Late Ming Dynasty: Conquering the world starting from riding and cutting

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In the autumn of the seventh year of the Apocalypse, when Qin Hao once again set foot on the land of Taiwan, it was announced that the journey to the Ming Dynasty, which had lasted for more than a month, had come to an end.

Of course it's only temporary, because in a few days, he will send another batch of salt back, and then he can collect a sky-high price of salt, and go to Xiaoxiang Pavilion to redeem Li Xiangjun's body, and he will have a beautiful girl to take care of him.

The purpose of coming back this time is, on the one hand, to calm people's hearts, and on the other hand, to inspect the situation in various places. Although the sparrow is small, it has all the internal organs.

The former, Qin Hao, caused a lot of stir when he appeared, and he calmed everyone's hearts after just one day's walk. The latter inspected two main places, one was the shipyard and the other was the gun foundry.

For wooden boats, the biggest problem is service life, and it is also the most difficult to solve, because the bottom of a wooden boat can easily breed marine organisms. In order to cling to the bottom of the boat, they will release corrosive hydrochloric acid, which will cause cracks in the boat. , hollow. Regarding this trouble, Qin Hao directly ordered the craftsmen to wrap the bottom of the ship with copper. Copper is an inactive mineral and will not react with hydrochloric acid. With such a small change, hundreds of years of problems can be solved.

In the dumbfounded eyes of the shipbuilder, Qin Hao took Li Chun to the gun foundry without stopping.

Men are all fond of using swords and cannons, and Qin Hao is no exception. Naturally, he pays special attention to the cannon factory.

On the first day after entering, there were rows of newly forged cannon barrels on the ground of the cannon foundry, which made Qin Hao's blood boil with excitement.

He knows that cannons are the future, and all truth can only be within the range of cannons. You must have cannons to speak to me. Besides, there will be money soon. Even if the cannon goes off, there will be ten thousand taels of gold.

If you have money, make it!

You can put as many shells as you can, no matter how much money you have!

alright! Our artillery construction begins with bronze cannons, but it starts with the highest level of bronze cannons, the Napoleon bronze cannon!

Thanks to the Taidao Mine, the mineral with the most nonferrous metals on the entire platform is copper.

In later generations, the Tongshan copper mine in Yilan had a proven capacity of 300,000 tons, and 180,000 tons could be mined in shallow layers. Li Chun sent people to prepare early, so there was no shortage of copper in the warehouse. Moreover, if Qin Hao exchanged his silver for copper coins, it would cost hundreds of thousands of coins every minute, and he didn't care about the copper at all.

In addition, countless waterwheels and water drainage lines have been erected in areas along the river. Through the promotion of the concept of waterwheels as a source of power, many craftsmen began to think about using water power to perform tasks that were beyond the reach of manpower.

alright! With basic motivation, raw materials and skilled workers, Li Chun's work progress will naturally not be slowed down.

A cylinder is made of steel casting with one end closed and a solid cylinder in the center. The cylinder is 122 mm thick and 20 cm shorter than the cylinder. Both the cylinder and the steel column are polished and ground so that the maximum error does not exceed 5 mm. Break the refractory bricks into fine powder like flour, then mix a small amount of animal oil, and use a small brush to apply the thinner on the surface layer by layer.

Finally, the molten copper is injected into the plastic film to cast the gun barrel. After casting, forging, boring, grinding, rapid cooling, gun lugs are added, iron chains are attached, and the gun body is pulled out of the steel mold using hydraulic power. It is sent to a drilling machine to drill holes and create a fire door, so that a bronze cannon completes all the processes.

It is a pity that the large-scale hydraulic press has not yet been built in the gun foundry. If there is a hydraulic press, the quality of the artillery made by the self-extrusion method will be better. Faster, easier, and cheaper.

After the craftsmen weighed and measured it, Qin Hao could confirm that he had obtained the first bronze forged cannon with a diameter of 122 mm. According to the conversion of caliber and weight, it should be a very powerful twelve-pound cannon in this era.

However, looking at the copper flowing in like water, Qin Hao still felt a little painful. After all, it was money. He asked: "Is it too expensive to use copper to make a cannon?"

In order to save experimental funds, adhering to the Chinese nation's fine tradition of diligence and thrift, Qin Hao ordered that anyone who can think of a way to save money, even if it can only save a little, will be rewarded with a minimum of 100 taels of silver, with no upper limit.

As soon as these words were said, many craftsmen came up with many solutions within three days, but they were all small improvements based on the original ones. There were no major technical problems. None of them were good solutions in Qin Hao's mind. Of course The money was sent in large sums.

In the end, Qin Hao could only turn his attention to our chief craftsman Li Chun.

Li Chun was also unambiguous in his work. As long as it was related to gunboats, Qin Hao found that there was nothing he couldn't do.

In front of everyone, he first made a steel pipe with an inner diameter of 17 mm from carbon steel. After dividing the steel pipe into two halves, he performed boring, grinding and other polishing processes on the inside. Then a steel rod with a diameter of 8 mm was built.

Next, fix the steel pipe and steel rod, and fix the steel rod in the middle of the steel pipe. Then fill it with clay ground into fine powder, then burn the medium carbon steel red, forge it, and then burn it red until it is translucent. Use a hydraulic press to squeeze the red-hot steel rod into the steel pipe, and then slowly rotate the steel rod in the center of the steel pipe. When the color is completely black, pull out the steel rod and separate the steel pipe to get a Almost perfect steel pipe.

When he brought the steel pipe and the process test records to Qin Hao, Qin Hao's first reaction was, Oh my God!

Isn't this the best musket barrel? ! If it is rifled again, it will be heated red and mixed with horse urine and cold salt water for overall quenching. Then plate it with copper and it becomes a perfect rifled gun barrel!

Qin Hao took Li Chun's hands and said, "Lao Chun, you are really my lucky star!"

Qin Hao knows very well that the biggest cost of today's muskets, whether they are matchlocks, flintlock guns, or the so-called Japanese iron cannons, is the manufacturing of the barrel.

Li Chun rolled his eyes helplessly, looking down on his boss. He had already mastered these techniques. If you hadn't arranged for me to do useless work many times, I would have been able to build these century-old guns. You have to wait until now.

Of course, Qin Hao doesn't care at all about his contempt. With these good things, who cares about your supercilious look?

"The gun is built, let's go out and give it a try." Looking at the row of 12-pound main guns, Qin Hao was so happy that he couldn't walk. "It turns out that I am so happy that my legs are really weak."

In the end, Qin Hao was carried onto the boat by several people.

"Raise the sail!"

"Raise the sail!"

A few loud slogans, dozens of white cloud-like sails, under the control of the sailors, filled with wind, made a beautiful rotation, and sailed towards the distant sea. As we drove along, we heard the rumbling sound of cannons.

The sailors happily conducted adaptive training and artillery drills. However, Li Chun, also the designer, was not satisfied with such a warship.

In terms of structure and other technical parameters, the scissor sailboat is not very suitable for being a gunboat, especially not suitable for carrying a large number of artillery. In order to make up for this defect, Li Chun had to carry out a large number of reinforcements on the keel and deck. They even used carbon steel as the keel of the ship, which the craftsmen considered very wasteful.

This behavior was criticized by the shipbuilding craftsmen invited by the Ming Dynasty, but Qin Hao defied all opinions and chose to believe it.

The result was that this choice was absolutely unmistakable. After Li Chun's modification, the warship's stability, displacement, and speed were greatly improved. In the end, he also asked craftsmen to assemble the ship modules.

"This is to use the assembly line in shipbuilding." Qin Hao was immediately shocked and dumbfounded by this idea.

If this method is successful, a shipyard can launch a large ship with a displacement of about 300 tons in just seven days, which is simply appalling.

Qin Hao stood on the observation tower at the bow of the ship, looking at the gunboats speeding on the sea, feeling secretly proud in his heart.

Although its maritime power is in its infancy, compared with the old maritime countries such as Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, its maritime power is too weak. The number of ships, sailors, and artillery is not enough, but as long as A little progress every day will eventually send the warships of these Western European countries to the cemetery.

Besides, Qin Hao is not without any strength now. Before his next departure, the entire Keelung Port will have 10 scissor sailboats with a tonnage of 250~300, each equipped with 20 12-pound steel cannons, which will be enough to dominate the Daming Sea. One side.

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