There is also the fact that now you study the casting cannons with these good steel, of course, not those that are thousands of pounds at every turn, you can study that thing, but the main energy still has to be put on casting small cannons, and in the future, Master Kong will be responsible for the musket side, and Master Mozigan will be responsible for the cannon side.

"Obey the order," the two of them said

I have to say that some of the artillery now are unbearable in terms of range and accuracy, the old artillery of the Qing Dynasty mainly has Wucheng Yonggu General Cannon, Shengong General Cannon, Winning General Cannon, Weiyuan General Cannon, Odd Cannon, etc., although there are many types, but they are basically the derivative artillery of the Hongyi cannon introduced in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, until the previous Opium War, there is still no major improvement, and there is even a regressive situation.

Due to the high-pressure policy of cultural repression implemented by the rulers of the Qing Dynasty, the large-scale destruction and banning of books, and a series of military books left by the Ming Dynasty, such as "Wubei Zhi" and "Fire Attack and Strategy", became banned one after another, so that on the eve of the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty's artillery casting, which had lost the guidance of scientific theory, fell into a serious regressive situation.

"Cast cannons? This matter has not yet succeeded, and the three-thousand-pound cannon last time also knew that it was empty. Mo Zigan's face turned red when he heard this, and he immediately shook his head. What he had learned from his master was to make birds, and cannon casting belonged to another category, which even his teacher was not good at. At the beginning, the master once sighed in front of him, the fire gun is not as powerful as the artillery. The best cannon casting master in the Qing Dynasty was Sun Yuanhua, but unfortunately this master couldn't be a man, and was later framed and unjustly killed by Shoufu Wen Tiren, which made the Qing artillery casting no longer progress.

At the beginning, the master was very sorry, thinking that if Sun Yuanhua had not died so early, the Qing artillery would have been sharper. It's a pity that since Sun Yuanhua, casting cannons has become a repetitive work of craftsmen, and there is no evolution and improvement. Even so, there are not many people who know how to cast guns, and there are no masters who have fled to the south, so it can be said that the casting skills of the Qing Dynasty have long been lost.

Mo Zigan confessed his past secrets, which also caused Wu Yunlin to sigh for a while, but as a latecomer, he didn't think that he couldn't figure out how to cast a cannon. What is artillery? The cannon is an enlarged firearm, but in order to withstand higher chamber pressure, it requires more exquisite craftsmanship.

The barrel of the gun can be made of wrought iron sheets, but the gun can only be cast from pig iron, and at the same time, air bubbles and impurities must be minimized to withstand greater bore pressure and avoid exploding. Wu Yunlin thought about the artillery of the late Qing Dynasty as seen from the history books, and drew a figure on the ground with a tree branch: "Are you casting such a cannon?" ”

"This ......" Mo Zigan looked at it for a moment and shook his head, "We have never forged it, and now we are casting it according to a few cannons that the adults bought, but they are just bigger." "The guns that Wu Yunlin bought were nothing more than Franc machine guns. The bigger problem is that the larger the cast, the greater the chamber pressure it needs to bear, and the more sensitive it is to defects such as the smoothness of the sand hole bore, which is not just a proportional increase.

Although he did not know how to cast cannons, Wu Yunlin would use simple physics knowledge to make calculations to evaluate the quality of artillery. After looking at the three cannons cast by Mozigan, he knew the problem. Mo Zigan enlarged and cast these three guns according to those old artillery, but because he didn't understand the principle, these cannons were very fragile, and they all blew up during the test cannon, and even sacrificed one person for this.

Wu Yunlin looked at the remnants of the cannons and asked, "Can you pour a pig iron cannon now, let me see the process." ”

"Ah, of course." Mo Zigan immediately commanded several craftsmen to do it. A group of workers began to turn over the sand to make molds. After the gun mold is made, it is directly released from the blast furnace and melted into molten iron. Using a ceramic pipe as a guide, the craftsmen poured molten iron into the sprue until the molten iron overflowed from the sprinkling spout.

All that remained was to wait, and it wasn't until two hours later that the cannon was completely cooled, and the craftsmen broke the sand mold and dragged the cannon out. Wu Yunlin stepped forward to check and shook his head, this cannon was extremely crudely made, not only was there a large number of sand holes in the barrel, but the surface was also pitted. The unevenness of the surface is due to the fact that the sand mold is partially melted by the high-temperature molten iron in the pouring process, causing the sand and gravel impurities to dissolve and mix into the molten iron, which is equivalent to adding impurities to the pig iron cannon in vain, and it is strange if it can withstand high chamber pressure.

Seeing Wu Yunlin shaking his head again and again, Mo Zigan said: "There will be nothing wrong with this process of casting cannons, even if it is the original Qing Dynasty craftsmen who cast cannons." "There must have been other ways to improve the quality of the craftsmen of the Qing Dynasty, but that required a long period of exploration, we didn't have that much time, and the best way was to improve the process." Wu Yunlin is well aware of the bad habits of the ancient craftsmen who left one hand in everything, and if they only rely on the theory of the Year of the Monkey, Ma Yue would not be able to cast a suitable cannon.

"How can it be improved?" Mo Zigan asked.

"I have a solution, but I'll need to get some wax first." Wu Yunlin said.

"Wax? How much? Mo Zigan heard strange how wax was used in the casting cannon.

"As much as a cannon." Wu Yunlin pointed to the obviously scrapped cannon and said.

"So much?" Zhao Kuo's mouth opened wide in surprise: "I'm afraid that so much wax will have to be searched in the entire Zunyi Mansion, otherwise it won't be able to be made up at all." ”

The lost wax method, also known as the "investment method", is a precision casting method for bronze and other metal objects. The method is to make a model of the casting with beeswax, and then fill the mud core with other refractory materials and apply the outer fan. After heating and baking, the wax model is all melted and lost, making the entire casting model an empty shell. Then pour the molten liquid into it, and it will be cast. Objects cast by the lost wax method can be exquisitely clear and have a hollow effect.

The principle of Chinese lost wax casting technology originated from the incineration method, which was first seen in the middle and late Shang Dynasty, and this technology gradually died out after the emergence of the non-normal line lost wax method. The tomb of Zeng Marquis B in Suixian County, Hubei Province, the bronze statue and plate unearthed are the earliest lost wax castings known in China, and the era is in the fifth century BC.

The pit is modeled, the mold material is prepared by wax and butter, the modeling material is lime triad soil and charcoal mud, and the ratio of wax material and copper material used is one to ten. The molten metal is poured through a channel. For large quantities of devices, in order to improve work efficiency, the wax sheet is first embossed on the template to create a pattern, and then spliced into a mold.

Lost wax casting is completed by the conversion of male mold - negative mold - male mold - negative mold - male mold, that is to say, the male mold has undergone three transformations of silver plate - wax model - finished blank.

After instructing Mozigan, everyone left the factory.