China has used gunpowder for military use since the Tang Dynasty. In order to deal with the Mongol Empire that emerged in the north during the Southern Song Dynasty, it even promoted gunpowder weapons. At this time, it had invented its own weapons and firearms. However, due to the insufficient power of the gunpowder formula, the manufacturing materials of firearms are diverse, so firearms during this period can only be used as auxiliary weapons.

The real side of firearms had to start with the peasant war in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. In order to compete for control of Southern China, Zhu Yuanzhang fought with Chen Youliang in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and Zhang Shicheng in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, because Zhu Yuanzhang was the weakest at the time and had no choice but to develop a large number of new weapons such as firearms.

Zhu Yuanzhang used firearms to defeat various peasant separatist forces and drove away the Mongols and established the Ming Dynasty. The establishment of the Ming Dynasty brought the development of our feudal society to a new historical period. At that time, the social economy was very prosperous, agriculture, handicrafts and commerce were extremely developed, overseas trade was very active, new productivity and production relations were in a state of invasion, capitalist factors began to sprout, and scientific and technological progress showed a clear turning point.

All these new and progressive factors provided a material and technical basis for the development of weapons, especially gunpowder and firearms in the Ming Dynasty. In addition, the Ming Dynasty was harassed by the rulers of nomadic tribes for a long time, and the southeast coast was often plundered by Japanese pirates. Therefore, in order to consolidate border defense and fight against foreign invasions, the rulers of the Ming Dynasty attached great importance to national military equipment and attached great importance to gunpowder and firearms. The government and the country regarded firearms as a skill to defend the enemy. In such a historical recollection, gunpowder and artillery in the Ming Dynasty developed rapidly, and the heyday of my country's gunpowder and artillery.

From the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, firearms joined the combat sequence as the main arms of the Ming army, the Shenji Camp of the entire firearm even appeared during the Yongle period. During this period, after hundreds of years of exploration from the Song Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, craftsmen could already use metal as the main material of firearms, and various weapons were emerging one after another, making great contributions to Zhu Yuanzhang's ability to occupy the whole country.

After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court did not stop developing firearms. In the mid-Ming Dynasty, various types of weapons already had the basic characteristics of modern firearms, such as the firearms having a Wangshan, triggers, and cannons having a gun ear and a cannon stand.

During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming army in Guangdong salvaged the Dutch merchant ships sinking in the Pearl River Bay and found that the cannons on them were much more advanced than the cannons they used, so they immediately reported to the court to imitate them. During this period, the technological strength of the Ming Dynasty was not much worse than that of the West, so they quickly imitated this Western cannon. The court specially named it the Red Barbarian Cannon. It was this imitated Red Barbarian Cannon that killed Nurhaci in Ningyuan City, Liaodong.

The Red Cannons were powerful, but the imitation artillery of the Ming Dynasty was still not as powerful as the original ones. There was no way to increase the power and range, so that the most important maneuverability of the artillery would be lost.

This is also impossible. The appearance of the cannon is easy to imitate, but you can’t learn the specific method of casting cannons and the manufacturing of raw materials by imitating them. The method of casting cannons in the Ming Dynasty was still a clay model, which is the process developed from the sand turning method used in ancient China.

The clay model was used in the Western Zhou Dynasty. At that time, it was mainly used to make bronze ware. The principle of the clay model was very simple. First, use a fine sieve to make white mud, remove stones and debris. Then, the evenly blended mud soil was beaten into flat mud pieces, and then wait for the mud pieces to be half-dried and made into several large pieces of mud desert according to the shape of the cast cannon, and then dry it, or bake it on a light fire, trim and fix the defects on the inner surface of the specimen, so as to be as smooth as possible. This became the external model used for casting.

Then use the same process to make the inner range, and the outer range is divided into several parts, and the inner range is a whole. However, it is smaller than the outer range, and the size that is different from the outer range is the thickness of the cannon. It is also true that when the inside and outside are all dry, put the inner range inverted on the base, and then place the outer range around the inner range. After the outer range is closed, seal the outer range with mud. After the mud is dry, cover the closed range cover with at least one pouring hole on the cover.

Then it is cast, inject the melted bronze solution along the pouring hole, wait for the iron to cool down, break the outer and inner phases, take out the cast artillery, and then polish and trim it. This is the production process of the Red Cannon.

This process cannot be said to be bad. The clay model method is simple, and the raw materials can be used locally, which is suitable for large-scale production. However, the clay model method can make bronze ware, but it is not possible to use pig iron with higher temperatures. Because the clay model also contains bubbles in the dark when it drys in the shade. When the iron with a temperature of up to thousands of degrees is poured into the clay model, the bubbles will expand, and bubbles will appear inside the cast gun body, which has a lot of impact on the service life and power of the gun.

The ductility of pig iron is not as good as bronze, and the process inevitably forms sand holes. In order to prevent the blow-off, domestic cannons are made very heavy, so there is a saying that they are thousands of pounds and tens of thousands of pounds of cannons.

There is no such reason for the original cannon salvaged from the sea. Of course, it is not that the Western production process is more advanced, but the West has changed the mud model method to the lost wax method, which greatly reduces the formation of bubbles on the cannon body.

Ma Cheng also does not have the Western method of losing wax, but he will have a simpler craft that is more suitable for China's national conditions. This is the iron model method.

The iron-fan method is also called the iron-molded cannon casting method. The inventor was Gong Zhenlin in the late Qing Dynasty. Gong Zhenlin was the county magistrate of Jiaxing County, Zhejiang Province. He was originally inseparable from the arms industry, but he had a reputation of "being smart and ingenious". During the Opium War, he was transferred to the Ningbo military camp by Yuqian, the governor of Liangjiang, to be responsible for casting cannons.

At that time, the Qing Dynasty was fighting against the Taiping Army, and the front-line cannons were lost and the demand was extremely large. After several tests, Gong Zhenlin finally invented the iron mold casting artillery method.

The iron mold casting method is similar to the mud model method. First, use cooked iron to make a hard mold of appropriate size. When casting a cannon, first brush two layers of slurry on the inner side of each petal of the iron mold. The first layer of slurry is made of fine rice husk ash and fine sand mud; the second layer of slurry is made of high-quality extremely fine kiln coal to mix water. Then, the two petals are combined, tightened with iron hoops, oven heated, and continuous, and finally cast metal melt. After pouring enough molten, cooled and formed, the iron mold is immediately peeled off in the order of the mold petals, as if the bamboo shoot shell is peeled off, gradually exposed the cannon body, and then remove the mud embryo in the center of the cannon, so that the chamber is naturally smooth.

Compared with traditional mud mold cast guns, the advantages of iron mold cast guns lies in the good quality of the cast gun body, smooth inside and outside surface, and unlike mud molds, it will cause bubbles to appear on the gun body. Furthermore, because it does not require hard work to apply mud molds, etc., it is extremely fast in manufacturing and is not affected by the climate. Because the mold can be reused, the production speed is fast, the output is large, and the cost can be suppressed very low. The greater significance lies in standardized manufacturing. Standardized batch production of products with almost exactly the same performance is crucial for artillery.

Ma Cheng's method is more advanced than Gong Zhenlin's. After seeing many time travels in later generations, Ma Cheng decided to adopt the self-tightening method used in later generations during the Civil War.

The first step is to make the outer model like Gong Zhenlin. Then use the traditional clay mold casting method to cast iron internal model, so that it can be used to cast cannons. Because the inner model is also made of iron, the interior is hollow, and there are pipes at both ends for water inlet and drainage.

This time the gun body does not use pig iron, but uses low carbon steel. When the melted metal liquid is poured into the mold, the metal liquid begins to cool slowly. At this time, the water in the inner mold comes in handy. The metal liquid close to the inner mold is first cooled and condensed into steel under the action of water, while the metal liquid on the outer layer cools slowly.

Due to the principle of thermal expansion and contraction, after the entire casting is cooled, the cooled part of the outer layer will tightly clamp the inner layer and cool the part first, so that the entire casting will produce an inward tightening force, which is the force that allows the barrel to withstand greater chamber pressure. This method of internal mold control cooling can have the effect of "self-tightening of the body tube".

The body tube through the self-tightening process of the body tube will greatly extend the service life, which can greatly reduce the thickness of the body tube, reduce the weight, and increase the maneuverability of the artillery.

Of course, this is just a method imagined by Ma Cheng. What to do is still necessary for Song Yingxing to actually operate. Ma Cheng does not have the ability to do it.

At that time, Ma Cheng handed over the drawings and the method of casting cannons he wrote to Song Yingxing. Song Yingxing looked at it and found nothing, but said that he would study it first. This study took three months to study. Ma Cheng had already given up on whether he could produce qualified cannons. Unexpectedly, Song Yingxing sent news at this time and asked Ma Cheng to come. The matter of casting cannons was obvious.

Ma Cheng came to the cannon casting workshop and saw Song Yingxing commanding workers to work hard. The old guy had not seen him gained a lot of weight in a few months. In order to satisfy the old guy, Ma Cheng was as satisfied with the old guy as material conditions as possible. In addition to sending Song Yingxing's two sons to Qian Qianyi as his apprentice, he also spent 500 taels of silver to redeem a priest from the tram and handing it over to the old guy Song Yingxing to ruin it.

However, there is reward for your efforts. The reward now is that Song Yingxing finally created artillery for Ma Cheng.

Although Ma Cheng called old man Song Yingxing in his heart, he dared not be disrespectful on the surface, because this era emphasizes heaven, earth, king, parents and teachers. If you don’t respect your teachers, you will basically not be able to get along in society.

Ma Cheng also had lofty ideals, so although he scolded Song Yingxing in his heart, he still bowed forward and said, "Advisor Ma Cheng, pay homage to the teacher!"

Although it is December, because this is the cannon casting workshop, the temperature inside is still very high. Song Yingxing wiped the sweat from his face and said after seeing Ma Cheng: "Zhong and you are here. This time, I finally live up to everyone's expectations. I will tinker with your iron mold cannon casting method. Today is the first time to cast it, so let you take a look!"

After hearing Song Yingxing say something, Ma Cheng flattered: "The teacher is indeed a talented person. The apprentice is just an idea. He didn't expect it to succeed. He didn't expect the teacher to succeed. The apprentice was so impressed!"
Chapter completed!