The group of people left the foundry and forging factory as if they were fleeing. [Read the latest chapter] Perhaps due to Hale's instructions, or perhaps he had been prepared, several indigenous workers were already waiting outside with tea buckets. A little sugar is added to the black tea imported from Lingao and chilled with well water. Drinking it makes you feel refreshed. When the Spaniards had just taken a breath, Hale dragged them forward without stopping. The next target is the machining workshop, built next to the river and the giant water wheel. Compared with the suffocating foundry and forging workshop, the workshop is filled with the pleasant smell of newly cut wood. The most indispensable thing in the Philippines is wood, which has excellent texture. Later, in a certain country in East Asia, striped hardwoods worth tens of thousands were sawed here to make brackets, bases or drive shafts for machine tools, or even goods laid on the ground. track. What filled people's ears was the squeaking and clattering of drive shafts and gears, and the screams of turning tools and drill bits gnawing at metal. Although it was noisy and harsh, it was definitely not as deafening as the noise in the hellish foundry and forging factory. . The Spanish gentlemen seemed to have regained some energy, circling around the huge boring lathe built for cannon production, and exclaimed.
From time to time, some indigenous workers walked around the drilling and boring machines, holding wooden shovels, shoveling the falling iron filings into baskets, ready to be sent back for re-casting. Marcos knew that more than 70% of the iron and nearly 90% of the copper currently imported by the Spanish Philippine colonies were consumed in this factory. Of course, what the citizens of Manila are most concerned about is the large sum of silver pesos that has been swallowed up by it. But the Governor of Salamanca did just the opposite: whether it was iron, copper or silver, he tried to double his investment in the mouth of the gold-swallowing beast of the arms factory. As long as the golden eggs it lays can bring glory and promotion to itself and its allies in the officialdom. Commodore Don Juanco de Bazin, the Marquis, is here for this purpose.
The Marquis grabbed a handful of iron filings from the ground and rubbed them in his hands. The white satin gloves immediately showed a large black stain. It was covered with soapy water that acted as a lubricant and coolant, and was greasy and filled with disgusting foam. Soaked gloves. The iron filings pricked the skin of his palm, hard and rough, as if to remind him that they were sliced and peeled off from the mother body by a harder and sharper steel drill. As a senior naval officer, the Marquis is no stranger to the naval gun foundries in Seville and Lillegens. He has also traveled to France, Germany and Venice and visited the weapons manufacturing factories there. It seems that prototypes of these machines can be found in European factories. Talk about scale, precision and efficiency. Compared with the miracle work designed by this Japanese priest, those European products are barely considered children's toys. Even among the most well-known cannon casting experts in Europe, who would believe that it is possible to use a drill rod to "take out" the cannon bore from a solid iron blank?
The Marquis de Bazin threw down his dark, damp gloves. He picked up a pair of brand new white silk gloves from the wooden tray that his entourage had been carrying along the way. However, the excitement in his heart caused his hands to tremble non-stop and he could not put them on. The Marquis threw the new gloves back to the wooden tray. "What is that?" He crossed his hands. He asked, pointing to a machine tool equipped with a spiral reamer in front of him.
"It's a rifling machine."
"Rifling--" the Marquis of Bazin repeated this unfamiliar word. It could be seen that he was very interested, but he tried his best to maintain his solemn expression and prevent ignorant doubts from showing on his face.
The Japanese priest seemed to suddenly open up a chatterbox and began to talk endlessly about various scientific theories, ranging from the principle of Archimedean spiral to the rotation of planets. The Commodore was confused. He vaguely seemed to understand something: rifling designed according to the principles of spiral and autobiography will increase the hit rate of artillery shells by more than ten times. If the gunner is equipped with a telescope, the rifled cannon can accurately destroy a warship sailing one mile away.
It would be too extravagant to equip the gunner with a telescope. European telescopes are not cheap these days. but. It has a range of over a league and can accurately hit a ship's cannon. It's appalling in this day and age.
"The problem is the shell," said an artillery officer. "The spiral-rifled cannon had proven its power at the Pangasinan expedition. It was a terrible weapon invented by genius. It had only one flaw: its size and shape. Cannonballs that are made very precisely can match the rifling. It is undoubtedly very difficult to make such shells. We can also make do with those old round shells in new cannons, but in that case, it is impossible to achieve what Mr. Paul claimed That kind of effect.
"You are absolutely right." Hale immediately took up the topic. "I have figured out a way to use precision machines to make precision utensils, which is far more efficient than relying on hand-made clumsy things. Gentlemen, please Come with me and see how machines are used to make cannonballs. Marcos, take us to the front."
In one corner of the machine shop are two small lathes drawn by animal power. The artillery shell blanks transported from the foundry are polished and shaped here, and the threads for mounting the fuse are turned out. Several selected Chinese workers carefully inspected the finished products with special clamps. Hale took out one of the projectiles that passed the inspection and showed it to the guests, asking them to imagine the horrific scene when the hollow bullet was filled with gunpowder or shotgun, and the explosion was controlled by a message tube spirally connected through the head.
"Helical rifled artillery must form a close match with the shells it is equipped with, and all its advantages stem from this. The most basic principle is that there must be no gap between the shells and the barrel, and all the thrust generated by the gunpowder explosion is used It is used to push the projectile, instead of leaking and wasting from the gap like a smoothbore cannon. Only when the projectile body completely fits the gun bore can it obtain friction from the spiral rifling and form a stable spin motion perpendicular to the flight line. . As for the smoothbore cannon, because of the existence of the gap, it rolls along an irregular route in the barrel from the moment it is ignited. This irregular rolling will continue from the barrel into the air. In the end The result is that it is impossible to predict where the shell will roll and land."
Hale became more and more excited as he talked. Since he came to this time and space, he has rarely had the opportunity to show his authority and advancement in the field of technology in front of everyone: "There are two contradictory principles for front-loading rifled guns. It must be fast and not Struggling to load the cannonball into the breech means that the friction between the two cannot be too great, but this violates the first principle that there must be no gap between the cannonball and the breech. If the breech-loading artillery did not exist, this contradiction would not exist. Just make the shell slightly larger than the bore diameter, but we are still unable to make a reliable large breech-loaded cannon. In order to solve the problem, the first thing I thought of was chemical mortar-style shells - oh, you don't know what Is it a chemical mortar? Well - it's a... in short, a pretty scary mortar. The shell is the long cone you saw at the Cavite Naval Fortress, with a steel plate inlaid at the bottom. The disk and the cannonball are connected by a ring made of copper. When the explosive force of the gunpowder pushes the steel disk, it will press forward against the copper ring. As a result, the softer copper ring will expand outward and fit. Bore.”
"It's really amazing," the Marquis de Bazin couldn't help but sigh.
"But it was still too complex for production. So at first our shell production couldn't keep up with the number of new cannons being cast. I kept trying to improve, and what you see here is the result of my most recent idea. This shell looks like Does it look a bit like an elongated water drop? You see, we have cut off a layer of the projectile below the centering part. This part of the projectile will be completely wrapped by a material that can expand under the action of thrust. It’s much cheaper than copper.”
"What material is it?"
"Paper papier mache."
"Paper?" the brigadier general asked suspiciously, and several officers had expressions of disbelief on their faces.
"Yeah, technically pulp."
The prepared concrete pulp is poured into a special mold to wrap the lower half of the projectile. After demoulding, it needs to be dried and pressed. Finally, workers will use a scraper to trim the surface of the concrete paper shell and use snap gauges to calibrate the outer diameter of the warhead one by one. After all this is completed, the shells are sent to the charging workshop.
"Then Mr. Paul, may I take the liberty to congratulate you on solving the production problem of new artillery shells?" Standing next to the stove in the drying room, the Marquis of Bazin asked, looking at the densely packed warhead casings on the drying rack. road.
"There are still some shortcomings in the current operation of the factory. First of all, there is a lack of labor, especially workers who are skilled in operating machines. So currently we can only produce about 100 explosive bombs and blooming shotshells a day." Marcos took a breath, Hale's production figures included a large amount of unlaunchable scrap, and actual daily production was less than one-third.
The operational efficiency of the arsenal was very poor, and both Hale and Marx knew this.
Hale continued to brag calmly: "As long as we can supply enough manpower and materials, we can increase the production of artillery shells by 3 to 4 times. It would be best to have more Chinese people and train a Chinese person to operate the machine." It takes 5 times less time and effort than training natives, and the work efficiency is 5 times higher. If His Majesty favors you and gives European craftsmen who are familiar with instrument manufacturing techniques, that would be great. We have now recruited some Germans Craftsmen undertake important technical work, but unfortunately there are still too few - there is only one instrument craftsman from Augsburg in the factory. All precision sighting instruments and artillery tubes rely on his skills, and he can also repair them. Clocks and watches. I really don’t have much to say about my craftsmanship, but the problem is that I’m just too busy.” (To be continued…)
