I really don't want to be emperor at the end of Ming Dynasty

Chapter 56
Chapter 055

Artillery is the god of war, and having an artillery unit can play a decisive role in the battlefield.However, after Cheng Shijie received the eight Frangler cannons, he did not send someone to receive them immediately, but threw the cannons to the gun bureau.

"Organize the manpower and imitate it immediately!"

Zhou Yandong said: "But the barrel production..."

Before Zhou Yandong could finish speaking, Cheng Shijie said: "Stop the gun barrel first, the defense has a better way to make the gun barrel!"

Throwing this order, Cheng Shijie walked towards Ning Haijun's steelmaking plant like a gust of wind. The steelmaking is not in Ninghai City, but the iron ore is in Yangjialing. Yangjialing is only forty miles away from Mouping County, the state seat of Ninghai Prefecture. But it is a full 140 miles away from Ninghai City.

In fact, Cheng Shijie did not play a decisive role in this blast furnace, but the craftsmen of Zuo Qianhu Institute made it themselves. Some time-travel novels went to ancient times to build blast furnaces and smelt steel.In fact, as early as the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, China already had blast furnace steelmaking. By the Song Dynasty, the technology had matured, and the Ming Dynasty was even less rare.

And the annual steel production capacity of the Ming Dynasty was more than that of the whole of Europe.The largest blast furnace has reached 20 cubic meters. According to the production rate of one-third, almost one furnace can smelt more than [-] tons of steel.

"See Lord Guard!"

"Are you ready?"

"Ready!"

"ignition!"

As a craftsman stepped forward and threw a lighted torch into the furnace, the firewood added with tung oil burned quickly. After the primer was established, the craftsmen added coke into the furnace, and then closed the furnace.

As the blower blows and deflates, a strong airflow is blown into the stove, and the fire ignites in a short time, and a column of smoke goes straight to Yunxiao, with red sparks.

In addition, the technology of using coal to make steel was mature as early as the Song Dynasty, but the current blast furnace is only 1 or [-] cubic meters, and it can extract more than [-] jin of steel at most.

The quality of the coke was good, and the fire was very fierce. Under the calcination of the fierce fire, the ore began to melt a little bit.The foreman continued to direct the workers to add coke, blow the wind hard, and even ran over to push Cheng Shijie away, occupying the observation hole and observing every subtle change inside. It can be seen that this craftsman is still quite dedicated.

When Luo Baishun saw the ore melting, he grinned and laughed, and shouted, "Fire more intense! Blow the wind, and work harder. At this time, the fire must not be weak. Once it is weak, this furnace of molten iron will be over!"

In fact, watching the opening of the furnace was not the only purpose of Cheng Shijie, but he wanted to enter the final check on the cold casting process of the shaft.

At the same time that the blast furnace was making steel, a shaft was built about 20 meters away from the blast furnace. For the sake of experimentation, Cheng Shijie did not directly build a ten-meter-deep well in the way of later generations. This shaft was only more than three meters long. Only when the technology is explored and matured can we dig deep wells.

The cold casting mold has also been manufactured. This kind of mold has an inner diameter of 32 millimeters and an outer diameter of [-] millimeters, which means that the thickness of the barrel is eight millimeters. In later generations, there are only three or four barrels of general rifles. mm, and the barrel thickness of the sniper rifle is thicker.

Cheng Shijie also had no choice. The smaller the caliber, the more difficult the shaft cold casting process is. For the same problem, once the diameter exceeds 150mm, the technical difficulty of the shaft process also increases with the higher the caliber.

The easiest caliber to manufacture is the intermediate caliber, such as [-], [-], and [-] calibers.

Cheng Shijie looked at the responsible craftsman beside him and said, "Remember, the preheating must be sufficient. As long as there is a little moisture, the molten steel will explode. That's no joke!"

"Master Garrison, how do we know that the warm-up has been completed!"

"Use fire to burn the mold until it turns white, and that's almost it!"

Cheng Shijie is also groping, because later generations have measuring equipment, and through instrument analysis, it is easy to draw a conclusion. As long as the mold exceeds [-] degrees, under normal circumstances, it is impossible to contain moisture.

The steel-making workers are very enthusiastic about their work. They used to work in the Heishan Iron Mine in Qingzhou Prefecture.The boss rewarded them with a bite of food. They should be grateful. It is easy to not want to do it. Anyway, the technical content of iron ore is very low.

At least ordinary workers are cheap labor, they are not willing to work, some refugees are willing to work, it is not easy to survive in the late Ming Dynasty, and they have no place to work if they have the strength.Later, foreman Luo Baishun's only son, Luo Changqing, fell ill. In desperation, he had no choice but to take Luo Changqing to Dengzhou for medical treatment.

Fortunately, Luo Changqing was determined to survive, but they lost their livelihood. It happened that Cheng Shijie recruited military households, and he successfully infiltrated into the military households' team according to these skills in his hand.

When they came to Yangjialing Iron Mine, Luo Baishun discovered that not only could they eat three meals a day, but they could also eat salted fish every now and then.In addition to being in charge of food and housing, the living conditions are not bad. Single craftsmen have a house for every four people, and each has his own cabinet where valuables can be stored.

You can get a tael or two of silver every month, or two stones and four buckets of grain. Where can you find such a good thing? Luo Baishun remembered the workers who helped him back then. Under the circumstances, more than 600 craftsmen came over.

Now these craftsmen are paid and have enough to eat. If they don’t work hard, they will feel sorry for Cheng Shijie. The workers are chanting, coke is being poured into the furnace, and the blower is blowing violent wind.

Despite the cold wind, these workers are still sweating in their short shirts.

The fire burned for a day and a night until the iron ore in the blast furnace turned into a furnace of boiling molten iron. All the craftsmen gathered together excitedly to see what was new. Seeing so much molten iron, everyone was very excited.

"Master Garrison is done!"

Cheng Shijie waved his hand: "Put out the molten iron!"

An iron chisel gently pokes the gate, and as the gate is opened, fiery red molten iron pours out of it like a torrent of molten iron, flowing along the cooling tank at high speed, with red stars scurrying around and purple smoke lingering, creating a splendid scene. Spectacular.

As an ingot cooled, the blast furnace's floodgates were immediately blocked.

Luo Baishun tapped the iron ingot lightly with a small hammer, his face was full of smiles: "Master Garrison, this is good iron, rare and good iron. This furnace can produce tens of thousands of catties. iron!"

"This is just for you to practice, and you can build a bigger blast furnace in the future!"

Cheng Shijie looked at these ordinary high-carbon steels and frowned slightly. He looked at Luo Baishun and said, "Add manganese powder into the furnace and stir!"

"okay!"

Charcoal is an important component that determines the quality of steel. Ming and Song Yingxing's "Tiangong Kaiwu·Hardware": "All iron is divided into raw and cooked. If it is not fried, it will be raw, and if it is fried, it will be cooked... For those who make pig iron for smelting and casting, this is the case. It can be used in long strips, round blocks, and ranges."

Carbon content greater than 2% belongs to pig iron. The carbon content of industrial pig iron is generally 2.11%-4.3%, and the carbon content from 0.60% to 1.70% belongs to high-carbon steel. The basic carbon content is different in quality and use.

The hardness of steel with the same carbon content will be greatly improved after quenching and engineering heat treatment.After adding and stirring the fierce powder.

Then Cheng Shijie said: "Open the gate, release the molten steel, and directly carry out the cold casting of the shaft!"

After giving the order, Cheng Shijie hurriedly ran to the distance. While running, he said: "The irrelevant personnel should disperse, and the staff should take precautions!"

Once the molten steel explodes, in addition to the shock wave, the flying molten steel will burn the workers, which is far more powerful than a bomb.However, pure cotton protective clothing and asbestos aprons have little protective effect. Once an explosion occurs, basically neither death nor injury.

This kind of work is really too dangerous. After running more than 200 meters, Cheng Shijie climbed a watchtower, holding a telescope, and observing the direction of the shaft.

As the molten steel is continuously cooled in the cooling tank, the temperature of the molten steel also decreases rapidly, and when the molten steel in the cooling tank flows into the mold of the shaft.

"No explosion!"

Cheng Shijie breathed a sigh of relief.

As long as the first drop of molten steel does not explode, it will not explode again later.When the molten steel flows into the mold, the water in the shaft will cool down the mold rapidly, and the chassis of the mold will be separated from the mold under the action of gravity, and will sink slowly under the action of the keyboard. With the extension of the winch, the seamless steel pipe Just cast it.

After about a quarter of an hour, the steel wire rope of the shaft winch reached the marking line position, which meant that the seamless steel pipe casting of this well was completed.

It took a quarter of an hour, that is, 15 minutes, to cast 24 barrels with a length of three meters, a thickness of eight millimeters, and an inner diameter of 32 millimeters.

When the furnace door is closed again, the molten steel in the cooling tank is led to the mold of the steel ingot to continue casting, while the workers raise the winch, and the seamless steel pipe in the shaft is slowly raised.

The craftsman of the Gun Bureau who came after hearing the news stared blankly at the high manganese steel gun barrel in the shaft.

"This...is it done in the blink of an eye?"

The length of the barrel of a firecracker is only 85 centimeters, and this shaft can cut out four, 24 multiplied by four, that is, 96.

15 pieces are produced in 96 minutes, this efficiency...

What if there were not one but ten shafts?
Zhou Yandong smiled and said: "Congratulations to the guard, with the barrel, we can imitate the Thunderbolt immediately!"

"So much the better!"

Cheng Shijie suddenly thought of another question, is the 32mm Thunderbolt gun still a gun?

It should be renamed Thunder Pao, right?

The larger the caliber, the thicker the tube wall, the higher the bore pressure, which means that each blunderbuss can add more gunpowder and have greater kinetic energy, which means that they made the Thunderbolt, no, The Thunder Cannon has a longer range and is more powerful.

Think about the effect of being hit by a 32mm caliber lead?
Think about being shot by the Thunder Cannon with 28 consecutive shots and [-] consecutive shots. What kind of scene is that?
That scene... was absolutely fantastic.

(End of this chapter)