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Chapter 126 Leaping Development

Compared with the relatively rudimentary matchlock gun, there is an ancient weapon that has been modernized and has better performance.The steel slave with spring steel as the arm, supplemented by a metal pulley set, and equipped with featherless metal arrows, has a higher range, shooting speed, accuracy, and output. The cost and training difficulty are lower. It can still fly at a hundred times when it rains. Miwai has strong accuracy and lethality.

In this case, there is no need to waste time, effort and precious resources to develop a relatively backward weapon. When the chemical industry takes shape, it will be more cost-effective to produce silver nitrate and collodion and directly use shotguns or breech-loading rifles.

However, an army equipped only with pulley crossbows does not seem to be able to take advantage of the Ming Dynasty, Mongolia, or Jurchen armies. They not only have muskets but also various artillery.Therefore, it is extremely important to develop artillery as soon as possible. Not only must we create artillery suitable for land warfare, we must also prepare naval guns for sea ships. There is a long way to go!

"...Is this a Folang machine gun?" Zhao Shizhen looked at the pile of drawings given by the emperor and looked at them. Zhao Shizhen became more and more confused as he looked at them.

It looks a bit like a cannon mounted on a Hongyi ship. The barrel is very long and becomes thicker toward the back.However, there is no opening at the rear of the Hongyi cannon. From this point of view, it looks like the small cannon of the Folangji.

"No, this is what I realized after more than ten years of study!"

During the first few times he traveled through time, Hong Tao had to make excuses. He would never say that he invented something by himself. He would either borrow someone else's name or simply say that a god came to him in a dream.This time he became the emperor, and he completely let himself go. He just picked up his mouth and started talking!

"...Does this cannon have a name?" Zhao Shizhen wanted to question it, but he was facing an emperor who founded Time Workshop, Liuguangzhai, and could also refine steel in batches, so he was not confident enough. I can only hold an attitude of preferring to believe that it has something rather than something that doesn’t exist.

"The long one is called a cannon, and the short one is called a howitzer!"

name?This is a big problem. Hong Tao didn't lie about one thing. He had indeed been extracting fragments from his memory and drawing them since he was seven or eight years old. However, he never named it, and it felt inappropriate to call it anything.Later, I got tired of thinking about it, so I simply used the type as the name.

When he traveled through the Southern Song Dynasty, he participated in the research and development of these two types of cannons, and even used them personally. The results were good, at least they were much more advanced than the Hongyi cannons and Folan cannons of this era.

So where exactly is the advancement?There are three main points: First, the cost is low.It is much cheaper to use gray cast iron than the Hongyi cannon and Franco machine gun made of bronze.Gray cast iron has strong fluidity, and the Rodman casting method has a yield no less than that of bronze, further reducing costs, including time and labor.

The second performance is good.The Rodman casting method can gradually cool the cast iron from the inside to the outside, making the metal crystal structure more uniform and eliminating stress. The closer to the bore, the tighter the texture, and the higher the bore pressure it can withstand.It can hold more propellant, the shooting distance will naturally be longer, and it is also durable.

The third structure is advanced.Like the flintlock gun, Hong Tao doesn't like to fight with the enemy with real swords, courage, training, or luck. Why fight so hard when he can crush them with strength.Therefore, these two guns are breech-loaded smoothbore guns, and their rate of fire is more than doubled without affecting the range and power.

In fact, there are fourth and fifth. For example, it can fire explosive bombs, which further improves the power; another example is that it is not afraid of counterfeiting. Even if it is captured by the enemy, it does not have a complete industrial system and a series of processing technologies, and it can still only be an eyesore.

If you were to ask in the Ming Dynasty at the beginning of the 17th century, whether using cast iron to make breech-loading smoothbore cannons was a bit too unrealistic, the answer is that it was not advanced at all.

As long as the smelting ratio of gray cast iron is solved, high carbon steel is obtained, the Rodman casting method is used correctly, and primary metal processing and heat treatment capabilities are available, let alone the breech-mounted smoothbore cannon, directly install the breech-mounted rifled cannon, and add There are no problems with listing or withdrawing from the organization.

At present, the coke kiln by the Yongding River can stably produce qualified coke in batches. Using this as fuel to make pig iron in an earthen blast furnace is like making boiling water, coupled with an acidic open-hearth furnace, there are wrought iron, gray cast iron, low carbon steel, and high carbon steel. The output is just not very stable and cannot produce whatever we want.But it is only a matter of time before purposeful production. By sampling iron ore from different regions multiple times, the appropriate ratio between the ore, cosolvent, and carbon powder will be found, and what you want to refine can be just around the corner.

Hong Tao also retrieved the complete set of equipment and technical parameters of the Rodman cannon casting method from his memory. Even if it cannot be put into production immediately, it can still be fine-tuned through continuous experiments, and it will not take too long.

With high carbon steel comes tool steel. With relatively primitive machine tools and hydraulic and animal power driving devices, simple turning, milling, boring, grinding and drilling are certainly not a problem. In fact, these processing methods were generally mastered by Ming Dynasty craftsmen, but they were not systematic.

If the previous skills are learned through many times of travel and can only be considered second-hand, then metal heat treatment is Hong Tao's specialty.It won't be too cutting-edge. You must remember quenching, annealing, normalizing, and tempering.

Look, as long as anyone can travel back to ancient times many times, and deliberately summarize, after many practices, he can perfectly combine the relevant knowledge of later generations with contemporary technology, and directly promote the rapid advancement of scientific and technological levels and cultural ideas.

No, it's not fast forward, it should be called standing long jump.There are no intermediate steps, so one person spans hundreds or even hundreds of years, moving from one stage to the next.

Hong Tao opened his mouth and talked for more than an hour, mainly about the Rodman casting method and the principles of the cannon wedge. Zhao Shizhen seemed to understand what he heard, and walked away with the blueprint in hand.If this wasn't the palace, he would probably have to lay on the floor, and his mind was filled with questions.

Hong Tao was neither surprised nor anxious about this result. For a man who couldn't even make smoothbore muskets and bronze muzzle-loading cannons to suddenly come into contact with a breech-loading cast iron cannon, he had to be kept in the dark.

It doesn't matter, just follow the diagrams a few times. It will be much easier to go back to the theoretical lectures after you have some practical work experience.This process of listening, doing, doing, and listening again is not just a one-time process. I am afraid you have to go back and forth several times to achieve the right result.It probably takes from one year to more than three years, depending on individual talent.

Zhao Shizhen is not the only one like this. Li Zhizao, who is responsible for coking and iron-making, and Xu Guangqi, who makes simple machine tools, were all like this at the beginning. They have been familiar with it for more than two years and have not yet completely got on the right track.

Fortunately, Hong Tao could afford to wait, and he didn't need a large number of muskets and artillery at the moment. Even if he had them, he wouldn't be able to use them because he wouldn't have anyone on hand.Yuan Keli's naval force only has more than 2000 people, and the keel of the first sea-going ship has just been laid. There is a big question mark whether it can be launched smoothly by the end of the year.

"Tell Chen Ju to take 200 crossbows from Xu Ziku and send them to Beixiaochang. No crossbow arrows are needed. I want to prepare for the autumn hunting!"

Hong Tao's proudest saying was to prepare for a rainy day. He didn't have muskets or steel crossbows for the time being, but he couldn't be idle. He first used the Ming Dynasty horn crossbows to let the young eunuchs practice their arm strength and formation to get a feel for it.

If you ask whether the emperor's private deployment of hundreds of crossbows from the Forbidden Army's arsenal will arouse suspicion from officials, it will definitely happen, but it won't be too strong, and it will be fooled by just finding a similar reason.

Long-range weapons like crossbows were relatively valued in the early Ming Dynasty. However, as Emperor Yongle became more interested in using firearms, crossbows were gradually marginalized and even discontinued.It was restored for several decades during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty, and then was shelved.Except for some guard posts that are still in use, the Beijing camp and frontier troops have very little equipment.

If it were replaced by a fire gun, no matter the length or model, the emperor would not be able to get one without written documents from the Ministry of War.Is Shenji Camp great?After training on weekdays, the muskets, projectiles, and gunpowder must be stored in the warehouse and registered by a dedicated person.

(End of this chapter)