Chapter 1914: Iron Cannon

After the meeting, Zhengde took the dog legs to the leopard room again. Zhengde is actually very smart, but he is too indulgent, so he did so many ridiculous things, resulting in poor criticism.

The Qingli ministers such as Liang Chu and Yang Yiqing also seemed relieved. But secondary assistant Jiang Mian frowned and said to Liang Chu:

"Brother Uncle Hou, although His Majesty dispelled the shipbuilding team's plan to go to the west, but overhauling the turrets along the coast of Daming, it was equally expensive!"

Liang Chu and Yang Yiqing smiled at each other and explained:

"Jingzhi, Wang Xuanzhi has written to me to explain this. He said that since the ghosts and pirates have already targeted the southeast coast, they will come again sooner or later. So, whether we are willing or not, we must protect the important coastal cities. , Especially in the coastal areas of Guangzhou and Jiangsu and Zhejiang. "

"And repairing the fort is already the least expensive and the best and most stable method. Although it is costly, but the money has to be spent ..."

Jiang Mian sighed and said:

"Brother Uncle is right, there is a saying" You are not afraid of thieves, but you are afraid of thieves! "Now that the evil thief of the Franco has been staring at Daming, plus the threat of pirates, it can't be said, a major town on the southeast coast It is necessary to repair some forts. However, it is too expensive to use copper casting cannons. Or, let the craftsmen try to use iron to cast the 'flat prison cannon'? "

"You know, the price of iron is much cheaper than that of copper. Copper costs hundreds of pounds, while iron costs only a few pounds. If it can be cast with iron, even if it is several times heavier, it is extremely cost-effective!"

Liang Chu paused and said:

"Jingzhi, you have a good idea. Otherwise, I ordered the Ministry of Engineering to work hard to try it. However, the ordinary pig iron is difficult to use for casting cannons, so as not to hurt the people by bombing. Therefore, the old man thought that casting cannons also I use high-quality iron materials. However, the high-quality Fujian iron is only a dozen pounds, which is indeed much cheaper than using copper casting guns. However, the old man seems to have heard that using iron casting guns is much more difficult than using copper casting guns ... … "

"No matter how difficult it is, you have to try it!" Jiang Mian cut the railway.

"You know, in the multiple towns along the coast of Daming, the number of artillery needed is extremely alarming. If you can successfully use iron casting guns, the court will save most of the money!"

Sansuke Mao Jize gratefully:

"Brother Jing respects, if you can change to iron casting guns, you can really save a lot of money!"

In this way, the Ming Dynasty Ministry of Industry began an attempt to cast iron guns. Later, it really came out. Of course, it's not so fast ...

In fact, in the original history, after learning to cast Folang cannons, the Ming dynasty people also felt that the cost of casting copper cannons was too high. Later, they developed their own technique of casting Folang cannons with iron. At that time, Foshan, near Macau where the Portuguese were, was a famous iron smelting center in ancient China, and there were many powerful blacksmiths.

Then, the Portuguese saw Daming's ability to cast guns with cheap iron, and were envious. Therefore, the Macao's Bragalao Cannon Factory directly hired the powerful blacksmiths in Foshan to use iron cannons in Macao and passed the iron cannon technology back to Europe ...

Marin speculates that the reason why England suddenly made the red cannon in the late 16th century may also be related to the transfer of Portuguese iron casting gun technology to Europe. After all, Portugal has always been a traditional ally of England, and the skills of the English to get guns from the Portuguese are normal. In addition, the rich coal and iron resources in England and the developed cannon technology quickly produced an iron-made Hongyi cannon.

Of course, this is just Marin's guess. It is also possible that England has developed its own iron casting gun technology. After all, England is a major iron-producing country, but there is a serious shortage of copper. Therefore, it is normal to be forced to concentrate on the iron cannon ...

The English are also lucky. The coal in England happens to have low sulfur content and high quality iron ore. Unlike the Lorraine iron ore that the French later acquired, it is a common iron ore with high sulfur and phosphorus content in Europe ...

With high-quality iron ore and coal, the quality of the British iron cannon is actually very good, but this is just a coincidence ...

Of course, the British later developed a reverberatory furnace to refining the wrought iron, which actually improved the quality of the cast iron.

The French have always been in the dominance of hegemony at sea. In addition to mistakes in decision-making, the lack of high-quality iron ore is also a very important reason. After all, the iron mine in Lorraine that the French took back from Germany has always been a large iron ore with high sulfur and phosphorus content in Europe.

Similar to the early good luck of the British, the Ming people obviously did not understand the problems of sulfur and phosphorus. However, the southern Fujian and Guangzhou railways are mainly made of charcoal for smelting iron, and when the quality of subway ore is better, Fujian and Guangzhou railways have always been synonymous with Daming ’s top iron materials ...

Therefore, although I don't know what the sulfur content and phosphorus content are, the Ming Dynasty relied on the Fujian and Guangzhou Railways with lower sulfur and phosphorus content, but I also wished to cast a lot of artillery for war.

In fact, it was not a day or two since the Ming Dynasty cast iron cannons, but from the beginning of the dynasty, it used cast iron to create three-eyed buns and bowl mouth buns.

However, whether it is a three-eyed gun or a bowl-shaped gun, it is an iron gun with a short body, and the manufacturing technology is relatively simple. After all, the longer the artillery, the more difficult it is to make.

Frankly speaking, those three-eyed buns are a tube of fireworks at the top of the stick. Because of the crude benzene, after playing three bullets, the Ming Musketeer took the three-eyed blunder directly as an iron hammer and directly hit the enemy ...

In this way, the three-eyed blunder with the top of the three heavy iron pipes can actually swing up after hitting the bullet and smash the enemy as a hammer. Moreover, the effect of hitting people is very good. This is a bit like the lobster soldiers of the later generations, concentrated on a volley, and then charged with a bayonet. In the early Ming Army, instead of charging with bayonets, they played a round and directly waved the "hammer" to smash ...

But casting the artillery into a long tube is still a bit difficult. The biggest difficulty lies in how to control the speed of molten iron cooling, and the molten iron is easily oxidized and becomes brittle during cooling. Specially, when pouring molten iron, avoid pouring slowly and pouring molten iron in batches to avoid big problems inside the gun body. Therefore, when casting iron cannons, the Beihai Communist Party often poured molten iron first, and then stuffed the cores to cool them.

Because copper is not easy to oxidize ~ www.wuxiaspot.com ~ but can slowly pour copper water into the mold without affecting the quality.

Therefore, if you want to use an iron casting gun, you must pay attention to the problems of oxidation and cooling rate. However, these things cannot be studied in a day or two. Therefore, it would take some time for the Ming dynasty to save costs by casting 12-pound guns and Folang cannons with iron. Fortunately, because of the rich experience in making three-eyed blunders and bowl-mouth blunders, people in the Ming Dynasty would take a lot of detours. At least, it's easier than the Portuguese who haven't used iron to cast guns ...

However, this is definitely not good news for Marin. If he knew that the Ming dynasty began to study the use of iron to cast 12-pound guns and Folang machine guns, they would certainly find ways to stop them.

Without him, Marin was afraid that the technology of iron casting guns would be transferred back to Europe, lowering the threshold of artillery equipment. After all, if other countries can afford a lot of artillery, Marin's firepower advantage will disappear.

However, he can't stop the trend, at most it is delayed. Moreover, Marin doesn't need to stop, as long as the North Sea State has a firm foothold at sea and has a fleet that is strong enough to protect its own interests, there is no such thing as confidentiality.

Besides, as long as England is annexed, the remaining competitors, France does not have high-quality iron ore, Spain and Portugal are seriously lacking iron ore, it is difficult to challenge the maritime hegemony of the North Sea country. Originally, several maritime powers in Europe and the United Kingdom created a strong maritime empire because of the rich domestic coal and iron resources and high quality. Spain and Portugal want to build iron cannons, but they have to have enough coal and iron in the country. Unfortunately, Spain and Portugal are relatively scarce, whether they are coal or iron ore. So, when the Industrial Revolution began, the two former maritime powers left behind ...