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Free Web Novel,Novel online - All in hlnovel.com -> Historic -> Xiao Ge Lao Chapter 874 Easier said than done
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- Inside the 101 laboratory.
"Cannon barrel?" Wang Yingxuan pushed up his glasses in surprise.
"Barrel?!" Zhao Shizhen also screamed, but he was more surprised.
"If you ask what else in the world besides guns is he interested in, it must be cannons.
"The structure of the cylinder and the barrel are similar, and the requirements are similar." Zhang Jian was not surprised. He had obviously adapted to the rhythm of Zhao Hao's antelope hanging its horns. "If you can cast a qualified cylinder, the gun barrel will definitely be no problem."
"Well, that's illegal" his brother-in-law said timidly.
It¡¯s okay to make a gun in the name of the county. If you build a cannon, my God, I can¡¯t believe it
"I forgot to introduce it to you, the full name of Institute 00 is the Ordnance Research Institute of the Ordnance Bureau of the Ministry of Industry in Nanjing." Zhao Hao smiled and reassured the honest four-eyed Lao Qin.
"Oh, that's it" Wang Yingxuan suddenly realized, thinking, no wonder 00 is not with us.
"Last time I saw it at the Ordnance Bureau, most of the imperial cannons were made of bronze," Zhao Shizhen recalled: "The Hongyi cannon tunnel is made of cast iron, but the barrel is as thick as a beam, and the barrel is a little bigger than a fist."
He is the director of the Ordnance Research Institute, and he has such a good reputation, so he naturally talks about it with familiarity: "The best artillery factory in the Ming Dynasty is the Bujialao Forge Artillery Factory opened by the Folangji people in Haojing'ao. I heard that All they supply to their own people are bronze cannons.¡±
"Yeah." Zhao Hao nodded. He also thought about poaching the Buddhist craftsmen from Bu Jia Lao, but since they are not of my race, their minds must be different. Due to narrow nationalism, Mr. Zhao did not start poaching people.
After the failure of pig iron casting, there were three paths before him. One was to innovate casting technology.
The reason why the cast iron barrel is still difficult to use even though all details have been paid attention to, is ultimately due to defects caused by natural cooling.
Because when left to cool naturally, the outer wall of the barrel cools first and then cools down from the outside to the inside. This causes a serious problem - after the outer layer is cooled and hardened, the inner layer has not yet cooled. As a result, the outer layer is harder than the inner layer, and the inner tube of the inner layer will be pulled, deformed, and even directly cracked.
This naturally leads to a high scrap rate when casting cannons, and can also directly explode the barrel, making gunners intimidated.
So at this time, the Ming Dynasty and the Westerners could only thicken the iron cannon barrels and thicken them. However, the cannons cast in this way were bulky and weak, so naturally it was difficult to please the military.
It wasn¡¯t until the American Civil War that an engineer named Rodman invented the ¡®internal mold water injection cooling method¡¯, which allowed the barrel to be cooled first from the inside and then from the outside, and this problem was solved.
This method is simple to say. It only needs to replace the inner mold of the gun barrel with a hollow one during the cooling process, and then use circulating water to cool it.
But this is just a theory that Zhao Hao read from books, and it is still far from actual implementation - for example, what is the relationship between water flow velocity and temperature changes?
In the mid-19th century when thermodynamics was well developed and relatively advanced measurement and control conditions were available, it took Rodman a full ten years to establish a relatively scientific and complete data system. How did Mr. Zhao achieve this in the Ming Dynasty? A kind of quantification?
There is no other way but constant trial and error to see when the blind cat will encounter a dead mouse.
Zhao Hao¡¯s hope is to conquer this casting method within five years. After all, he has an advantage that Rodman doesn't have. As long as he experiments more, he can get it even with a lot of money.
But innovating casting technology is actually just a temporary solution. The real solution is to innovate smelting technology!
In another time and space, when the reverberatory furnace for pig iron refining appeared in the late 18th century, the British could resmelt the molten pig iron to remove impurities and make the molten iron purer. None of the cannons cast by the British Navy using this wrought iron exploded. Finally, the bronze cannon was completely eliminated.
But at present, the metallurgical technology and steel output of the European and Western countries are still far behind the Ming Dynasty. Even Ming Dynasty didn't master the technology, so naturally they didn't understand it either.
Mr. Zhao only knew a general idea about this, and he was even more confused about how to do it.
In fact, the Wuhu blacksmiths who produced Su Steel in the Ming Dynasty have long been able to skillfully use the steel filling method to control the carbon content in the wrought iron. And steel materials with various carbon contents can be produced according to needs. It was not until the Europeans invented the crucible steelmaking method two hundred years later that they could catch up.
But whether it is the steel filling method or the crucible method, there is a serious problem, that is, the production volume is too small and the cost is too high.
That¡¯s why there is a saying that ¡®good steel is used on the blade¡¯.
In short, people in this era cannot imagine who would use extremely precious steel to cast cannons?
But in the next few hundred years, the world¡¯s most powerfulEverything is made of steel, so no matter how much it costs, Zhao Hao must mass-produce this damn steel.
When the first two methods are far from quenching the thirst, only the third method - 'casting a cannon with copper' is the only solution that can work immediately.
In fact, in the long years after the birth of cannon, bronze cannon played the leading role most of the time. All countries have a long history of casting bronze cannons, and the Ming Dynasty naturally also has mature casting technology.
Copper is corrosion-resistant and not easy to rust, has good ductility and is not easy to explode, and has a low melting point and is easy to cast. Therefore, bronze cannons were more powerful than iron cannons for a long time.
The only problem is that it¡¯s expensive. Especially in the Ming Dynasty, copper was money!
Taking the current bronze cannon of the Fo Langji as an example, the ship-borne heavy cannon weighs about one ton, and the light snake cannon also weighs four hundred kilograms.
The Longqing Tongbao of the Ming Dynasty weighs one cent and three cents and contains 950% copper.
A heavy cannon costs 216,000 yuan in materials alone. Including labor and losses, the cost is no less than 250 taels of silver.
The cost of the snake cannon is more than fifty taels.
"The battleships of Spain or France must be equipped with twenty to forty heavy guns alone. The various light guns are even more numerous.
Not counting the cost of the ship, just installing all the cannons would cost about 10,000 taels
??~~
Mr. Zhao thought about it silently, and suddenly felt that he was not that rich anymore.
The mighty Spanish Empire was driven to poverty by the arms race, let alone his little family?
Thinking of this, Mr. Zhao stared at his four-eyed brother with a ferocious face and said: "Even if you cast the copper cannon first, you must not relax. Within five years, you will overcome all the problems of converter steelmaking for me and give birth to five children." son!"
"Uh" Wang Yingxuan took off his glasses and wiped them. Similar to the 'water-cooled cannon casting method', the principle of converter steelmaking is also very simple. But this is a systematic project. Without long-term testing and improvement, there is no application at all.
But fortunately, five years should be enough.
But how can you do something like giving birth to five sons in five years?
¡° Unless But my brother-in-law is his immediate boss, and he wouldn¡¯t dare to think anything wrong.
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