The end of the Ming Dynasty swept the world

Chapter 795 Rifling and Minie
The "Tianxia Shi" newspaper spread the story all over the world, and the gentry and officials all over the world trembled. Their entire families were wiped out, and they had nowhere to appeal for grievances. The court wanted to help the rebels.

At this time, whoever dares not to divide the land, the slaves from all over the place do not want Ding Yi's people to do it, they will first get up and kill the officials to divide the land.

With the backing of Ding Yi's hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses, under the strong promotion of the court, the policy of officials, gentry and gentry paying food in one package was quickly and slowly spread throughout Daming.

On June [-]th, Ding Yi came to the base of the Craftsmanship Bureau in the capital.

Here, all the craftsmen and craftsmen of Lushun moved here, and all the craftsmen and their families went to the capital, and they were also divided into houses.

The craftsmen here should be the best and strongest group of craftsmen under Ding Yi.

Many excellent craftsmen of the big staff were also transferred here in the later period.

Now there are only shipwrights in Dayuan and Jeju, and other experts and craftsmen in firearms are in the capital.

In the future, Dayuan and Jeju can only make Lumi guns, small artillery and maintenance.

It has been a long time since Ding Yi came to the Craftsman Bureau. When Ding Yi entered, he found that Li Zhongyi brought a group of people to meet him. Many craftsmen did not know each other, and there were more than a dozen foreigners among them.

Some of these foreigners were originally Portuguese from Lushun, and some were foreign engineers who were recruited from the officials later.

The crowd surrounded Ding Yi like stars, and brought Ding Yi to a shooting range.

"Come here." Li Zhongyi waved excitedly, bringing our new guy over.

A gun with a wooden handle longer than a flintlock was brought over. As soon as Ding Yi got it, he felt heavy, heavier than a flintlock.

Ding Yi looked down and saw that it was no different from a flintlock gun, but seeing Li Zhongyi's excited expression, he suddenly realized that he picked up the barrel of the gun and looked inside.

"Rifling?"

There is already rifling in the barrel.

This is the rifling that he told Li Zhongyi a long time ago, but due to the technology and ability of this era, it has not been pulled out until now.

"My lord, it's the rifling, we can pull the rifling." Li Zhongyi danced excitedly.

With rifling on the barrel, the accuracy has risen sharply, and the shooting distance has also increased significantly, which is another progress across the ages.

In fact, the history of rifling is quite long. It has appeared in the [-]th century, but it was not until the [-]th century that the armies of various countries were equipped on a large scale.The decisive reason for this situation is that the reloading speed of the muzzle rifled gun is too slow.Since the projectile must be embedded in the rifling to rotate with the rifling, the diameter of the projectile must be greater than the diameter of the positive line of the rifling, which makes the loading of the front-loading rifle very laborious. Soldiers often need to hit the delivery stick with a hammer to load the projectile into the gun. As a result, the shooting speed is reduced to one-third of the usual or even slower.

Such a slow rate of fire is intolerable for the army, so for 200 years after the invention of the rifle, the rifle was only a supporting role in the army, until Claude Edirne Minie, captain of the French Orleans Jagers ( Claude Etienne Minié invented the Minié bomb in the mid-nineteenth century.

The caliber of the Minie bullet is a circle smaller than the diameter of the positive line of the front-loading rifle gun, which solves the problem of difficult loading.The Minie bullet has a small conical hole in the bottom of the projectile.When fired, the gunpowder gas expands the tail of the projectile, inserts it into the rifling, and rotates out of the bore at high speed with the rifling.Since the diameter of the Minie bullet is smaller than the barrel caliber, loading is easier, and the rate of fire of the front-loading rifle is greatly improved.After solving the loading problem, front-loading rifles quickly became popular all over the world on a large scale.

Sure enough, at this time, a voice came from the side: "Dear lord, although the rifling has been pulled out, the loading of projectiles is too slow. I personally think that it is not possible to equip troops on a large scale now."

Ding Yi turned his head and found that it was a foreigner who stuttered in Chinese, but he could still understand it.

"Your Majesty, this is the Englishman Schweig who came from the High Commissioner." Li Zhongyi introduced to him.

Schweiger arrived in Luzon in April 1642. He heard in Europe that there was a place in the far east that welcomed craftsmen from all over the world. He first went to Luzon, and then went to Dayuan, because Schweiger himself said he could To build the best arquebus gun in Europe, Xu Erxian sent a warship to escort the officers.

After arriving at Dayuan, the indomitable Schweiger found that there were flintlock guns here, which were more powerful than their European matchlock guns, and he was shocked immediately.

But Zhao Dashan still sincerely kept him and made Lumi guns for the officials.

Over the years, Ding Yi has been asking craftsmen from all over the place to find a way to draw rifling in the barrel, but there has been no progress.

In Jeju, the main energy is on shipbuilding, and the energy of the big staff is on the steam engine. Only Lushun is trying to find a way, but most of Lushun is local craftsmen.

Schweiger's family used to be a watchmaker, and there are more than a dozen craftsmen like him who were born in Europe.

He asked Zhao Dashan to gather all these people and use them for him.

Soon, within half a year, Schweiger and these European craftsmen thought of several ways to pull the rifling.

The first is the 'scratch method'.

Use a steel rod that is slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the gun barrel, dig a groove at a specific part of it, and install a hard alloy steel sheet. There are one or two protruding strips with a certain angle of inclination on the steel sheet. There is a sharpened part, and the raised height can be adjusted.Pull back and forth dozens of times on a rifling position to cut a negative rifling, and then adjust the position to cut and scrape the next one.This method generally uses a single scraper to cut odd or even rifling, and a two-way scraper can be used to cut even rifling.It is also possible to install a single scraper, double scraper or three pairs of knives at opposite positions, and cut out 2 to 6 rifling lines at a time.

The second is the 'hook knife broaching method'.

The hook-shaped cutter is placed on a steel pull rod slightly thinner than the diameter of the gun bore, and the height of the hook-shaped scraper edge can be adjusted by adjusting the screw on the layer of the pull rod.Every time it is pulled through the barrel, the rod moves a few microns. With the constant speed rotation of the barrel, a female rifling with a certain degree of winding is broached. After reaching the predetermined width, the second rifling is pulled in another position.Early rifled guns took about twenty broaches to pull a single groove, while a better gun took about a hundred broaches to broach the same groove.The more times of pulling, the thinner and more precise the groove formed.

The early American colonists used the hook-knife broaching method to manufacture rifling. The tools used were very simple manual wooden machines, which the colonists could manufacture by themselves.

But both are relatively inefficient and require a large number of manual operators.

The second type was already in use when the Dutch and the Spaniards competed for American colonization. The main rifled guns, like the spring wheel guns in Europe, were toys for nobles and used in the field.

If you want to promote such a rifled gun among Ding Yi's hundreds of thousands of troops, the rifled rifle alone can exhaust all their craftsmen to death.

Of course Zhao Dashan saw Biduan, Ding Yi was already in Datong at that time, Zhao Dashan decided to send all the participating European craftsmen to Lushun.

The Chinese craftsmen on Li Zhongyi's side worked with their European craftsmen to solve this problem.

What Han craftsmen lack is experience and insight.

After seeing how to draw the rifling, the craftsmen of Lushun studied with Schweiger and others.

Finally, at the beginning of this year, the 'combined annular knife broaching method' was invented.

The so-called "combined ring knife broaching method" is to fix 25 to 30 hard alloy steel rings on a pull rod, the distance between each steel ring is equal, and each steel ring is processed with the same number of female grooves. For equidistant scrapers, each cutter can be connected to the cutter on the next ring along its winding angle, and can be regarded as a spiral line from the head to the tail.

The protruding amount of the blade on each ring is slightly larger than that of the previous ring, forming a series of cutting knives. The grooves opened have a stable width, depth and interval. This combination of ring broaching knives passes through the gun bore once.Then all the negative rifling can be cut out, the working time is shortened, and the output and quality are improved.

Of course, there are more advanced "top cone (or rifled punch) extrusion JE method" and "cold precision forging method" which cannot be realized in this era.

At present, the "combined ring knife broaching method" invented by Lushun can cut out all the rifling lines in one pull, and its efficiency far exceeds the previous two. It can already be used in batches on Ding Yi's hundreds of thousands of troops.

And Schweig quickly saw the disadvantages of rifled guns, the reloading was too slow, and they couldn't be equipped in batches.

He reminded the joyous Ding Yi that the prince's flintlock is invincible on the battlefield and can fire four rows of bursts.

But after using the rifle, the sergeant had to reload it for a while. At the same time, the rifled gun could only fire two rounds, or even one round.

Therefore, he suggested that Ding Yi should not fully assemble it for the time being.

Ding Yi laughed loudly, and patted him on the shoulder: "Sweger, what you said is very reasonable. The 'combined circular knife broaching method' is also very good. I want a reward, a big reward."

He ordered on the spot to give 300 taels of silver to each of the craftsmen who participated in the invention of the 'Combined Ring Knife Broaching Method', and 1000 taels of silver to Schweiger.

All the craftsmen were ecstatic and thanked the prince one after another.

Schweiger was not very happy. Although he came to the east for money, he wanted to prove his own strength.

"Give me some more time, I think only by improving the projectile can the shooting speed be increased."

Ding Yi smiled and said, "Bring a pen, I already have an idea."

Everyone was shocked, Li Zhongyi hurriedly asked someone to get a pen and paper.

When I was pretending again, Ding Yi was overjoyed and drew a Minnie bomb.

Minie bullets are cylindrical lead bullets slightly smaller than the caliber. There are threads around the single body to fit the rifling. At the same time, there is a cork at the lower end of the general bullet. It is smaller than the caliber, so it is easy to load, and the same thread and cork increase the airtightness, so the muzzle velocity is stable. At the same time, the design of the cylinder and the fit of the barrel also makes it more accurate. Instantly deformed and broken, the after effect on soft targets is very terrible. The appearance of the Minie bullet also brought the front-loading gun into the era of rifled guns, but at this time the gun still uses the principle of flint flint. The epoch-making parts come out.

Ding Yi first drew the Minnie shells, and then explained to the craftsmen.

The craftsmen who participated in the research and development of rifling suddenly realized.

Ordinary people may not be able to understand this thing, but the craftsmen who participated in it can understand the principle as soon as they hear it.

　Tomorrow, Ding Shuo is going to be the emperor

　　
　
(End of this chapter)