Steel Dynasty - Chapter 293

[Chapter 293 The Birth of Tungsten]

In the Equipment Department, Song Changping took his seat with his artillery production team.

After making Song Changping independent, Song Changping only brought the artillery production team that had followed him before.

Standing in front of the blackboard in the Equipment Department, Xiao Ming drew the structural diagram of the flintlock gun.

Whether it is a matchlock or a flintlock, both firearms are muskets. The only difference lies in the way the gunpowder is fired.

The matchlock gun is very simple, basically the same as the principle of artillery. As long as the barrel is obtained, this technology is not a problem for Song Changping and others.

It’s just that for Xiao Ming, it is no longer necessary to reproduce the matchlock gun, and the matchlock gun cannot have a good effect against cavalry in the wild. The shooting capacity of two rounds in three minutes is just like the three-eyed fire blunderbuss of Guan Ning’s cavalry in the late Ming Dynasty. But after two bullets, the rest is hand-to-hand combat, and once the matchlock’s match goes out, it needs to be relit. At this time, there is no difference between the matchlock and the fire stick.

The flintlock gun avoids the situation where the matchlock goes out when shooting, and has higher stability. This is why the flintlock gun quickly eliminated the matchlock gun.

“In general, the outside of the bolt of a flintlock gun is divided into four parts: the hammer, the main spring, the buckle spring, and the gunpowder tank. The hammer is used to fix the flint, the main spring provides power for the hammer, and the buckle spring is The iron piece struck by the flint and the gunpowder pool are used to preload a small amount of gunpowder to ignite the gunpowder in the barrel. “

The gun also has a trigger, a movement, a sear and a sear spring, a buckle spring, and an inner main spring. The trigger is used to fire, the movement maintains and releases the power of the main spring, and transmits the power to the hammer. When someone pulls the trigger, the sear engages the movement and then releases it. The buckle spring is fixedly connected to The spring-loaded cover on the powder tank allows the flintlock bolt to withstand wind and rain. Generally speaking, this principle is that when the trigger is pulled to gather strong force on the main spring, the sear will engage with the movement after the trigger is pulled. It will push the blocking iron forward until it reaches the position where the movement can be released, and the striking iron will push the flint forward to impact.”

On the blackboard, Xiao Ming pointed at the structure of the flintlock gun and explained it bit by bit. Song Changping and other craftsmen were serious about it. Memory, all the structure of the flintlock gun is engraved in the mind.

At the same time, they noted the dimensions of each flintlock structure on the blackboard.

In Song Changping’s view, forging the small parts on this gun is a very troublesome thing, whether it is the hammer, spring, movement or trigger.

After generally speaking about the entire structure of the flintlock gun, Xiao Ming said: “Now you can raise the difficult points.”

“Your Highness, the problem is still with the spring. How to make the steel elastic?” Song Changping raised the most important question. .

In his opinion, if the spring cannot be made, the flintlock gun cannot be produced.

At this time, Xiao Ming laughed and said, “Originally it was not possible, but now it is possible.”

“Oh, why?” Song Changping asked strangely.

“Do you know why I am looking for tungsten mines but have not yet started producing flintlock guns?” Xiao Ming asked.

Song Changping and others shook their heads.

Xiao Ming said at this time: “The barrel is just one of the problems. The barrel can be made by hand, but at that time you could only produce matchlock guns, not flintlock guns, because there was no way to have spring steel at that time, because spring steel required Elements like carbon and manganese can only be produced. Even if there is a gun barrel at that time, it will not be of much use. Instead, it will waste a lot of manpower and material resources.”

After a pause, Xiao Ming said: “So now you know why I have always been obsessed with tungsten. It’s not just for the knives, it also comes with spring steel materials.”

Song Changping nodded slowly. As craftsmen, they naturally knew how to use rolled iron to make gun barrels, but hand-made guns .

The barrel also has disadvantages, that is, barrels made by different craftsmen will have errors and are very time-consuming.

The structure of the flintlock gun was explained clearly, and Xiao Ming asked Song Changping to assign tasks to his team.

Now that we have lathes, we need to carry out assembly line production. Precision scales are available. Standards are formulated to allow craftsmen to divide labor into different parts for final assembly. This can increase the production speed of flintlock guns.

After all, he couldn’t compare with Western countries or even Japan using the old methods, because his fiefdom had a population of only 600,000 households, and all his labor came from limited slaves.

Apart from improving the level of mechanization, we simply cannot compete with our enemies.

“Your Highness, I will be responsible for the spring steel.” Song Changping took the initiative to provoke the most difficult part.

Xiao Ming showed a look of praise and said, “In that case, let’s go find Zhang Liu.”

Let the members of the flintlock research team each be responsible for their own accessories. Xiao Ming and Song Changping found Zhang Liu.

Now the molds for boring machine tools, milling machine tools and drilling machine tools have been prepared, just waiting to extract the tungsten ore.

“Prepare some charcoal and calcine the tungsten ore powder and charcoal together at the same temperature as iron-making.” In the backyard of the Equipment Department, Xiao Ming found Zhang Liu who was discussing the problem together.

After receiving Xiao Ming’s order, Zhang Liu and the craftsmen took action immediately. They had been waiting to extract tungsten.

Based on the current scientific and technological conditions, Xiao Ming can only use carbon reduction method to extract tungsten. According to historical data, the Spanish discovered wolframite ore in 1783. In the same year, he used carbon to reduce tungsten trioxide and obtained tungsten for the first time. Pink and name the element.

Therefore, it is feasible for Xiao Ming to use the carbon reduction method. Although the purity of tungsten extracted by this method is not high, it is more than enough for use in this era.

It may even make his lathe technology in Qingzhou equal to or even surpass the West in one fell swoop.

The tungsten ore powder and charcoal were mixed and poured into the blast furnace heated by the regenerator, and Zhang Liu, Xiao Ming and others began to wait.

An hour later, while waiting for the blast furnace to cool down, Zhang Liu took out the mixed powder through the reserved opening. At this time, some silver-white particles came out from the black powder.

Although these particles are small, they prove that the charcoal reduction method successfully extracted tungsten.

“Your Highness, are these silver-white particles tungsten?” Zhang Liu asked. When mixing the materials, he had never seen such silver-white particles. The only answer is that this kind of thing is tungsten.

Xiao Ming nodded, with joy in his eyes. This was another technological breakthrough in Qingzhou. He said, “Yes, this is tungsten. Now we can produce tungsten steel.”

The faces of Zhang Liu and other craftsmen were filled with excitement. With a thick smile, he immediately said: “Go and get a sieve to sift out the tungsten, and then get some charcoal to continue extracting tungsten.”

(End of Chapter)