After the New Year, people in Zuozhuang became more energetic.
The Chinese people's wish for their children to become successful has never changed since ancient times.
Years later, without Zuo Menggeng's organization, the villagers spontaneously built schools.
Brick kilns are ready-made.
It was originally used to make refractory bricks, but now it can also be used to make ordinary bricks and tiles.
The recruits of the First Brigade and the General Logistics Brigade are put through a lot of hard work every day, but their progress is visible to the naked eye.
Zuo Menggeng was responsible for teaching officers and readers new literacy, mathematics and other aspects of knowledge. These people then went on to teach the recruits of the two brigades.
Every three to five, the recruits will also have exams and competitions.
Those who learn well are rewarded, and those who do not learn well are disgraced.
This kind of atmosphere makes everyone feel novel and enjoy it.
Seeing that everything was going smoothly, Zuo Mengeng was troubled.
"Qianzuo, we tried to make a gun tube, but it didn't work."
Yang Gui and others looked sad and reported bad news to Zuo Mengeng.
"Why not?"
Weapons are related to the future and combat effectiveness of the army. Zuo Menggeng was extremely nervous and hurried to the firearms manufacturing factory.
The gunsmiths responsible for making gun barrels are all here at this time, and they are all as dejected as eggplants beaten by frost.
"Qianzuo, this gun tube... we can't drill through it."
The person in charge of the firearms factory is Xu Daqian, who has been a gunsmith for decades. Regardless of his craftsmanship, everyone is convinced.
He held an unfinished gun barrel in his hand and showed it to Zuo Mengeng.
Zuo Mengeng took it and looked at it carefully.
The tube wall made of fine steel looks full of texture. I believe that soldiers will feel at ease holding it in their hands and don't have to worry about exploding the barrel.
But Xu Daqian's words puzzled Zuo Mengeng.
"Why can't I drill?"
Xu Daqian took another object, and it was a drill bit.
"The barrel is made of steel, and the drill is also made of steel. We tried our best, but we couldn't drill it in."
Zuo Mengeng was stunned, and then he couldn't help but slap his forehead, dumbfounded by this question.
How were the musket barrels of the Ming Dynasty made?
It is made of two pieces of red-hot and softened wrought iron, wrapped in an iron stile in the middle, and then hammered out bit by bit by a craftsman.
After it was smashed, although there was a hole in the middle, the diameter was too small and could not be used as a gun barrel. So it needed to be expanded with a drill to make it reach a compliant caliber.
Finally, the inner wall of the barrel must be polished smooth before it can be used for musket manufacturing.
Because the drill is made of steel and the gun barrel is made of wrought iron with different hardnesses, although the manual method is still slow, it can be drilled slowly.
Now that the smelting plant has produced steel gun barrels, the gunsmiths have steel drill bits, but they can't start.
Zuo Mengeng thought happily that he had made a steel barrel, which could save the weight of the musket and improve the quality of the musket. But he didn't expect that the craftsmen had nothing to do with such a barrel.
Now that we can't even expand the inner diameter of the barrel, there's no need to think about other things like rifling.
So is there any other way to enable existing drills to drill steel gun barrels?
Judging from the current conditions, there is no such thing.
The best way is of course to use mechanical force to increase the speed of the drill bit to complete this process.
But where can Zuo Mengeng get machinery that reaches the required speed?
There is no steam engine, there is an internal combustion engine.
As for water power…
Zuo Mengeng didn't even need to try it, he rejected it directly.
No matter how much water power is used, the mechanical kinetic energy cannot meet the requirements for drilling the gun barrel.
Furthermore, the kinetic energy provided by the hydraulic drive is not stable, and it is easy to drill the gun barrel askew.
Seeing that Zuo Mengeng was also stumped, Xu Daqian said cautiously: "Qianzuo, actually the wrought iron barrel is enough. We don't corrupt or deduct money here, we use enough materials, and the barrels we make will be fine.
"
One word awakens the dreamer.
Only then did Zuo Mengeng realize that it was his own demonic barrier.
He only thought about maximizing the performance of the weapon as much as possible, but forgot that with today's firearm technology, it is enough to be useful.
Regardless, gunpowder is still black powder.
Even if the quality of black powder is increased to the limit, the potential energy of the explosion will be just that. As long as the quality of the wrought iron barrel is guaranteed, it can withstand it.
Otherwise, the Ming Dynasty would have abandoned firearms made in this way for more than two hundred years.
If the barrel is made of wrought iron again, there will be many benefits.
First, the steel drill bit can rifling the barrel, which satisfies Zuo Mengeng's need for new firearms.
Second, manufacturing costs are greatly reduced.
When Yang Gui and others were making steel, Zuo Mengeng had already calculated the cost.
Good guy, the cost of making a pound of steel is actually five times the cost of the same pound of wrought iron.
The official price for making a musket is two taels of silver. If it were made according to Zuo Mengeng's request, it would cost at least fifteen taels of silver.
Three thousand muskets cost forty-five thousand taels of silver, not counting the cost of supporting bayonets, ammunition, and maintenance tools.
Can't afford it, can't afford it...
"Then just change it back to the wrought iron barrel. But you must maintain the quality and quantity, and there can be no defective products. If I find out, my head will be lost."
While Xu Daqian and others were frightened, they made repeated promises.
"Don't worry, Qianzao. We have enough to eat and earn enough here. How can we be sorry for our own jobs? As long as we can ensure the supply of iron materials, we can make as many blunderbuss as we need."
Anyway, here we are, Zuo Mengeng decided to solve a few more problems.
"For the time being, we can only rely on you to forge blunderbuss by hand. Once the river is opened up, the hydraulic forging machine will be available, and you will have to adapt as soon as possible. Once you have mastered it, we will build more hydraulic forging machines in the river.
Forging machine.”
Compared to the craftsmanship of craftsmen, Zuo Mengeng believes more in machinery.
After all, what we want to create is not a work of art, but a weapon with unified standards.
How to hit the barrel of a gun? Zuo Mengeng had seen these craftsmen working and could still trust them. But there was one problem that he couldn't bear.
"How long does it take you to drill the barrel?"
"You can drill an inch every day, and it will probably be completed in more than a month."
When he said this, Xu Daqian was so proud that he didn't notice Zuo Mengeng's head was full of black lines.
It took him more than a month to complete a barrel...
Yes, he can't do anything else, but he can still find ways to improve this.
Craftsmen in the Ming Dynasty drilled gun barrels not just by hand, but also with drilling machines.
The drill press uses wood as a frame, with a circular stone plate placed on it, much like a stone mill. After attaching a leather strip and pulling it manually, the stone plate can drive the drill bit to rotate.
How efficient can this thing be?
Zuo Mengeng asked Zuo Dai to run back and get paper and pencils, and started drawing in front of everyone.
"Can this drill press be made?"
As an arms expert, Zuo Mengeng has too much relevant knowledge in his memory.
He found a set of simple rifling machine drawings and drew them.
This rifling machine is also used manually and has a very simple structure.
The rear part of the machine is a large hand-cranked wheel. This can be made of iron and just needs a crank handle.
There is a connecting rod on the runner, which looks a bit like a steam train wheel.
The other end of the linkage rod is connected to a vernier buckle that can move forward and backward. The buckle is integrally clamped on the rifling machine. Once the wheel is turned, the buckle will move back and forth within a fixed distance.
Above the buckle, there is an iron piece that is low in front and high in the back. There is a long hollow in the middle of the iron piece, and a mechanism is hung to connect to the buckle below.
On the side of this mechanism, there is a row of gear-like structures that fit tightly with the gears on the buckle.
When the buckle moves forward and backward, the gear will interact with the mechanism and start to rotate.
The other end of the gear is connected to the drill bit. This force is used to drill and carve rifling for the barrel.
In order to input more force, Zuo Mengeng changed the crank handle on the runner and replaced it with a bicycle pedal.
In this way, the device that originally required hand cranking can be moved with feet, saving time and effort.
A group of craftsmen gathered in front of the drawings and marveled.
They could not understand what they were reading, so they had to pull Zuo Menggeng to ask for advice.
After discussing for more than two hours, everyone agreed that it would not be difficult to create this rifling mechanism.
Zuo Mengeng was not so reassured, because he knew that even though this was just a small rifling machine, it could be manufactured with today's technology. But along with the rifling machine, there would be a complete set of process standards.
"Whether you can put the gun barrel in, there are size requirements. So when you make the gun barrel, you must ensure that the size is consistent."
While Xu Daqian and other gunsmiths looked troubled, Zuo Mengeng looked at Yang Gui.
"Have you finished the ruler and vernier caliper?"
Yang Gui nodded quickly and asked his apprentice to get it.
When Zuo Menggeng was determined to build weapons, he knew that standardization was an issue that could not be ignored.
The units of length used by the ancients, such as steps, inches, feet, and feet, are really not standard enough. The only way is to unify weights and measures.
Therefore, when the first furnace of steel was smelted, Zuo Mengeng, apart from asking Yang Gui and others to make a few blowpipes for the glass side, the rest were used to make measuring tools.
Steel rulers, vernier calipers, balance scales, etc. were all created.
As a pragmatist, Zuo Menggeng didn't struggle at all and directly came up with the concepts of meters, decimeters, centimeters and millimeters.
At the same time, he also told the craftsmen that whoever can come up with methods and tools for measuring smaller units will receive a heavy reward.
The length of a meter is the distance he takes one step.
After Yang Gui and others took it back, they divided it into equal parts, and then they got decimeters, centimeters and millimeters.
This standard is of course different from the accepted standards of later generations, but that doesn't matter.
Anyway, he was the first to set this standard, and people in later generations can only follow his standards.