eastern european eagle

Chapter 14 Artillery and Gunpowder Recipes

In winter, farmers are idle.This year also passed. (Think beautifully, how could I be idle)

Many farmers came to Constanta, Tulcea, Mangalia and other places to find work and earn some money to support their families.

Lord Dobroga also has many construction projects, such as piers, city walls, churches and other buildings are under construction or expansion.In addition, the army has also been recruited, and a total of 7000 farmers have been called up for training. Their families are also plowing and weaving in Constanta, which has also virtually boosted the prosperity of Constanta.

Most of the newly recruited soldiers are serfs and mountain people. Although they have little knowledge, they are simple and obedient.They are simple in heart, and they don't have the little Jiujiu of city people in their hearts, so they are the easiest to fool.As long as these people are well trained and fooled, they are definitely a powerful military force.

At the same time in Constanta, Peter also repaired several coastal defense guns.Forts are generally built of stones, which are highly resistant to iron ball shells.Ships, however, are different. Today's ships, until the mid-19th century, have wooden hulls.The anti-strike ability of iron ball shells is very limited.The wooden warship and the coastal defense artillery in the stone fortress are bound to suffer.Moreover, coastal defense guns can be made very large and heavy, and they are full of power.The artillery on wooden boats is often subject to great restrictions and cannot be made too heavy.Otherwise, if a small boat is equipped with a cannon, the recoil of the cannon might overturn the wooden boat.

Wallachia did not have the ability to make cannons, nor did it have artisans who could make them.It is still the end of the 14th century, and the cannon-casting craftsmen are definitely the top talents in Europe.Even in those big countries, craftsmen who can cast cannons are high-end talents.Peter had a hard time recruiting cannonsmiths.Therefore, he can only choose to buy guns.

After inquiring, Peter learned that the Holy Roman Empire's cannon casting level was very average, and only small bronze cannons could be cast for land warfare.This is because the Holy Roman Empire is a land-based country.Moreover, the southern part of the empire is close to the Alps, and the artillery needs to be portable and able to cross the Alps.Therefore, the cannon cannot be made very large.The artillery needed for coastal defense forts must be heavy artillery.Therefore, the artillery of the Shenluo Empire obviously does not meet the requirements.

However, because they have not yet entered the age of sailing, Europeans do not pay much attention to the power of naval guns.Therefore, it is reasonable to popularize such a small powerful bronze cannon.The development of artillery technology in Europe was around the 16th century. Due to the needs of naval warfare, heavy artillery such as the "Hongyi Cannon" was developed.

Moreover, bronze artillery cannot be made with a large caliber at all.Because, bronze has a major flaw - it tends to soften when overheated.

Bronze cannons with smaller calibers are fine, but larger caliber ones are different.A large caliber gun has a high chamber pressure.When the gun barrel overheats, the gun wall softens.Bronze is not as soft as pure copper when it is overheated, but it softens eventually.Small-caliber guns have good chamber pressure, but large-caliber guns can easily deform the inner wall of the barrel when fired under overheating conditions because of the high chamber pressure.In this case, the artillery will be useless.

Therefore, bronze cannons cannot be cast too large, but only small and medium-sized ones.If you want to cast heavy artillery, you can only choose to cast artillery with iron.Moreover, cast iron cannons cost much less than bronze cannons.After all, before the development of the large copper mine in Sweden and the acquisition of Japanese copper by the Dutch, the price of copper in Europe was still very expensive.The cost of casting heavy artillery with a large amount of copper is absolutely high.

Originally, Peter thought that the artillery had to come slowly, but the people who went to the Golden Horde brought back good news.

From the 13th century to the 14th century, the trade between Europe and China was mainly conducted through the Golden Horde.Therefore, the Mongolian rulers paid special attention to the development of commerce.Batu Khan and Berge Khan successively built the cities of Batu Sarai and Belgosarai on the Volga River, and later built the city of Uvik, and built the city of Salech at the mouth of the Zayahei River (Ural River). Kecheng.

As a bridge for trade between the East and the West, the Golden Horde naturally has a group of craftsmen traveling from south to north.Among them was a craftsman from the middle of the river who actually made cannons out of iron.

The appearance of cast iron cannons had to wait until the middle of the 15th century. After Dijon, France produced cast iron blocks, this technology gradually spread to the outside world, and then spread to Weld in Sussex, across the sea from France.So there were cannon-casting craftsmen in Weald, Sussex, who began to try to use cast iron to cast cannons.Because cast iron is much cheaper than bronze.

The Samarkand craftsman named Shafkat devoted himself to the construction of cast iron cannons, but they all failed.It was hard to make a door, but it exploded in the end.In order to develop this front-loading heavy cast iron gun, he almost exhausted his family's wealth.He even considered giving up altogether, but the people from the Dobroga region heard about him and came to him and asked if they would like to meet their lord.

He thought that instead of waiting like this, he might as well take the initiative to attack, maybe this lord has a long-term vision.

He was right, Peter was the long-sighted one.After hearing about his works and experience, Peter thought in his heart: "You must not let the talent go!"

So he made a decision immediately, hired the craftsman, and offered a salary of 1 British shilling per day (the daily income of ordinary people is 3 pence).

As for the problem of bombing, Peter also has a solution.The blasting of cast iron guns is nothing more than the pig iron used for casting guns. There are too many impurities, such as sulfur and phosphorus, which make the gun barrel brittle.Moreover, the carbon content of pig iron is too high, although its strength is high, its toughness is insufficient, so it is not suitable for casting cannons.Wrought iron and medium and low carbon steel are actually suitable for casting guns.

As for how to make steel, although he is not a professional, he has also learned a lot of theories from many time travel novels.For example, he knew that an important secret of the early British iron cannons that were not easy to explode was the use of reverberatory furnaces for secondary refining of pig iron.

The so-called reverberatory furnace is a relatively closed furnace (including air inlet and outlet).After pig iron and scrap iron are put into the furnace, the heat in the furnace cannot escape due to the relatively closed space, and after reaching the furnace roof and furnace wall, it is reflected back to concentrate and refine the iron materials.After several hours of refining, plus adding some slagging agent (the simplest slagging agent is quicklime, which can be used to remove sulfur and phosphorus).Then, after cleaning up the waste slag (because of the density problem, the waste slag usually floats on the molten iron, just fish it out), and then get wrought iron or steel (the carbon content needs to be controlled).

The well-known steelmaking open hearth furnace is actually just adding a regenerator inside the reverberatory furnace.

The British Empire fully mastered the reverberatory furnace refining technology in the 18th century, which also made the iron cannons cast by the British have excellent quality and are not easy to explode.Because the French did not understand this technology, until the early 19th century, naval guns were still easy to blow up.It was not until the mid-19th century that France and other European powers initially learned about reverberatory furnace refining technology.But then, the open hearth furnace appeared, and mankind entered the era of open hearth steelmaking.And artillery has also entered the era of forging cannons from casting cannons.

Although Peter is not a graduate of the steel industry, he can direct people to do it.As far as this reverberatory furnace is concerned, the structure is very simple.He can completely direct the craftsmen to make one, and then make high-quality wrought iron and steel.Then, it is definitely much better to use wrought iron or medium and low carbon steel to cast the cannon, and it is not easy to explode the chamber.

As for gunpowder, Peter also has a way.He remembered an old-fashioned way that the old man in the village said before: find an open space, clear out impurities such as stones, then dig a series of pits or simply use a cellar, and then pour water and lime into it to keep the temperature.In this way, the soil becomes a nitrate field after a period of "heat preservation".

Pour the collected human and livestock urine into it, and after about ten months, the soil in the pit will be rich in nitrate.This nitrate-rich nitrate soil is dug out, then mixed with plant ash for filtration.Afterwards, as long as the nitrate is boiled, high-quality nitrate can be obtained.

With nitrate, making gunpowder can be more convenient.At this time, the gunpowder formula used in European countries was: 50% saltpeter, 25% sulfur, and 25% charcoal, which were relatively easy to explode and belonged to the formula of explosive firearms.And the gunpowder produced in this way is still in powder form, and there will be many situations in use of such gunpowder.For example, powdered black powder is easily squeezed together when it is under pressure in the barrel, so that it will not be able to burn completely due to lack of oxygen during ignition, which reduces the power of the gunpowder.

Another disadvantage of powdered gunpowder is that it is susceptible to moisture.This is because Europeans at that time often sprinkled a lot of lime powder in the nitrate field in order to increase the production of potassium nitrate. Although this operation could increase the production of potassium nitrate, it also greatly increased the calcium nitrate contained in it, and calcium nitrate This substance is extremely hygroscopic, making the nitrate easy to deliquesce, making gunpowder unusable unless it is exposed to sunlight before use.

In addition, the transportation of powdered gunpowder is also inconvenient, because during the turbulent transportation of powdered gunpowder, sulfur powder, charcoal powder and saltpeter powder with different weights will be separated from each other, and the densest saltpeter powder will live in the gunpowder barrel The bottom layer of the gunpowder barrel, the lightest charcoal powder will be on the surface of the gunpowder barrel, which will inevitably reduce the power of the gunpowder, or even make it impossible to ignite at all!Before use, unless all the gunpowder is poured out and remixed, but there is still time to operate when the war is not urgent, and once an urgent war occurs, it cannot be used quickly at all.

Therefore, in order to maximize the power of gunpowder, the production of its granulated gunpowder must begin.

In fact, the production of granular gunpowder is also quite simple, just add flour for compaction, add water, and then smash it.And Peter's gunpowder formula is close to the ideal ratio (75% nitrate, 12% sulfur, 13% charcoal).

(End of this chapter)