The peninsula near Beigang was named the Red Zone by Zheng Sen, and it was also the most heavily guarded area in the entire Beigang, and the entire area was surrounded by a wall about four meters high, even in the direction of the sea. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 info However, this wall doesn't actually provide too much defense. The wall was actually very thin, and there were even accidents when a large section collapsed during a typhoon, but its main function was to prevent people from entering and obscuring the view.

The real defense of the peninsula was made up of a number of low polygonal walls built against the land, and some small artillery pieces erected on them. With this, on the island of Taiwan, there is no other force that can pose a threat here. As for the sea, because there are many reefs near the peninsula, big ships can't get close, so there is no need to do too much defense, and the more than 1,000 scouts stationed here are enough to protect it.

Behind the walls here, the Zheng family has just built an artillery factory.

Theoretically, the best material for making artillery is, of course, steel. If you can set up a steel-making furnace to smelt steel, and then a heavy-duty hydraulic press can be used for rough forging to forge the cannon billet, and then a drilling machine can drill out the gun chamber, it is simply ...... There is no pressure in this world. However, industry is never something that can be achieved overnight. If nothing else, it is very difficult to just build a steelmaking furnace. To make a steelmaking furnace, you need refractory bricks, to make refractory bricks, you need a set of sintering furnaces, and then ...... When everything is ready, you suddenly find that the iron ore in your hand is all slag containing only 30% iron, so you also need a complete set of ore crushing, selection, and sintering equipment, and these equipment not only need to be manufactured by yourself, but more importantly, it takes a lot of steel to make them! Meow, if I've got a lot of steel, I might as well ...... In short, just relying on a lonely traverser like Zheng Sen, it's better to wash and sleep in the big steel or something.

In the absence of a way to make steel, at least in a short period of time, the only materials that can be used to cast cannons are bronze and cast iron. Cast iron, of course, is much cheaper than bronze, but only the British can do a good job of making artillery from cast iron in the world. It's just that the British value this kind of technology very much, and Zheng Sen can't get such technical information, at least for now. And bronze is really an expensive thing, even if the Zheng family is equipped with a large amount of this thing, they will feel distressed.

Therefore, although the cannon factory can only make bronze cannons, research on iron cannons has already begun.

Zheng Sen is not a metallurgical major, and he doesn't know much about metallurgy. But one of the great things about traversers is that they know the right direction. And that in many cases means more speed and more efficiency.

Zheng Sen knew that in later generations, the barrel and everything were obtained by drilling holes in the forged blank. In terms of strength, the guns obtained by forging and drilling, whether bronze or iron, far exceeded those of cast guns. This means that the barrel can be made lighter and thinner, making it easier to move the gun, easier to dissipate heat when firing, and naturally a higher sustained rate of fire. So forging the barrel and then drilling it was the first technological development direction that Zheng Sen set for the gun factory.

As for the second development direction, it is the multi-layer gun barrel and even the self-tightening technology of the body barrel. Both of these things actually have the same purpose, that is, to make the barrel itself have a large inward squeezing stress, so that when the gun fires, these inward squeezing stresses can offset part of the chamber pressure, thus making it possible to use thinner barrels.

In these two ideas, the multi-layer barrel is the easiest to implement, and its principle is very simple, make two thin barrels, one large and one small, of which the inner diameter of the larger one is slightly smaller than the outer diameter of the small one, and then heat it up to make it heat and expand. At this time, its inner diameter will be slightly larger than the outer diameter of the small barrel, and then the small barrel will be inserted into it, and when the outer barrel is cooled, it will be firmly encircled outside the inner barrel, and a large inward squeeze stress will be generated.

This kind of technology is the least difficult, Zheng Sen feels that it is relatively easy to implement, of course, the effect is far less than the second approach, but the single body tube self-tightening technology has not really become popular until after World War II, so, Zheng Sen knows its principle, but he feels that the possibility of realization is not too great, especially the best of the "hydraulic body tube self-tightening", Zheng Sen feels that even if it comes to his great-grandson's generation, it is estimated that it can only be a dream. However, in Zheng Sen's time, the punch squeezing self-tightening, which had been basically eliminated, was hopeful, but even if everything went well, Zheng Sen did not think that this thing could catch up with the war against the Manchus that he envisioned. Therefore, this thing can only be used as a pre-research reserve.

The artillery technician hired by Zheng Sen Lando is an Italian, it is said that even in Italy, he is also a very famous artillery technician, and it is said that his small life in Italy is also very nourishing, but then this guy is so good that he got involved with a broken aristocratic woman, which is nothing in Italy, and even Lando's husband is still a friend, and the woman's husband is actually clear about the relationship between him and his wife. Only once, Landau drank a little more, and bragged with the woman's husband, and somehow the two of them boasted about the length of one of their organs. Lando came up with this sentence: "Your wife says that I am longer than you." Naturally, his friend was not convinced, and actually proposed, or we should all take out that thing and compare it to see whose one is longer. So Lando, who had drunk too much, agreed, and the two compared, and as a result, Lando's was actually a little shorter. Lando, who felt that he had lost face, was furious, and actually picked up a knife and cut his friend's one short. And then, well, he came into exile here.

For Zheng Sen's idea of drilling, Lando is very unimpressed, in his opinion, such a process will greatly increase the cost of artillery, and the effect is difficult to guarantee.

"Major General, this requires a big hammer, because you are not forging a knife, but a cannon. No one could wield a hammer that could be used to forge a blank for a cannon, not even Hercules. So this has to rely on large machinery. And there is no such machine in the world, which needs to be designed from scratch. It takes a lot of money to build, and I'm not optimistic about the final result. Although this plan was proposed by his boss and his immediate boss, when it came to technical issues, Lando did not mean to cater to his boss at all. In his opinion, this is the most basic work ethic of a craftsman.

"You don't have to worry about the financial matters, Mr. Lando." Zheng Sen smiled and said, "We definitely have a surplus of funds. As for the effect, I believe Mr. Lando also knows the difference in strength between forged and cast parts. Although it is not yet known how this distinction is made, and it is difficult to explain it theoretically, I think that as a general rule of thumb, forging and then drilling should be better than direct casting in any case. You're right? ”

"Major General, I admit that you have a point, and if you can guarantee a continuous injection of funds, as well as tolerance for failure after failure, then I have no opinion. Major General, I have always been unable to do it, and I can't guarantee that after spending money, there will be a result that satisfies you. "And I'm not an expert in the design of large machines, I'm more expert in building cannons." ”

"I know that for large-scale forging machinery, we have another team in the design, and the power can only use hydraulics, so the address of the forging factory must not be here. We plan to build a dam on the other side of the Clear Water Creek and then use the water power to propel the forging machine. However, this project also takes time. So for now, what we're going to experiment with is the casing cannon. I don't know if Mr. Landor has any thoughts on this. Zheng Sen said.

"It's not that technically difficult." "And the idea of the casing is a genius idea." It should be possible to significantly increase the power of the artillery. How big of a cannon does the major general plan to build first? ”

"Let's try our hand at building a six-pound cannon." Zheng Sen said, "What materials do you think is better for the inner and outer barrels?" ”

Lando thought for a while and said: "The inner cannon barrel is still cast iron, first, it is cheaper, and secondly, the cast iron is harder and wear-resistant, so it is good to make the inner cannon barrel." Of course, if it's safe to be safe, bronze is also wrong. As for the outer barrel, it was possible to use both bronze and cast iron. I recommend using bronze though. Bronze is much better malleable than cast iron, and it is not easy to break when squeezed by force. If the outer barrel is also made of cast iron, I am worried that it is easy for the outer barrel to break. If this kind of thing happens a lot, the final cost is not necessarily much lower. ”

"So can you use wrought iron for the outer barrel? Wrought iron is also very malleable. Zheng Sen asked.

"Major General, if you already have a forging machine and a drilling machine, then wrought iron is not bad either. But now, Major General, wrought iron can't be cast. Lando said.

Wrought iron does not melt into liquid molten iron until it is about 1,500 degrees Celsius. And in this era, people have not been able to heat wrought iron to such high temperatures. In this era, the closest thing to liquid wrought iron is probably the wrought iron fried in the steel frying process. It's just that it's only half-melted wrought iron, and it's so viscous that it can't be cast at all.

"Is that so?" Zheng Sen found that he might have forgotten this important question, "Then these three cannons, let's build three of them first." In addition, the cast iron cannon is made with traditional craftsmanship, and there are three bronze cannons. By the way, Mr. Lando, what more tools do you need, do you need an apprentice? ”