Zhu Yuanzhang is very confident, he can't help swords and guns, strong bows and crossbows, and the people only ban armor and firearms.

Firearms were initially strictly controlled, and only the three bureaus directly under the central government were allowed to build them. Later, the firearms produced by the central government were not usable, so the power to cast firearms was delegated to the localities, and the provincial political departments and capital departments could cast firearms.

During the Zhengde period, the firecrackers produced in Guangdong and Sichuan were the most reliable and durable!

If Wang Yuan wants to cast a cannon, he must cooperate with the Zhejiang Political Department or the Capital Division, and if he makes it privately, he will be suspected of rebellion.

Zhejiang Metropolitan Division.

A group of Ming craftsmen are learning how to make cannon molds from Portuguese cannon casters.

If you want to cast a cannon, ninety percent of the time is spent on making a cannon mold, which takes a month to several months.

Wang Yuan called the craftsmen to inquire, and basically sorted out the artillery making methods of the Ming Dynasty and Europe, which were divided into two types: "forging cannon method" and "casting cannon method".

The "forging cannon method" is used to make iron cannons, and the technology of China and the West is exactly the same -

The first method of forging cannons is to beat wrought iron (usually mild steel) into iron plates and weld them into cylindrical barrels, or directly hammer iron plates into barrels and then weld them.

The second method of forging artillery: wrought iron is hammered into strips and rolled into barrels with iron bars, which are used to make small-caliber iron cannons. The large-caliber iron cannon is to roll the iron bar out of the inner tube, and then reinforce the iron ring layer by layer, just like a hoop barrel (the English barrel and barrel are the same word).

These two forging methods are easy to blow up!

Therefore, the "casting cannon method" is now widely adopted, and casting copper cannons has become the mainstream. But if the cost is insufficient, you can only cast iron cannons, which are more unreliable than forged iron cannons, because a large number of pores will be generated during the casting process. 、

As for the technology of drilling cannon pipes, we have to wait for another two hundred years, and during the Zhengde period, both the East and the West did not have the ability to drill holes in the iron mound.

In fact, the shortcomings of iron cannons that are easy to explode have been gradually overcome in the late Ming Dynasty, and they are not reinforced iron hoops like in the West.

One method is the iron core copper body, which uses the different melting points of copper and iron to cast bronze on the iron tire. When the copper solidifies, the heat expands and contracts coldly, and the iron tire barrel inside is compressed, which is more durable than the iron cannon and cheaper than the copper cannon.

One is wrought iron core and pig iron outer wall cannon, which has more obvious advantages than copper-iron co-cast cannons, and is cheaper, which is conducive to mass production.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the technology of casting artillery was no longer lost to Europe, and the war was always lost because of the country's problems. With the civil and military, it is difficult to collect taxes, and the party is constantly fighting...... No matter how good the technology is, it can't be promoted; No matter how good a general is, he will be killed by civilian officials; No matter how powerful a civil official is, it is difficult for him to display his talents.

In the past, Wang Yuan didn't know these cannon casting techniques.

He can make steel from crucibles, and Krupp's early steel cannons were cast from crucibles, which is only a few hundred years ahead of the West!

Wang Yuan saw the Portuguese cannon caster, using fir wood to make cannon molds, and the work efficiency was pitiful. Casting cannons like this, when the cannons were cast, Wang Yuan would have been summoned by the emperor to fight in the north a long time ago.

"Gather the most skilled coppersmiths in the province!" Wang Yuan immediately ordered.

The coppersmiths came to the Hangzhou War Bureau one after another, and Wang Yuan asked: "What method do you use to make molds for casting large bronze objects?" ”

A coppersmith said, "Lost wax." ”

Wang Yuan said: "Then try to use the lost wax method to make a cannon mold." ”

The wooden cannon mold that took several months can be completed in more than a month using the lost wax method. First, the casting model is made with beeswax, and then the mud core is filled with refractory material, and the outer model is filled, and the wax mold is melted after heating and baking, and a gun mold is easily made.

Wang Yuan was afraid that the refractory clay fan would not be able to withstand the high temperature of molten steel, and specially ordered the craftsmen to mix it with graphite.

The whole process stunned the Portuguese gunsmiths.

Next, the gun mold is transported to the Shaoxing Iron Factory, where the molten steel is made by the crucible steelmaking method, and then directly cast into a steel cannon.

The world's first real steel cannon was born!

As the Portuguese called it, this is a shipborne cannon (smoothbore) with a caliber of 17 cm, a total length of 225 cm, and a chamber length of 216 cm. It can fire 12-pound stone bullets, or 30-pound iron bullets - Europe has not yet distinguished artillery by bullet weight.

According to the name of the Ming Dynasty, this is a 500-pound cannon.

Why is it more advanced than the Ming artillery?

In addition to the long range, there is also the advantage of rate of fire. There is a mother gun (main gun barrel) and five subguns (secondary gun barrels), the subguns are equivalent to the medicine chamber part of the artillery, which can be loaded with ammunition and fired in the long mouth of the abdomen in turn, which belongs to the improved version of the early European rear loading guns.

"It's ...... Steel cannons? "The Portuguese gunsmiths, surrounded by artillery, couldn't believe it.

These guys secretly looked at the furnace, but they couldn't understand it at all. They did not know that the crucible had been filled with graphite, and that there was a flux, so even if they went back to the Portuguese governor, it would not have been possible to make steel from the crucible.

The 500-pound steel cannon is already the casting limit, and more than 10 steel-making furnaces in the entire iron factory have been used.

Wang Yuan also didn't plan to relocate the ironworks to the seaside, what if he encountered a pirate raid? However, a branch factory can be opened outside Hangzhou to provide molten steel for cannon casting, and there is a Qiantang water division guarding it, so there is no problem in general.

Pull out the test gun, shoot at a 45-degree elevation angle, and the longest firing range is more than 1500 meters.

But if it is a naval battle, six or seven hundred meters is the best range, and if it is too far, the accuracy will not be enough, and whether it can hit or not depends on luck.

Wang Yuan also asked the Portuguese gunsmiths to join forces with Chinese coppersmiths and gunsmiths to make small field cannons. The gun body is equipped with wheels, weighs only more than 100 catties, and can fire stone bullets, iron bullets and scattered bullets, and the firing range barely reaches 500 meters.

Twenty gates were built in one go, and many iron bullets were cast by the way.

Such mass production of artillery was unthinkable in the sixteenth century, and it can only be said that the crucible steelmaking method was an invention beyond the times, and it should have been more than two hundred years later!

But its technical principle is indeed not complicated, only need to solve the problem of heat resistance of the crucible, and solve the problem of flux.

Wang Yuan used Shaoxing Minfu to transport artillery to Hangzhou, intending to land in Tianjin by sea ship.

No matter how late it is, Zhu Houzhao will scold his mother, because it is already June.

Wang Yuan's position as governor of Zhejiang was still retained, and all the work was entrusted to Zhang Zhang's agent.

Ning Botao, a chivalrous man who defected to the governor, with a group of Taihu Lake water bandits, has been integrated into the Qiantang Water Division as a whole. Wang Yuan got a deputy Qianhu official for Ning Botao, which could be regarded as supervising the governor of Zhejiang, Manzheng, lest Manzheng eat empty salaries and abolish the training of the sailors.

The newly arrived director of Nanguan, Zhejiang, was beaten by Wang Yuan and continued to detain timber for the sailors to build ships. The Iron Works and the Zhejiang Metropolitan Division also continued to carry out public-private cooperation to cast artillery for the sea ships that had not yet been built.

The money for military training, shipbuilding, and cannon casting was all misappropriated from the customs and customs duties.

Upon learning that Governor Wang was about to return to Beijing, the Zhejiang gentry wept bitterly and spontaneously organized to see each other off at the port. This meeting made the missionary Camillo, who decided to stay in Hangzhou, realize more deeply how much the people loved the governor.