"There are peaceful days to live, not so many people may choose to be soldiers to eat food, and being a soldier in this era is not a good way out. (.)" Ning Qi was not so relieved about the plan of the Military Police Department: "Don't make it too unrecruited, and end up being a strong man." ”

"You can rest assured of this. Tao Donglai said confidently: "There is no good way out, it is the army of the Ming Dynasty, you must know that what we can give our soldiers is not just a meager salary and two meals of gruel a day." ”

In the planning of the Military Police Department, the future naturalized soldiers will have a special social status, and this social status is not only obtained because they are in the violent organ of the army, but also because the relevant departments have to establish a tall and positive image of the military in the mainstream social culture through long-term propaganda and indoctrination. As long as a soldier chooses to join the naturalized civilian army to serve, then the future military salary, medical care, education, employment after retirement, starting a family, enrolling children in school, pension for disabled soldiers, pension for soldiers killed in battle, and so on, will all be guaranteed by the Executive Committee.

Of course, even if the Military Police Department can complete the recruitment of indigenous soldiers as planned, these recruits will not be ready for use immediately, and at least there will be a training period of about a month to let these people understand what military orders are and what is meant by soldiers. The Military Police Department is in a hurry to expand its staff, which is also part of the reason. As for the real tactical training, these people in the Military Police Department know very well that it will be a long-term process, and it will not be rushed.

"Haven't many people been clamoring to join the commune recently? When we have collected this batch of soldiers, you can recruit a group of people from the current migrant workers to join the commune. Tao Dong came to see that Ning Qi's face was not very good-looking, so he quickly came up with an idea for him.

"Okay, you don't need to persuade me, I still understand the principle of putting the overall situation first. Aren't you going to send people to set up a point in Yazhou City in a few days? Let them keep an eye on that kid from Luo Shengdong and quickly pull people over from Yazhou. In the end, Ning Qi chose to compromise. This is not a battle of will between departments, which is more important, Ningqi can still distinguish it.

Early the next morning, a group of red-eyed old men gathered in the metallurgical workshop one after another, ready to participate in the trial production of the first artillery. It is said that it is a workshop, but in fact, it is a reinforced version of the thatched shed, just for fire prevention, the roof has been raised a lot. But even so, the visitors to this place still stare at their heads from time to time, lest a little spark float up and ignite the roof.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Chinese cannon casting process was still very primitive, mainly using the clay mold casting method. This casting method is very troublesome, and molds made of water and mud take more than a month to dry. Moreover, a clay mold can only cast one cannon, which cannot be reused, and the scrap rate is extremely high, and the cannon that can be used is only two or three out of ten, so the efficiency of casting cannons is quite underground. Methods such as adding stiffeners to the clay mold, roasting the clay mold, and boring the gun chamber are completely unknown to the Chinese gunsmiths of this era.

This kind of clay mold casting cannon method also has one of the biggest drawbacks, that is, the manufacturing size can not be truly unified, the biggest evil result caused by such non-standardized production is that the diameter of the muzzle, the thickness of the barrel is often different, and the difficulty of logistics supply has greatly increased, and in extreme cases, it is even necessary to cast shells separately for each gun to meet the normal firing requirements. In addition, the thickness of the barrel is different, which also leads to a slight deviation in the charge of each gun, and only the exclusive gunner of this gun will gradually grasp the relationship between the charge and the firing range and angle of fire after several live firing. In this way, if the gunner is damaged in battle, even if the substitute gunner is replaced, the combat effectiveness of the gun will be greatly reduced because of the lack of understanding of the performance of the gun.

Even if it is such a backward technology, it is regarded as an unpassed secret by the artillerymen as a skill to eat, and the result is that the artillery-making technology has not made qualitative progress for a long time, so that the central dynasty, which began to be equipped with metal barrel artillery in the Yuan Dynasty, had to import this weapon to the Europeans who were originally a large step behind in technology at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, when determining the cannon making process, the traversal directly skipped this clay mold casting method, and chose the more advanced, easier to achieve standardized and rapid production of iron mold casting method.

Liu Xingli's professionalism is undoubtedly extremely high, and after last night's meeting, he did not rest at all, and led a few people from the metallurgical team to make two sets of cast iron gun molds of 6-pound guns overnight. They even polished the surface of the two sets of iron molds with coarse sand before dawn, which made the group of people in the military police department give a heartfelt thumbs up.

Yan Chujie patted Liu Xingli's shoulder excitedly and said, "This is the attitude of doing revolution!"

The group of people who came today said that they were participating in the trial production, and it is more accurate to describe it as onlookers. Although most of the people here have played with guns, and many of them have killed people in the first two battles, no one really dares to do this when they are asked to operate the red-hot molten iron in that large furnace.

The technical work must still be completed by professionals, Liu Xingli explained to everyone while operating: "Now it is to brush the inside of the mold with slurry, this recipe is still found in the database, the slurry is divided into two layers, the first layer is made of fine rice husk ash and fine sand mud, and the second layer is made of high-quality ultra-fine kiln coal and water." ”

After brushing, several people came up to close the iron mold two petals together, and then tightened it from the outside with an iron hoop, and slowly heated the iron mold with a furnace fire. After assembling the iron mold in this way, Liu Xingli ordered the pouring to begin.

The metallurgical workshop currently uses a miniature crane as a navigation vehicle, and this miniature crane produced by Maeda looks like a spider when working, and the support columns that extend out in four directions are like four long legs, helping the small body to stabilize the center of gravity. The crane was so small that it didn't even have a cab, so the operator had to sit in a small seat at the back of the car with a maximum lifting weight of only three tons. Originally, the purpose of preparing this miniature crane was not to replace the current vehicle, but to hoist the hydroelectric generator in the hydropower station project, and the other is to use several metal processing machines in the material warehouse that have not yet come in handy, and this crane must be used for hoisting at that time.

As for the special lifting equipment in the metallurgical workshop, the mechanical department chose to use the power of the steam engine with mature technology, and the design task has been completed, and the assembly object of the first batch of steam engines produced is the metallurgical and mining department. Of course, the current humble workshop must be renovated at least a few sturdy load-bearing columns before the lifting equipment can be installed.

A small crane boom slowly lifts the graphite crucible filled with hot red molten iron, moves it above the iron mold, and slowly injects the molten iron from the pouring opening. Although the onlookers were standing more than ten meters away, they still felt a hot air coming from their faces.

Liu Xingli was wearing a protective mask, a hard hat, a mask, a full set of heat-insulating clothing, heat-insulating gloves, and heat-resistant shoes, and stood about three meters away from the iron mold, staring at the casting process motionlessly. It wasn't until the thin molten iron left in the graphite crucible could fill the iron mold that Liu Xingli blew the whistle in his mouth, and the colleague who operated the casting immediately adjusted the angle of the graphite crucible and stopped casting. The boom moved slowly, and then began to cast the second set of iron molds, and finally more than thirty spherical shells were cast with the remaining molten iron.

After the two sets of iron molds were cast, Liu Xingli took off the whistle in his mouth and returned to the position where everyone watched. In just a few minutes, Liu Xingli was already sweating profusely, which showed the high temperature of the place he was standing just now. Someone else immediately handed over a glass of cold boiled water, Liu Xingli was not polite, took off the mask and took it over and drank most of it, then wiped the corners of his mouth and said: "Today's time is too tight, it's too late to engage in the central cooling method, to use that kind of casting method, the core has to be processed separately, which is more troublesome." When the test firing of the cast cannon is successful, it will be used again when it is finalized and produced. ”

The so-called central cooling method is to dissipate heat with running water inside the core to accelerate the cooling of the barrel, so that the inside of the barrel can be hardened first, and when the outer metal of the barrel is cooled, it shrinks inward, and the metal structure of the entire barrel is more firm, which can greatly reduce the cracks of the barrel caused by uneven cooling and heat dissipation when casting the gun. Now the casting of this 6-pound cannon is good, even if it is really scrapped, it is 500 catties of pig iron, but if it is cast large-caliber heavy artillery, the barrel wall is much thicker than that of the 6-pound gun, and it is easy to have uneven cooling after casting, and it is difficult to control the scrap rate without using this method.

The key is that this kind of cast iron that has been used once cannot be used to cast cannons again, and can only be used to make iron farm tools. At this point, the cast iron cannon is not as good as the bronze cannon, the bronze can be cast repeatedly, and there are not so many worries in the casting process. However, with the current pathetic copper reserves of the Executive Committee, such wishful thinking is not daring for the time being.

Liu Xingli only rested for a moment, and then ordered the mold to be removed. Someone asked, "Isn't it going to be a little too fast to dismantle now?"

"It's a problem when it cools down. Liu Xingli explained: "This kind of casting will definitely have some burrs, that is, to remove these burrs when the cannon is not cold, and by the way, clean the mud core in the barrel." ”

Soon the process was completed, and the visitors finally saw two freshly baked cannons, exactly as black and thick as everyone imagined, and sprinkled with bursts of scorching smell.

"Come on, let's see if our two cannons stand up to scrutiny. Seeing that the appearance of the two cannons was intact, Liu Xingli finally breathed a sigh of relief.