101 In the laboratory.

"Battery?" Wang Yingxuan pushed his glasses in surprise.

"Bombing barrel?!" Zhao Shizhen also screamed, but there were more surprises.

If you ask what else he is interested in in this world besides guns, it must be a cannon.

"The cylinder and gun barrel structure are similar, and the requirements are similar." Zhang Jian was not surprised at all. He had obviously adapted to the rhythm of Zhao Hao's antelope hanging horns. "It is definitely not a problem to be able to cast qualified cylinders."

"Then, that's illegal..." his brother-in-law said timidly.

It's okay to build a gun in the name of the county. If you build a cannon, my god, I can't believe it...

"I forgot to introduce it to you. The full name of the 00 Institute is the Ordnance Research Institute of the Military Weapons Bureau of the Nanjing Ministry of Works." Zhao Hao smiled and took a reassurance to the honest four-eyed Lao Qin.

"Oh, that's how..." Wang Yingxuan suddenly realized, thinking that no wonder the 00s were not with us.

"I saw it at the Military Weapon Bureau last time, and the court mostly had bronze cannons," Zhao Shizhen recalled: "The red cannons are cast iron, but the barrel as thick as the beams of the room are, but the barrel bore is a little larger than the fist."

He is the director of the Ordnance Research Institute and is very good at speaking. He naturally says: "The best artillery factory in the Ming Dynasty is the Bujialao artillery yard opened by the Folang Jiren in Haojingao. I heard that they all use copper cannons for their own people."

"Yes." Zhao Hao nodded. He also thought about digging up the Bo Gallao's group of Folang craftsmen, but they were not of my race, and their hearts would be different. As a result of narrow nationalism, Mr. Zhao did not poach people.

After the failure of casting pig iron, there were three ways before him, one was to innovate casting technology.

The reason why cast iron cannon barrels are still very useful when they pay attention to all aspects of details is ultimately due to defects caused by natural cooling.

Because when left to cool naturally, the outer wall of the barrel is cooled first, and then cooled from the outside to the inside. This creates a serious problem - after the outer layer is cooled and hardened, the inner layer has not cooled yet, and the outer layer is harder than the inner layer, and the inner pipe of the inner layer will be pulled and deformed, and even cracks will be directly generated.

This naturally leads to the high waste rate when casting cannons, and it will directly explode, making the gunners daunt.

So at this time, whether it was the Thais in the Ming Dynasty, they could only thicken the iron cannon barrels and thicken them. However, the cannons cast in this way were bulky and powerful, so they naturally could not please the military.

It was not until the Civil War in the United States that a Rodman invented the "internal mold water injection cooling method" that allowed the barrel to cool inside and then outside, which solved this problem.

This method is simple to say. You just need to change the inner mold of the barrel into a hollow during the cooling process and then cool it with circulating water.

But this is just the theory that Zhao Hao saw from the book, and it is still far from specific implementation - for example, what is the relationship between water flow velocity and temperature change?

In the mid-19th century, under the development and improvement of thermodynamics and relatively advanced measurement and control conditions, Rodman spent a full ten years to establish a relatively scientific and complete data system. How could Mr. Zhao achieve this quantification in the Ming Dynasty?

There is no other way, only by constantly trying and making mistakes, and seeing which day the blind cat will encounter a dead mouse.

Zhao Hao’s expectation was to overcome this casting method within five years. After all, he had an advantage that Rodman did not have. As long as he did more experiments, he could pile it up with money.

But innovating casting technology is actually just a symptom treatment, and the real way is to innovate smelting technology!

In another space-time, when the pig iron refining reflector appeared in the late 18th century, the British could refine the pig iron liquid to remove impurities and make the iron liquid purer. The British Navy's cannon cast with this kind of cooked iron did not explode. The copper cannon was finally completely eliminated.

But at present, the metallurgical technology and steel output of the countries in the Thai West are far behind that of the Ming Dynasty. They naturally don’t understand the technology that the Ming Dynasty has not mastered.

Mr. Zhao only knew one concept about this, and how to do it in detail was even more disdainful.

In fact, the Wuhu blacksmiths who produced "Su Steel" in the Ming Dynasty were already proficient in using the steel filling method to control the carbon content in the iron and produce various carbon-containing steels according to their needs. The Europeans did not barely catch up until two hundred years later when they invented the crucible steelmaking method.

But whether it is the steel filling method or the crucible method, there is a serious problem, that is, the production volume is too small and the cost is too high.

That's why there is a saying that "good steel is used on the blade".

In short, people of this era cannot imagine who would use extremely precious steel to cast cannons?

However, in the next few hundred years, all the powerful countries in the world will rely on steel as their own. Therefore, no matter how much the price they pay, Zhao Hao will have to mass-produce this damn steel.

When the first two methods are far away and cannot quench intimidation, only the third method - "Casting a cannon with copper", is the only solution that can work immediately.

In fact, in the long years after the birth of the cannon, bronze cannons were the protagonists for the vast majority of the time. All countries have a long history of bronze cannon casting, and the Ming Dynasty naturally also had mature casting technology.

Copper is corrosion-resistant and not easy to rust, has good ductility and is not easy to explode, and is easy to cast. Therefore, copper cannons are more powerful than iron cannons for a long time.

The only problem is that it is expensive. Especially in the Ming Dynasty, copper is money!

Taking the current bronze cannon of the Flang Jiman as an example, the carrier-based heavy cannon is about one ton, and the light snake cannon is also 400 kilograms.

A piece of Longqing Tongbao in the Ming Dynasty weighs one cent and contains ninety-five percent copper.

A heavy artillery costs 216,000 yuan for materials alone, and including labor and losses, the cost is no less than 250 taels of silver.

The cost of snake cannon is more than fifty taels.

The main battleships of the Spanish or Flang aircraft must be equipped with twenty to forty pieces of heavy artillery alone. The number of various light artillery is incalculable.

It doesn’t count the cost of the ship, just installing the cannons will cost about 10,000 taels...

~~

Mr. Zhao thought silently and suddenly felt that he was not that rich.

Even the Spanish Empire was poor by the arms race, let alone every family of his children?

Thinking of this, Mr. Zhao stared at Brother Four-eyed with a ferocious face and said, "Even if you cast a bronze cannon first, you must not relax. Within five years, you will overcome all the problems of converter steelmaking for me... and give birth to five sons!"

"Uh..." Wang Yingxuan took off his glasses and rubbed them. Similar to the "water-cooled cannon casting method", the principle of converter steelmaking is also very simple. But this is even more a systematic project. Without long-term experiments and improvements, it is impossible to use it at all.

Fortunately, five years should be enough.

But how can you do such a thing as having five sons in five years?

Unless... but my brother-in-law is the immediate boss, he dares not have any unreasonable thoughts.
Chapter completed!