Chapter 39 Iron Casting Gun

The cannon shed was built earlier than Yu Xiaotian requested, and the Lei blacksmith was completely scared this time. After Yu Xiaotian went out, he did not dare to play around, as if he was on a clockwork. First, he asked Li Gouzi to make a pile of lists, and then he went to seven or eight to work.

Among the attackers, two people were captured from the mixed river dragon. After knowing that they could strike iron, they were put on the shore as reserve talents to work, and this time they were allocated to Lei Blacksmith.

Zhang Blacksmith also allocated an apprentice to Lei Blacksmith as his helper, so the cannon was put up first.

As soon as the manpower was in place, the Lei blacksmith took these people to start building a melting iron furnace in the cannon. The iron furnace used for casting cannons is much larger than the iron furnace used by ordinary blacksmiths. It is necessary to ensure that enough iron water is melted at one time and cast a cannon at a time, otherwise it will not be cast into a qualified artillery.

So building such a melting iron furnace is something that blacksmiths who can cast cannons must do. Blacksmiths have their own skills in this regard and keep secrets from each other. It is difficult for ordinary people to learn their skills.

Yu Xiaotian paid great attention to this cannon. Almost every day, he took a little time to check the progress on the construction site of the cannon, forcing Lei blacksmith not to slack off a little and took people here from morning to night.

Although this guy's character is not good, his craftsmanship is still good. When he really work hard, he is also quite hard and fast at hand, which makes Yu Xiaotian very satisfied.

It's not that Xiaotian didn't praise him because of this, because he knows that this kind of person can't praise. Once he is given a good face, such a person will immediately kick his nose, so it's better to make him nervous.

When building an iron furnace, although Yu Xiaotian could not help, he knew something about this. Molten iron requires a very high temperature, and the furnace temperature needs to reach more than 1,500 degrees of biogiron to melt. With current technology, it is not easy to achieve such a furnace temperature.

One way to effectively improve the furnace temperature is to find a way to heat the air temperature of the air inlet first. The higher the air temperature entering the furnace, the higher the furnace temperature.

Therefore, after listening to Lei Blacksmith's introduction of the melting iron furnace, Yu Xiaotian immediately proposed to build an air preheating furnace or reheating furnace before the air inlet of the melting iron furnace, blow the air into the reheating furnace through the bellows to heat storage furnace, and then enter the melting iron furnace, which can greatly improve the furnace temperature of the furnace and make The temperature of the iron furnace can reach the required temperature faster.

After listening to Yu Xiaotian's suggestion, the Lei blacksmith was a little suspicious and did not believe that Yu Xiaotian said that the method was useful, but he did not dare to say no, so he agreed to try it.

This guy is also a smart man. After thinking about it for a while, Yu Xiaotian made some comments carefully, and he knew what to do.

So this man asked for help and added a furnace in front of the furnace to warm the passing wind. As a result, a new furnace was built.

As for what fuel is used for the furnace, Lei blacksmith asked not to use coal. Although Fujian Longyan also produces coal, it is not difficult to purchase coal in Nanri Island, but Lei blacksmith asked that only charcoal should be used as fuel.

Yu Xiaotian understood the truth after thinking about it, because in this era, people still don't know much about the content of sulfur in coal, which will reduce the quality of iron, but they also found that iron made from coal is not as good as iron made from charcoal. Guangdong is short of coal. , so ironmaking is basically made with charcoal.

In this way, this also caused the quality of Guangdong iron, which was far better than that of other places in the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, the quality of iron cannons cast in Guangdong is naturally much higher than that of iron cannons cast in the north.

This is also why the court sent people to Guangdong to buy iron cannons cast in Guangdong and transport them to the north after something happened in the north, and the quality of the iron cannons cast in the north is never as good as the quality of iron cannons cast in Guangdong. The key reason lies in this.

So after Yu Xiaotian figured it out, he immediately nodded and agreed to the request of the Lei blacksmith and asked him to inform Li Yi and several merchants who set up business warehouses on Nanri Island to find a way to get good charcoal for the sea wolf.

Anyway, charcoal is not a rare thing. In addition to making iron, gunpowder is also indispensable.

And compared with coal, charcoal is easier to obtain, and it is also easy to transport, and the price is not necessarily higher than coal.

So with the help of the merchants, several ships of good charcoal were immediately sent to Nanri Island, which became the next fuel for smelting iron.

With the efforts of the Lei blacksmiths, the newly built cannons quickly rose up. In addition, with the help of the carpenters, the hangers used to cast cannons and other objects were quickly built and installed in the iron shed.

When everything was ready, Lei's blacksmith, at the urging of Yu Xiaotian, quickly began to make the gun model of the first cannon. In the past, Yu Xiaotian felt that it was not difficult to cast a cannon, but when he really let him cast the cannon himself, he found that things were not as simple as he thought.

Before opening the gun mold, you must first determine the size of the cannon to be cast. After setting the size of the gun, you must first make a positive mold with wood, and then use the positive mold to make the clay model for casting the cannon.

After making the mud model, it cannot be poured immediately. The gun mold must be completely dried or dried to ensure that there is no excessive water in the gun mold.

If the mud is not dry enough, once you are in a hurry to cast the cannon, the result will vaporize the moisture in the mud model, causing a large number of bubbles in the cast iron of the gun body. Then this gun must be a waste. If it is forcibly used, there will be only one result, that is, explosive!

At that time, whoever operates this cannon will be unlucky. If you don't hang up on the scene, at least you will be blown up!

Moreover, this clay casting method not only requires high craftsmanship, but also basically relies on the experience of craftsmen. Every time the gun mold is opened, the shape cannot be unified. After each cannon is cast, it can be said to be a unique work.

Crafts never communicate with each other and thought about their own so-called secret methods, so that the casting methods of artillery could not be learned from each other, which greatly limited the progress of artillery development, and even regressed in history. Historical records record that after the middle of the Qing Dynasty, because of artillery casting The continuous loss of skills, so that the quality of artillery casting in the middle of the Qing Dynasty could not even catch up with the quality of the end of the Ming Dynasty. The artillery became more and more stupid, and the quality was getting worse and worse, and the range was not as powerful as before.

The most important thing is that the artillery cast in this way cannot be unified in diameter, and the inner wall is difficult to make smooth, and bubbles of different sizes in the gun body cannot be avoided.

This is a great safety hazard left by artillery users. At the same time, it is impossible to unify the caliber of shells, and it is also troublesome to produce shells.

So it is not an easy thing to build a qualified cannon in this era. This matter can't be rushed. Yu Xiaotian can't help sighing at such a progress.

It was when Xiaotian was worried about casting cannons. In his mind, he had an idea to think of a person, that is, a man named Gong Zhenlin in the late Qing Dynasty.

He once inadvertently browsed about Gong Zhenlin on some websites. This person can be said to have left a heavy mark in the history of China's military science and technology, especially a person who has to be mentioned in the history of China's artillery development.

Gong Zhenlin was once an official in the late Qing Dynasty. * During the war, many forts along the coast of China were destroyed by the British army. The Qing Dynasty urgently needed to purchase a large number of artillery equipment forts along the coast to arm its ships.

Therefore, at that time, the Qing Dynasty ordered a large number of all kinds of artillery in various places. As a result, due to the backward gunmaking process and the rush to the construction period, the quality of the cannons cast was very poor. It is said that the air holes in some cannons were large enough to fit a bowl of water.

Such a cannon was fired. As a result, the probability of killing the enemy was far less likely to kill his own people. Gong Zhenlin was appointed as an official who supervised artillery at that time. Therefore, he racked his brains to come up with a new method of casting cannons, and immediately promoted this method of gun casting, which eventually made the Qing Dynasty short-term. In the meantime, a large number of available cannons were obtained.

Specifically, his method of casting iron cannons is not complicated. According to the records at that time, he first made mud cannons according to the size of iron cannons in4-7 sections. Then divide the iron mold mud type according to the mud cannon section. Each section of the mud type is divided into two pieces, rotate the inner surface to make the surface smooth and the shape regular, and then dry it for later use. Put the prefabricated handle into the mud shape and cast it into one with the iron mold when pouring.

Then, when using the mud-shaped cast iron mold, first put the section of the muzzle upside down on the mud plate and fill one of them with mud. After drying, cover the mud plate and tighten the shape. After pouring, you will get a flap of the first iron mold. Then remove the mud and cast another piece of iron mold in the same way. In this way, it can be cast into a complete set of iron molds layer by layer.

After obtaining a qualified iron mold, when casting an iron cannon with an iron mold, first brush the paint made by adding water with fine rice husk ash and fine sand mud on the inner surface of the mold, then paint the second layer of extremely fine coal powder, and then tighten the iron mold, heat, assemble the mud core, and pour iron water. After solidifying, immediately remove the iron mold, remove the burrs when the gun body is still red and hot, remove the mud core, and get the finished product.

In this way, the casting process has become much simpler. The most important thing is that the iron model used for casting the gun is no longer disposable and can be used repeatedly, which completely saves the time and process of making the clay model first, which greatly saves the time spent on casting the cannon. At the same time, because after the iron water is poured into the iron gun mold, it is The heat is uniform, and there will no longer be water vapor in the gun body to cause air eyes and pores. The quality of the cast gun is greatly improved, which basically ensures that there will be no more explosion accidents due to quality problems.

This is undoubtedly the best thing for artillery users, which can ensure the safety of users, and at the same time greatly boosts the morale of users, so that they don't have to worry about whether their cannon will explode the next moment, so they don't need to deliberately for their own safety. Reduce the loading of gunpowder, resulting in a significant reduction in the range of artillery.

Another very big advantage is that all the cannons made from a gun mold are unified, and the inner wall of the burr is also very smooth, eliminating a lot of process of polishing the turret. Basically, it can be used after casting. Even if you polish the inner wall of the turret, you only need to simply remove the burr. That's it.

This also makes the logistics supply much easier. When casting shells, you can try to ensure that they are as sophisticated as possible. Anyway, the inner diameter of the gun is exactly the same. Don't worry that some of the same shells can be loaded into some cannons, but they can't be loaded into the guns.

In a word, the iron model casting method is used by the ancient saying, "The cost of one job is to collect hundreds of workers, and the cost of work is incalculated!"

(Good news! After discussing with the editor, the listing time of this book has been postponed. As soon as there is any news, I will inform you separately! Thank you, brothers, for your help! In addition, I especially thank qshh2006 friends for their rewards!)