Zhou Lang's approach was to hire Dutch technicians who knew English as intermediate translators, not to let him directly provide translation services for British technicians and Chinese craftsmen, which would be too slow, but to let the Dutch formulate standard specifications according to British technology, and then translate them into Chinese, so that the technology was passed on to Chinese craftsmen, which was much more efficient.

The translation work was basically completed as early as the time of the drum port, and now the full set of materials, as well as some Taiwanese craftsmen who have mastered British technology, have also been transferred to Fuzhou for guidance.

Zhou Lang found that there is not much difference between British technology and Dutch technology, but there are still differences in some details.

For the same smoothbore gun, the parts are basically the same, but there are always some differences in shape. For example, the technology for the production of the Indian version of the brown bass brought by the technicians of the East India Company is different from the technology provided by the Dutch in the most important barrel production.

Zhou Lang used to think that the barrels of ancient guns were cast, but after seeing the production process of the Dutch, he learned that the original barrel was donated from iron sheets, which was really iron sheets, not steel, which made Zhou Lang quite surprised, and was once a little worried about the strength of the barrels.

It is said that in the early days of the British, in order to make better performance rifles, the materials for rolling the barrel were even collected horseshoes to make them, because the horseshoe became very flexible under the repeated trampling of the horse's hooves.

If ordinary wrought iron is used, the wrought iron will be forged repeatedly in order to remove the impurities, and Chinese craftsmen call the iron that has been tempered thousands of times as fine iron.

These fine iron plates are then forged into long strips of iron, the length of which is slightly larger than the length of the barrel, the thickness of which is required to be almost uniform, and the width of the iron plates, which is about 4 inches wide at one end of the barrel and two and a half inches wide at the end of the muzzle. Because the wider end acquires a greater thickness during the rolling, the tail of the barrel is guaranteed to withstand the impact of gunpowder explosions.

The anvil used to forge the barrel is also different from that used by ordinary blacksmiths, and the anvil used to forge the barrel has a series of grooves with a semicircular cross-section, which act as a simple mold in the process of forging the barrel. When forging, the iron plate is first heated to a red-hot temperature, then forged into a groove, and then a hardened iron rod that is used as a mandrel is placed in it, and the iron plate is rolled into a closed cylinder. The diameter of the mandrel is smaller than the diameter of the actual barrel.

The rolled barrel had half-inch overlaps on both sides of the muzzle part of the iron plate, and the overlapping parts were forged and welded together. The specific method is to heat the barrel to a white-hot temperature, and then repeatedly hit the position of the weld with a hammer, and the striking action must be light. This process has to be repeated because only two or three inches of length welds can be done per heat. If the barrel is found to be bent during welding, it must also be corrected at any time with the grooves on the anvil.

The process of welding is drilling, this hole is not the ignition hole at the tail end, but the aperture of the whole barrel, because the diameter of the iron rod as a mold is smaller than the actual barrel caliber, so the preliminary forged iron pipe can not be called the barrel, to use a special drilling machine to drill out of the inner layer of the iron pipe, the advantage of this is not only to make the inner diameter of the barrel smoother, but also to remove the defects on the inner layer of iron sheet due to forging and other reasons, so that the quality of the barrel is better.

The steps of drilling Ancient Chinese scholar Song Yingxing has described, because the musket technology introduced in the Ming Dynasty is actually the Western technology introduced by the Japanese firecracker, and the drilling machine used for drilling is the same, but it is very simple, completely different from the machine tool of later generations, it is a high shelf, erect the barrel and manually drill with a long drill bit, the efficiency is very low.

The drilling process is very meticulous, not a drill bit to drill to the end, but first use a small drill bit, and then use a large drill bit, layer by layer to drill off the iron sheet, which can reduce the cutting force required in the drilling process, too large cutting force will make the drill bit or drill pipe break, resulting in the scrapping of the entire barrel. Even so, the drilling process still heats up. Heating causes deformation of the barrel and must be controlled. The method of control is also very simple: wrap a water-soaked cloth around the barrel and change it frequently.

These details are written into the specification, Zhou Lang asked the Qing army craftsmen who made the bird in Fuzhou, they said that the production process of the bird is actually the same, it was inherited from the Ming Dynasty, but it was not strictly followed in the production process, and each link was abbreviated, not that the craftsman was unwilling to make it strictly, but that the conditions did not allow it.

For example, the manufacture of the most important barrel, starting from the forging of fine iron, the standard of the Ming Dynasty is that ten catties of iron can produce one catty of refined iron, because repeated forging in the removal of impurities at the same time, will also lose raw materials, the officials who manage the workshop are often very resistant to the waste of craftsmen, and even think that the craftsmen are cheating, stealing raw materials, and one will be hit by the board if one is not good, so the craftsmen of the Qing army said that they forg fine iron, and ten catties of forging to three catties is already considered excellent.

These officials who manage craftsmen may not be ignorant, but they may have the intention of saving costs and enriching their own pockets. It is no wonder that the Ming Dynasty Qi Jiguang was very distrustful of the fire hammer made by the craftsmen of the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty, and had to recruit craftsmen to make it himself.

The same is true for the barrel of the drill gun, the drill bit is gradually replaced from large to small, the quality is of course excellent, but the efficiency is very slow, the supervisor is still not satisfied, the progress is slow, and the craftsman still has to eat the board. So they end up doing less work and speeding things up. Instead of being dissatisfied, their overseers will say that they are almost done.

The result of cutting corners and reducing the process is that the Ming and Qing dynasties have weak pressure bearing capacity of the musket barrel, the amount of gunpowder they are loaded, and the range and power are worse than those of the Western contemporaries.

Therefore, in the production of rifles, not only Western countries are basically the same, but China is also similar to Western countries. But there are still slight differences in details, including between Western countries.

For example, the French made the barrel of a gun in a more complicated way, they first made a thinner iron plate, which was 1/12 inch thick, about 2 millimeters. This thin iron plate is then rolled into a cylinder by way of flat rolling. This cylinder is made into the lining, and then the body of the barrel is made on the outside of the lining by the method of spiral rolling.

The Netherlands is close to France, and it is a small country, so the Dutch use a full set of French technology, compared with British technology, Zhou Lang is quite puzzled, he found that when the barrel of the last French technology rolled up, the two-millimeter-thick lining was actually cut off, so what is the point of adding lining?