That scene was incredible

Chapter 055

Artillery is the god of war. Having an artillery unit can play a decisive role in the battlefield. However, after Cheng Shijie received the eight Folang machine artillery, he did not immediately send people to receive these artillery, but threw the artillery away.

Go to the gun station.

“Organize manpower and imitate the imitation!”

Zhou Yandong said: "But the production of gun tubes..."

Before Zhou Yandong could finish speaking, Cheng Shijie said: "Stop the gun tube first. I have a better way to make the gun tube!"

After giving up this order, Cheng Shijie was like a gust of wind, walking towards Ninghai Haijun's steel mill. The steelmaking was not in Ninghai City, but the iron ore was in Yangjialing. Yangjialing was closer to Muping County, the state seat of Ninghai Prefecture, only forty miles away.

But it is a full 140 miles away from Ninghai City.

In fact, it was not Cheng Shijie who played a decisive role in this blast furnace. It was built by the craftsmen of Zuo Qianhu Institute themselves. Some time-travel novels go to ancient times to build blast furnaces and smelt steel. They are so awesome. In fact,

, As early as the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, China already had blast furnace steelmaking. By the Song Dynasty, the technology had matured, and the Ming Dynasty was no longer a rarity.

The annual steel production capacity of the Ming Dynasty was greater than that of the entire Europe. The largest blast furnace had reached fifty cubic meters. According to a one-third accumulation rate, almost one furnace could produce more than twenty tons of steel.

"See Lord Guard!"

"Are you ready?"

"Ready!"

"ignition!"

As a craftsman stepped forward and threw a lit torch into the furnace, the firewood with tung oil was quickly burned. After a primer, the craftsmen added coke into the furnace and closed the furnace.

As the blower swelled and deflated, strong air flow was blown into the stove. Soon, the fire became fierce, and a column of smoke shot straight into the sky, with bright red sparks.

In addition, the technology of using coal to make steel has been mature since the Song Dynasty. However, the current blast furnace is only 17 or 8 cubic meters and can refine more than 10,000 kilograms of steel at most.

The quality of the coke was good, and the fire was very fierce. Under the fierce calcination, the ore began to melt little by little. The foreman kept instructing the workers to add coke, blow hard, and even ran over to push Cheng Shijie away, occupying the observation hole, and observing inside

Every subtle change shows that this craftsman is quite dedicated.

When Luo Baishun saw the ore melting, he grinned and shouted: "Make the fire stronger! Blast harder! The fire must not be weak at this time. If it weakens, the furnace of molten iron will be finished!"

In fact, Cheng Shijie's purpose of watching the opening of the furnace was not his only. He wanted to enter the final check on the cold casting process of the shaft.

While the blast furnace was making steel, a shaft about 20 meters away from the blast furnace had been built. For the sake of experiment, Cheng Shijie did not directly build a more than ten meters deep shaft in the manner of later generations. This shaft was only more than three meters long.

, wait until the technology is explored and matured before digging a deep well.

The cold casting mold has also been manufactured. This mold has an inner diameter of thirty-two millimeters and an outer diameter of forty millimeters, which means that the thickness of the barrel is eight millimeters. In later generations, the average rifle barrel was only three millimeters.

Four millimeters, the barrel thickness of the sniper rifle is thicker.

Cheng Shijie had no choice. The smaller the diameter, the more difficult the shaft cold casting process was. For the same problem, once it exceeds 150 mm, the difficulty of the shaft process also increases with the higher the diameter.

The easiest caliber to manufacture is the intermediate caliber, such as 60, 80, and 90 calibers.

Cheng Shijie looked at the responsible craftsman beside him and said: "You must remember that the preheating must be sufficient. As long as there is a little moisture, the molten steel will explode. That is no joke!"

"Master Guard, how do we know that the preheating is complete!"

"Use fire to burn the mold until it turns white, then it's almost done!"

Cheng Shijie was also fumbling, because later generations had measuring equipment, and through instrumental analysis, he could easily draw the conclusion that as long as the mold exceeds 300 degrees with an infrared thermometer, it is generally impossible to contain moisture.

The steel-making workers are very enthusiastic about their work. They used to work in the Heishan Iron Mine in Qingzhou Prefecture. They worked so hard every day that they could only get enough water to eat, so they didn’t have to think about the wages. Their boss gave them a bite of food, and they

You should be grateful. It’s easy not to want to work. Anyway, the technical content of iron ore is very low. The craftsmen who master the technology have enough to eat and drink, and their small lives are quite nourishing.

At least ordinary workers, that is, cheap labor, were unwilling to work. Some refugees were willing to work. It was not easy to survive in the late Ming Dynasty. There was no place to work hard if they had the strength. Later, Luo Changqing, the only son of the foreman Luo Baishun, fell ill. In desperation, he

He had no choice but to take Luo Changqing to Dengzhou to seek medical treatment.

Fortunately, Luo Changqing survived and survived, but they lost their livelihood. It happened that Cheng Shijie recruited military households, and he used the skills at hand to successfully infiltrate the ranks of military households.

When he came to the Yangjialing Iron Mine, Luo Baishun discovered that not only could they eat three meals a day, but they could also eat salted fish every now and then. In addition to food and housing, the living conditions were not bad. For a single craftsman, every four people

In a house, each person has his or her own cabinet where valuables can be placed.

Every month he can get one or two taels of silver, or two stones and four buckets of grain. Where can he find such good things? Luo Baishun thought of the workers who helped him, but the results were good. He heard that the treatment here in Yangjialing was so good. After Luo Baishun's deception

Soon, more than 600 craftsmen came over.

Now these craftsmen are getting paid and have enough to eat. If they don't work hard, they all feel sorry for Cheng Shijie. The workers are shouting slogans, adding coke to the furnace, and the blower is blowing fierce wind.

Despite the biting cold wind, these workers were still sweating profusely in their short shirts.

The fire burned for a day and a night until the iron ore in the blast furnace turned into a furnace of boiling molten iron. The craftsmen excitedly came together to see what was new. Seeing so much molten iron, they were all very excited.

"Master Guard is done!"

Cheng Shijie waved his hand: "Put out the molten iron!"

An iron drill gently poked the gate. As the gate was opened, the fiery red molten iron poured out like a torrent. It flowed rapidly along the cooling tank, with red stars scurrying around and purple smoke lingering.

Spectacular.

As an iron ingot cools, the blast furnace gate is immediately blocked.

Luo Baishun took a small hammer and tapped the iron ingot gently, with a smile on his face: "Master Guard, this is good iron, rare good iron. This furnace can produce tens of thousands of kilograms of good iron."

iron!"

"It's just for you to practice your skills. You can build a bigger blast furnace in the future!"

Cheng Shijie looked at these ordinary high carbon steels and frowned slightly. He looked at Luo Baishun and said: "Add manganese powder into the furnace and stir!"

"okay!"

Charcoal is an important component that determines the quality of steel. Yingxing of the Ming and Song Dynasties "Tiangongkaiwu·Hardware": "Every iron is divided into raw and cooked. When it comes out of the furnace, it is raw before frying, and when it is fried, it is cooked... Anyone who makes pig iron for smelting and casting needs this

It flows into long strips and round blocks and can be used within the scope."

Pig iron has a carbon content greater than 2%. Industrial pig iron generally has a carbon content between 2.11% and 4.3%. Carbon content from 0.60% to 1.70% is high carbon steel. Basically, different carbon contents have different qualities and uses.

The hardness of steel with the same carbon content will be greatly increased after quenching and engineering heat treatment. After adding ferrous powder and stirring.

Cheng Shijie then said: "Open the gate, release the molten steel, and proceed directly to the cold casting of the shaft!"

After giving the order, Cheng Shijie hurriedly ran away. As he ran, he said: "Unrelated personnel should disperse, and the staff should take precautions!"

Once the molten steel explodes, in addition to the shock wave, there will also be flying molten steel that will burn the workers, which is much more powerful than a bomb. However, the protective effect of pure cotton protective clothing and asbestos aprons is actually not great. Once an explosion occurs, they are basically not dead.

Both hurt.

This kind of work is really too dangerous. After running for more than 200 meters, Cheng Shijie climbed up a watchtower, holding a telescope and observing the direction of the shaft.

As the molten steel continues to cool in the cooling tank, the temperature of the molten steel also decreases rapidly. When the molten steel in the cooling tank flows into the mold in the shaft.

"No explosion!"

Cheng Shijie breathed a sigh of relief.

As long as the first drop of molten steel does not explode, there will be no more explosions later. When the molten steel flows into the mold, the water in the shaft will quickly cool down the mold, and the chassis of the mold and the mold will separate under the action of gravity.

Under the action of the winch, it slowly sinks, and as the winch extends, the seamless steel pipe is cast.

After about a quarter of an hour, the wire rope of the shaft winch reached the marking position, which means that the casting of the seamless steel pipe in this shaft was completed.

It took a quarter of an hour, that is, fifteen minutes, to cast twenty-four blunderbuss tubes with a length of three meters, a thickness of eight millimeters, and an inner diameter of 32 millimeters.

When the furnace door is closed again, the molten steel in the cooling tank is led to the mold of the steel ingot to continue casting, while the workers raise the winch and the seamless steel pipe in the shaft slowly rises.

The craftsmen from the Gun Bureau who came after hearing the news looked at the high manganese steel barrel in the shaft with a blank expression.

"This... it happened in such a blink of an eye?"

The length of a firegun barrel is only eighty-five centimeters, and four can be cut out of this shaft. Twenty-four times four, that is, ninety-six.

Producing ninety-six sticks in fifteen minutes, this efficiency...

What if there were not one shaft, but ten?

Zhou Yandong smiled and said: "Congratulations, Lord Guard, with the barrel of the gun, we can imitate the Thunder Gun right away!"

"So much the better!"

Cheng Shijie suddenly thought of another question: is a thunderbolt with a caliber of 32 mm still a gun?

Should the name be changed to Thunder Cannon?

The larger the caliber, the thicker the tube wall, and the higher the bore pressure resistance, which means that each blunderbuss can add more propellant and have greater kinetic energy, which means that when they create thunder blunderbuss, no,

The Thunder Cannon has a longer range and is more powerful.

Think about the effect of being hit by a lead bullet with a diameter of 32 mm.

Think about it, what would it be like to be shot by a thunder cannon with 18 or 28 rounds?

That scene... was absolutely wonderful.
Chapter completed!