Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 146 Cannon Casting ([-])

"Arms dealers are not in a hurry." Zhang Bolin said, "Can we equip ourselves with smoothbore guns? There are too many gaps in firepower now. The three gun towers on Bopu Highway have no guns, and Bairen City also has one. There are no guns. In addition, we have to build an indigenous army. The indigenous army can use smoothbore guns to form artillery units. In this way, they can be converted into Armstrong guns in the future, and a group of qualified gunners can also be trained.”

Zhang Bolin, a big artillery member, is most concerned about the artillery team he has dreamed of. No matter what kind of artillery it is, it is better to have it than not to have it.

Everyone thinks this suggestion is reasonable. Even if the manufacturing cost and the need to arm the indigenous army are ignored, the smoothbore gun is much cheaper in use. Because the smoothbore gun has no rifling, the shell can theoretically be anything that can fit into the barrel. There is no need for elaborate shells, the simplest one is a solid iron ball. Even in the 19th century, the lethal power of this shell on land and sea is still acceptable. Still fired the most shells.Much more reliable than grenades of questionable lethality.

"Well, we can also develop some special spherical shells, such as grenades and incendiary bombs."

"There is another benefit, which you may not realize." Wang Luobin said, "Mr. Wen's generation gap theory."

"Generation difference theory?"

"In this time and space, at least as long as we live, we are all outsiders. And in order to conquer and rule, we rely on the help of the natives. So sooner or later, the native army will be established."

Once the native army is established, because of its large number, it will inevitably become the main armed force across the country.

No matter how much you spend on brainwashing, political work, and control, the army is a violent machine. Once it realizes its strength, it will become greedy. They will fight for more power and interests, and the traversers themselves Strength is limited.The only way is to maintain the technology gap.

The 20mm flintlock guns equipped by the indigenous troops, the traverser must have a bolt-action rifle-level weapon to fight against.This ensures that a very small number of people can suppress a large group of people.In the same way, if the traversers can make 92 infantry guns themselves, the best guns to equip the indigenous army should not exceed 37mm recoil guns.

This theory has not yet been perfected by Wen Desi. He is now thinking about the future military institutions and political organizations every night-"the eternal state of the traverser" is his goal.

After several days of preparation, the cannon casting work began.As a technical reserve and practice, the artillery team will first cast traditional smoothbore guns.Generally speaking, smoothbore guns are best made of copper, and the life span can reach almost 1000 rounds, compared with the life span of cast iron guns, which is only 600 rounds.But copper is much more expensive than iron, and it is a precious industrial raw material for travelers, while the pig iron Deng Yingzhou bought from Guangdong is of excellent quality and low sulfur content.Great for casting cannons.

Historically, the pig iron in the Fujian and Guangdong regions in the Ming Dynasty was known for its superior quality. Because the iron smelting workshops in this area used charcoal as fuel to make iron, the sulfur content was much lower than that of pig iron made in the north using coal.Sulfur is a major factor that makes pig iron brittle and deteriorates in quality.People in the Ming Dynasty could not understand this reason, but it became a consensus at that time that the artillery made in the South was stronger than that in the North.So much so that the large-scale casting of cannons by the imperial court in the late Ming Dynasty was carried out in Guangdong.In the 47th year of Wanli, when Xu Guangqi was ordered to train troops to defend the capital, he suggested that the imperial court recruit craftsmen from Fujian and Guangdong to come to Beijing to cast cannons.In the third year of Chongzhen, he invited himself to go to Guangzhou to cast cannons. The reason was: "there are many craftsmen, the iron materials are especially fine, and the price can be saved by one-third..." In the early years of Chongzhen, Wang Zunde, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, made a one-time Two hundred cannons were cast.

Wang Luobin suggested whether to recruit a few masters who are good at casting cannons from Guangzhou to demonstrate the traditional Chinese cannon casting technology. After everyone has an intuitive concept, they can improve it.Lin Shenhe said that it is unnecessary: ​​Don't talk about the level of Chinese gunsmiths in 1628, even the Europeans who followed suit at that time had a level of cannon casting technology that was not much higher.Travelers don't need to learn them at all.

Matteo Ricci mentioned in the book that the problems of Chinese cannons at that time were: less charge, short range, no front sight, and no aiming. Unable to achieve a qualified round shape, the bore of the gun is not bored.Cannonballs can be any size or even shape you want.Cannon play is too large.The artillery has no lugs and is top-heavy. If the charge is too dense, it will explode by itself when it is fired.

The Hongyi cannons introduced at that time were essentially the same as the various traditional artillery manufactured and equipped by the Ming army. They were all smoothbore front-loading cannons, using black guns and solid shells.However, thanks to scientific understanding, European artillery has some obvious advantages in design, such as thicker barrel wall, larger gun diameter, and the gun barrel gradually becomes thicker from front to back.Therefore, it has advantages in terms of range, lethality and safety.There are generally front sights and rear sights on the gun body, and gun lugs are cast on the gun body, which is convenient for erection on the gun carriage, and it is convenient to adjust the shooting angle and move.

The smoothbore gun that the traversers will make can be regarded as a kind of Hongyi cannon in general, but the blueprint is slightly more advanced, imitating the 19-pound cannon of the French army in the early 6th century.The effective range of this gun is 500 meters, the maximum range is 1500 meters, and the weight of the gun body is about 250KG.

Lin Shenhe and Wang Luobin decided to first adopt a Western cannon casting method from the 17th to 18th centuries, which also required making clay molds.

They asked the wood processing factory to process a batch of special wood molds: the conical material used as the support body, and the car-made gun tail mold.After completion, the first thing to do is the blank of the male mold.First, use straw rope to densely wrap the shape of the cannon on the tapered wood as the support.At this time, there is still a margin of about 25cm from the final size of the male mold hair.Then use clay and water to paste the plaster evenly layer by layer on the male mold hair.Wait until the previous layer is completely dry before applying the next layer.

When smearing, they made the entire male mold a bit larger than the actual size of the cannon because the casting would shrink.When the last layer of plaster has dried and the shape has been corrected, a layer of wax is applied to the outside of the male mold hair - lacking paraffin wax, replace it with beeswax.The surface of the male mold will be smooth and will not stick to the female mold in the next process.The breech of the gun is a car-made wooden mold, which is fixed on the male mold fur with screws.

After the positive mold was completed, it was used to make the casting mold of the cannon.The casting mold is to apply the semi-fluid marl made of clay, pottery clay, fine sand and water on the male mold layer by layer.Apply the next layer after one layer is dry.After it is completely dry, add iron bars to the outside of the mold.

After the mold is completely dry, the male mold is removed by cutting the head and tail of the mold, removing the tapered wood core of the male mold, and then pulling out the wrapped straw rope.Because there is a layer of wax between the male mold and the casting mold, it will be easier to take it out. If it is really difficult, the wax surface can be melted by heating, causing the gap to separate.The mold for the breech is made separately.

The third part of the mold is the core, which is made of clay attached to an iron bar. It is usually a cylinder, but it may have a special shape where the gunpowder is placed.The core is loaded into the main mold and is held in place by an iron core stay at the end of the main mold and a clay ring at the muzzle part of the mold.

The separately made breech female mold and the cannon body female mold are reassembled together. After the three molds are assembled firmly, they need to be baked. The mold is completely firm, and finally the mold is buried in the side of the furnace with the muzzle facing up and compacted. In the pit.Jiang Ye designed and installed a wooden hanger that can lift the whole mold, because the need for casting cannons was not considered when the iron melting furnace was built at that time, and the ground of the steelmaking workshop was hardened.As a last resort, another iron melting furnace was built in the foundry, but because there was no need for ironmaking, it was enough to simply melt the metal, and the furnace did not use a regenerative furnace.The runner is one out of four.Ji Wusheng personally came to guide, and Zhan Wuya himself had some casting experience, so the first casting was very successful.

After the casting is completed, keep it warm for 24 hours before digging it out of the mud pit.After further cooling, the ribs on the outside of the mold were removed, the mold was broken, and the artillery crew used hammers and chisels to remove the remaining ash from the gun body.

Finally, the cast-iron 6-pound cannon was finished.It also requires further processing to bore the bore.The mechanical group built a simple boring machine to process the gun bore. The power didn't even use an electric motor or diesel engine, but a donkey.The donkey drives a winch that drives a boring bar topped by a high carbon steel breech cutter.

The boring operation can greatly improve the smoothness of the inner wall of the cannon, but after measurement, it is found that the boring process cannot really cut a cylinder or correct the deviation of the core during the casting process.In the whole process, the hard residue is also very harmful to the boring bar.In other words, the process consumes too much.

"No wonder it was changed to the drilling method in 1713." Lin Shenhe was a little frustrated.The drilling method is to cast a solid iron rod first, and then use a drilling machine to drill out the gun bore.This technology was first used by the Dutch, but it was not fully promoted until the late 18th century. The British Naval Arsenal was still using the above-mentioned casting method to manufacture naval guns until 1770.

(End of this chapter)