Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1482 Marquis
A group of people fled away from the foundry.Maybe it was Hale's order, or he had already prepared, and several indigenous workers were already waiting outside with tea buckets.A little sugar was added to the black tea imported from Lingao, and it was chilled with well water, and it felt refreshing after drinking it.When the Spaniards had just caught their breath, Halle dragged them on without stopping.The next target is the machining workshop, which is built next to the river and the giant water wheel.Compared with the suffocating foundry, the workshop is full of the pleasant smell of freshly felled wood.The most indispensable thing in the Philippines is wood, which is of excellent texture. Later generations in a country in East Asia have striped hardwoods that cost tens of thousands. Here, they are sawn to make machine tool supports, bases or drive shafts, and even goods laid on the ground. track.What fills people's ears is the squeaking of transmission shafts and gears, and the screams of turning tools and drill bits biting metal. Although it is a bit noisy and harsh, it is definitely not as deafening as the noise in the hellish foundry. .The Spanish gentlemen seemed to have regained their spirits, and they circled and marveled at the huge boring lathe built for the cannon.

From time to time, some indigenous workers walked around the drilling machine and boring machine, holding wooden shovels, shoveling the falling iron shavings into baskets, ready to send them back for re-casting.Marcos knew that more than [-]% of the iron and nearly [-]% of the copper imported by the Spanish Philippine colony were consumed in this factory.Of course, what the citizens of Manila are most concerned about is the large amount of silver pesos swallowed up by it.But the governor of Salamanca is just the opposite: no matter iron, copper or silver, he tries to redouble his investment in the mouth of the gold-swallowing monster, the munitions factory, as long as the golden eggs it lays can bring him and his allies in the officialdom. Glory and promotion.The Marquis of Commodore Don Juan Codebazan came for this.

The Marquis grabbed a handful of iron filings from the ground and rubbed them in his hands.A large black stain immediately appeared on the white satin gloves.It was covered with soapy water that acted as a lubricant and coolant, and it soaked through the glove with a sticky, disgusting foam.The iron filings stuck on the skin of the palm, hard and rough, as if to remind him that they were sliced ​​and stripped from the mother body by a harder and sharper steel drill.As a senior naval officer, the Marquis is no stranger to the naval foundries in Seville and Reergens. He has also traveled to France, Germany and Venice and visited the weapons manufacturing factories there.These machines seem to have found prototypes in European workshops.But when it comes to size, sophistication, and efficiency, those European products are barely child's toys compared to the miracle work devised by the Japanese priest.Even the most well-known cannon casting expert in Europe, who would believe that a drill pipe can be used to forcibly "pull out" the gun bore on a solid iron blank?

The Marquis of Bazin threw down the black and wet gloves, and picked up a pair of brand new white silk gloves from the wooden tray carried by his entourage all the way. However, the excitement in his heart caused his hands to tremble non-stop, and he couldn't put them on no matter what.The Marquis threw the new gloves back into the wooden tray again, "What is that?" He crossed his hands and asked, pointing to a machine tool with a spiral reamer in front of him.

"A machine that makes rifling."

"Rifling—" the Marquis of Bazin repeated this unfamiliar word, and he could see that he was very interested, but he tried his best to maintain his solemn expression, so as not to let ignorant doubts show on his face.

The Japanese priest seems to have suddenly opened up a chatterbox, and began to talk about various scientific theories, from the principle of Archimedes' spiral to the rotation of planets.The Commodore was in a daze, and he seemed to understand something vaguely: rifling designed according to the principle of spiral and autobiography would increase the hit rate of shells by more than ten times.Rifled cannons can accurately destroy warships even a mile away if the gunner is equipped with a telescope.

It would be too extravagant to equip the gunner with binoculars, and the cost of binoculars in Europe is not cheap these days.But a cannon with a range of more than a league and the ability to accurately hit a ship is horrific in this day and age.

"The problem is the shell," said an artillery officer. "The spiral-rifled cannon proved its prowess at the Pansiran Crusade. It was a formidable weapon of genius. It had only one defect: size and shape." The shells are all very precisely manufactured to match the rifling. Such shells are undoubtedly quite difficult to manufacture, and we can also make do with the old round shells in the new cannons, but then it is impossible to achieve what Mr. Paul claims. that effect.

"You are quite right." Hale immediately took up the conversation. "I have figured out a way to make precise objects with precise machines, which is far more efficient than relying on hand-made clumsy things. Gentlemen, please Come with me to see how the machine is used to make shells. Marcos, lead us to the front."

In one corner of the machining workshop are two small lathes drawn by animal power.The shell blanks brought from the foundry are ground and modified here, and the thread of the shell for installing the fuze is turned out.Several selected Chinese laborers carefully inspect the finished product with special calipers.Hale took one of the projectiles that passed the test and showed it to the guests, asking them to imagine the terrible scene when the hollow bullet was filled with gunpowder or shotgun, and the explosion was controlled by the fuse connected through the head screw.

"The spiral rifled gun must form a close fit with the shell it is equipped with, and all its superiority comes from this. The most basic principle is that there must be no gap between the shell and the bore, and all the thrust produced by the explosion of the gunpowder is used. It is better to push the shell instead of leaking and wasting it from the gap like a smoothbore gun. Only when the projectile body fits the gun bore completely can it get friction from the spiral rifling and form a stable spin motion perpendicular to the flight line As for the smoothbore gun, because of the existence of the gap, it rolls along an irregular route in the gun bore from the moment it is ignited, and this irregular roll will continue from the gun bore to the air. Finally The result is that it is impossible to foresee where the shells will roll and land."

The more Hale talked, the more excited he became. Ever since he came to this time and space, he rarely had the opportunity to show his authority and advancement in the field of technology in front of everyone: "There are two contradictory principles for front-loading rifled guns. It must be fast and not Strenuously loading the shell into the barrel means that the friction between the two cannot be too large, but this violates the first principle that there must be no gap between the shell and the barrel. If there is no such contradiction in the breech-loading artillery, Just make the shell slightly larger than the bore, but we can't make a reliable large breech-loading gun at the moment. To solve the contradiction, the first thing I thought of was a chemical mortar type shell - oh, you don't know what Is it a chemical mortar? Well -- it's a kind of... Anyway, a pretty terrible mortar. The shells are the long cones you see at the Cavite Naval Fortress, with a steel plate at the bottom, and the steel The disk and the shell are connected by a ring made of copper. When the explosive force of the gunpowder pushes the steel disk, it will punch the copper ring forward, and as a result, the softer copper ring will expand outward and fit. Bore."

"It's really amazing," the Marquis of Bazin couldn't help sighing after hearing it engrossed.

"But it was still too complicated for production. So at first our production of shells could not keep up with the amount of newly minted cannon. I kept trying to improve, and what you see here is the result of my most recent conception. The shell looks Does it look like an elongated water drop? You see, we have cut a layer of the body below the centering part, and this part of the body will be completely wrapped by a material that can expand under thrust It's much cheaper than copper."

"What material?"

"Concrete."

"Paper?" The brigadier general asked suspiciously, and the faces of several officers showed disbelief.

"Yes, technically pulp."

The prepared coagulated pulp is poured into a special mold to wrap the lower half of the projectile, and it needs to be dried and pressed after demoulding.Finally, the workers will use a scraper to trim the surface of the concrete shell, and use a caliper to calibrate the outer diameter of the warhead one by one.After all this is done, the shells are sent to the charging workshop.

"Then, Mr. Paul, may I take the liberty to congratulate you on solving the production problem of new-style shells?" Standing by the stove in the drying room, the Marquis of Bazin asked while looking at the densely packed shells on the drying rack. road.

"There are still some shortcomings in the operation of the factory. First of all, there is a lack of labor, especially the lack of workers who can skillfully operate the machine. So at present, we can only produce about 100 explosive bombs and shotgun shells a day." Marcos took a breath, Hale's production figures include a large amount of unlaunchable waste, and the actual daily production is less than one-third.

The operating efficiency of the arsenal is very poor, and both Hale and Marx are well aware of this.

However, Hale continued to brag calmly: "As long as we can supply enough manpower and materials, we can increase the production of shells by 3 to 4 times. It is best to have more Chinese, and train a Chinese to operate the machine. It takes 5 times less time and energy than training natives, and the work efficiency is 5 times higher. If Your Majesty favors, it would be great to be given European craftsmen who are familiar with instrument manufacturing skills. We have now recruited some German Craftsmen undertake important technical work, but unfortunately there are still too few - there is only one instrument craftsman from Augsburg in the factory, all precision sighting instruments and shell fuses rely on his skills, and he can also repair Clocks and watches. The craftsmanship is really good, but the problem is that they are too busy."

(End of this chapter)