On December 25, Li Zhi expanded the artillery workshop.?
The artillery workshop currently has five gunsmiths who can cast ten cannons every month. If the cannons are fully produced in a year, they can produce more than a hundred cannons. The production capacity of these five people is enough to supply Li Zhi's Army. Li Zhi has developed so much
The Army of the People's Republic of China has only been equipped with 140 field guns for many years.
But now that Li Zhi is developing his navy, these artillery production capacities are insufficient. Li Zhi needs to install twenty cannons on each large ship. After Gao Ligong's introduction, Li Zhi produces large ships in six places at the same time, and six cannons are produced every two and a half months.
A sailing ship was launched. In other words, Li Zhi needed one hundred and twenty cannons every two and a half months.
To produce so many cannons, Li Zhi had to vigorously expand the artillery workshop.
Li Zhi transferred twenty-five skilled foundry craftsmen from the workshop that produced dragon-tailed carriages to the artillery workshop, increasing the number of people in the artillery workshop to thirty. The original five gunsmiths served as masters to teach the new arrivals how to cast.
How do craftsmen cast cannons.
Li Zhi set up a reward mechanism for five gunsmiths. Each gunsmith has five apprentices. It is stipulated that for every apprentice taught, the master's monthly salary will be increased by one or two. If all five apprentices become apprentices, they can participate in cannon casting to increase artillery production capacity.
, the master’s monthly money increased by five taels.
We hope that after several months of teaching, the artillery workshop can produce dozens of cannons every month.
Such a reward system is very tempting. The five gunsmiths originally only had a monthly salary of three to two taels per month. When they heard that the church apprentices could increase their monthly salary to such an amount, they all felt so happy that they no longer kept it secret. They taught the apprentices step by step and strived for the best.
Train disciples quickly.
In fact, cannon casting is similar to other foundry work, and it is not difficult to teach cannon casting technology to skilled foundry craftsmen. The Macao Bugalao Cannon Foundry, which is famous in the Far East, employs cannon casters who are all Han Chinese from Guangdong and Fujian.
As a result, a large number of cannon-casting masters were trained and Western cannon-casting technology was brought to the East.
In Li Zhi's artillery workshop, five old gunsmiths are the leaders, and the other new gunsmiths serve as assistants. The new gunsmiths do not need to fully master the details of cannon casting. It is estimated that it will only take a few months to increase the production capacity of the artillery workshop.
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In order to cope with future wars at sea, Li Zhi decided to display the flower pop-up.
The so-called blooming bombs are cannon shells that explode after hitting the target. Compared with solid iron cannonballs, the destructive power of blooming shells is much greater. The use of blooming shells in naval artillery battles can greatly damage enemy ships. 18
As long as a few of the explosive shells fired by the pounder guns are fired into the enemy ship, the enemy ship can be sunk.
The structure of early blooming bombs was simple and easy to manufacture, which Li Zhi knew about before traveling through time.
In fact, the Ming Dynasty also had explosive shells at the end of the Ming Dynasty. However, this explosive shell technology was in the hands of a few elite artillerymen in the Beijing camp and was never spread to the outside world. Moreover, according to Li Zhi’s inquiry, this explosive shell technology seemed to ignite the shells separately.
Fuze and cannon propellant. There are layers of barriers between the cannonball and propellant, so the operation is very complicated.
The blooming projectile that Li Zhi wanted to develop was more advanced. It used the flames caused by the explosion of the cannon's propellant to ignite the delayed fuse of the cannonball.
Zhi was immediately brought to the late Ming Dynasty.
Li Zhi came to the foundry where the Dragon Tail Cart was cast and directed the craftsmen to produce explosive bombs.
Li Zhi's blooming bullet is simple to say, it is to cast a hollow iron ball, put black powder and shotgun iron beads as anti-personnel in it, there is a mouth at the top of the shell, and a wooden delay fuse is inserted into the hole.
When firing a gun, the gunner cuts some fuze lengths according to the distance from the enemy ship to control the detonation time of the fuze. To detonate the gun, you only need to ensure that the shells are fired into the enemy ship before exploding. The explosion time does not need to be too precise.
, a slightly longer time is fine.
The opening for inserting the fuze needs to be threaded with a lathe, and the wooden delay fuze body tube also has threads, so that the delay fuze can be screwed into the shell to prevent it from falling off during flight.
The wooden fuse is also very simple. It is a hollow wooden tube filled with hard black powder. When the density of the black powder is high, it will burn stably according to the parallel layer rules, achieving the effect of delayed ignition of the explosive in the shell.
The wooden tube of the wooden fuse needs to be made of hard wood. Before manufacturing, the wood must be soaked in vinegar solution and then alum solution to enhance its flame resistance and prevent the wood from being ignited and causing the lower black powder to burn.
In the early immature shells, the gunpowder in the shells is in direct contact with the shotgun beads used as killing objects. This kind of shells is more dangerous. When the shot beads collide with each other, it is possible to directly ignite the gunpowder and cause the chamber to explode, and it will also explode while flying.
, so there are very few artillery shells that effectively reach the intended target and detonate smoothly. The improved version produced by Li Zhi isolates the projectile explosives and shot beads with iron plates, which is safer because the gunpowder and projectiles do not come into contact.
In order to increase the armor-breaking ability, the shells of the flower shells produced by Li Zhi are relatively thick.
Behind the blooming bomb, Li Zhi also added a wooden holder to the blooming bomb.
The wooden stock is as big as ten, which can make the cannon's propellant more airtight when it is ignited. The cannonball and the wooden stock are combined into one, and the wooden stock is fixed at the tail of the cannonball with an iron piece. In this way, when the cannonball flies in the outer ballistic state,
The low density of the wooden stock will cause the head of the cannonball to always face forward when flying. It has a head-heavy and light-tail self-stabilizing structure similar to a badminton, which increases the shooting accuracy. Not only that, the wooden stock also has the function of buffering the bore pressure, which can reduce
The peak chamber pressure experienced by the cannonball.
The craftsmen who cast the dragon tail car and the Fanjiazhuang lathe who operated the lathe worked hard for several days under the leadership of Li Zhi, creating the most advanced blooming ammunition of this era.
Li Zhi pushed the 18-pound cannon onto the school field to test the effect of the explosive bullet.
According to Li Zhi's instructions, the gunner took aim at the graduated fuse of the artillery shell, and used pliers to shorten a section of the fuse. Then the gunners loaded the cannon with propellant, loaded the gunpowder, pounded the gunpowder, and attached the wooden handle to the cannon.
Put the explosive shells in the barrel, pound them, and aim at the target two hundred paces away.
In the Ming Dynasty, one step was 1.5 meters, and two hundred steps was 300 meters.
Li Zhi gave the order, and the gunner lit the match and ran ten meters away.
This was the first test of the explosive bomb. No one knew what would happen, so it was better to stay away.
Only a bang was heard, and the shell shot out of the barrel. The shell penetrated a wooden sign three hundred meters away, making a big hole in the wooden sign, and landed behind the wooden sign.
After everyone waited for a few seconds, they heard a loud bang, and the shell that landed on the ground exploded. Fire spread everywhere, and the shell of more than ten kilograms exploded into a dazzling spark three hundred meters away.
Li Zhi was overjoyed when he saw the sparks from the exploding cannonball. Just imagine that such a cannonball was fired into an enemy ship, the destructive power can be imagined. (To be continued.) 8
