any case, gunpowder is still black powder.

Even if the quality of black powder is increased to the limit, the potential energy of the explosion will remain the same.The barrels made of wrought iron are good enough to withstand as long as the quality is guaranteed.

Otherwise, the firearms built in this way would have been abandoned for more than two hundred years in the Ming Dynasty.

If the barrel is remade from wrought iron, there are many advantages.

First, the steel drill bit can rifling the barrel, which satisfies Zuo Menggeng's demand for new firearms.

Second, the manufacturing cost is greatly reduced.

When Yang Gui and others were making steel, Zuo Menggeng had already calculated the cost.

My dear, the cost of making a pound of steel is five times the cost of the same pound of wrought iron.

The official price to build a musket is [-] taels. If Zuo Menggeng's requirements were followed, a musket would cost at least [-] taels.

Three thousand muskets cost forty-five thousand taels of silver, not counting the cost of matching bayonets, ammunition, and maintenance tools.

Can't afford it, can't afford it...

"Then change it back to the wrought iron barrel. But you must maintain the quality and quantity, and there must be no defective products. If I find it, I will lose my head."

While Xu Dagan and others were terrified, they repeatedly promised.

"Don't worry, Qianzu, we have enough to eat here and earn enough money. How can we be sorry for our jobs? As long as the supply of iron materials can be guaranteed, we can make as many gun tubes as we need."

Anyway, Zuo Menggeng decided to solve a few more problems.

"Forging gun tubes can only be done by hand for the time being. After the river is enlightened, the hydraulic forging machine will be ready for use. You have to get used to it as soon as possible. When you master it, we will build a few more hydraulic power plants in the river. Forging machine."

Compared to the craftsmanship of the craftsmen, Zuo Menggeng believes in machinery more.

After all, it is not a work of art to create, but a weapon with a unified standard.

How to shoot the barrel, Zuo Menggeng has seen these craftsmen working, and he can still trust it.But there was one problem that he couldn't stand.

"How long does it take you to drill the barrel?"

"About an inch can be drilled every day, and it can be completed in more than a month."

When he said this, Xu Daqian was very proud, but he didn't notice Zuo Menggeng's head full of black lines.

It took him more than a month to complete a barrel...

Well, he can't do anything else, and he still has a way to improve this.

Ming Dynasty craftsmen drilled the barrel, not purely by hand, but also with a drilling machine.

The drill press is framed with wood, and a round stone plate is hung on it, much like a stone mill.After the leather strap is tied, it can be pulled by manpower, so that the stone disc can drive the drill bit to rotate.

How efficient can this thing be?
Zuo Menggeng asked Zuo Dai to run back to get the paper and pencil, and started drawing in front of everyone.

"Can this drill press be made?"

As an arms expert, Zuo Menggeng has too much knowledge in his memory.

He found a set of simple drawings of a rifling machine and drew it.

This rifling machine is also used by hand and has a very simple structure.

The second half of the machine is a large hand-cranked wheel, which can be made of iron, just bring a crank handle.

There is a link rod on the runner, which looks a bit like the wheel of a steam train.

The other end of the linkage rod is connected with a vernier buckle that can move back and forth.The buckle is integrally hooped on the rifling machine, and once the runner is turned, the buckle will move back and forth within a fixed distance.

Above the buckle, there is also a piece of iron with a low front and a high back.In the middle of the iron sheet is a long hollow, and a mechanism is suspended to connect with the buckle below.

On the side of this mechanism, there is a row of gear-like structures that fit tightly with the gears on the buckle.

When the buckle moves back and forth, the gear will interact with the mechanism and start to rotate.

The other end of the gear is connected to the drill.With this force, the barrel is drilled and rifled.

In order to input more force, Zuo Menggeng changed the crank handle on the runner and replaced it with bicycle pedals.

In this way, the device that originally required hand-cranking can be stepped on by people, saving time and effort.

A group of craftsmen gathered in front of the blueprints and were amazed.

They could understand but couldn't understand, so they had to drag Zuo Menggeng to ask for advice.

After discussing for more than two hours, everyone agreed that it was not difficult to make this rifling machine.

Zuo Menggeng was not so relieved, because he knew that this was just a small rifling machine, it could be manufactured with today's technology.But with the rifling machine, there will be a whole set of technological standards.

"You are optimistic, whether the barrel can be put on, this is a size requirement. So when you build the barrel, you must ensure that the size is the same."

While Xu Dagan and the other gunsmiths were looking embarrassed, Zuo Menggeng looked at Yang Gui.

"Have you made the ruler and vernier caliper ready?"

Yang Gui nodded quickly and asked his apprentice to fetch it.

When he was determined to build a weapon, Zuo Menggeng knew that standardization was an issue that could not be ignored.

The units of length such as steps, inches, feet, and feet used by the ancients are really not standard.The only way is to unify weights and measures.

Therefore, when the first batch of steel was smelted, Zuo Menggeng used Yang Gui and others to make a few blow pipes for the glass, and the rest were used to make measuring tools.

Steel rulers, vernier calipers, balance scales, etc., have all been created.

As a pragmatist, Zuo Menggeng did not struggle at all, and directly took out the concepts of meters, decimeters, centimeters, and millimeters.

At the same time, I also told the craftsmen, whoever can come up with methods and tools to measure smaller units will be rewarded.

The length of the meter is the distance he takes one step.

After Yang Gui and others took it, they took it back and divided it into equal parts, and then they got decimeters, centimeters and millimeters.

This standard is of course different from the accepted standard of later generations, but it does not matter.

Anyway, he was the first to formulate this standard now, and people in future generations can only follow his standard.

(End of this chapter)