ushernet Chapter 674 No Annual Meeting
Chapter 674 No Annual Meeting
Chen Erke had personally witnessed their flintlock cannons from the late 19th century.
Chen Er had drawn up rough diagrams of the flintlock mechanism and bayonet for the masters. He knew the principle of the flintlock mechanism, but he didn't know the specific structure inside.
When I asked the craftsmen if rifling was feasible, they all said it was no problem, but no one said anything about how to adjust the winding pitch.
At this moment, Chen Er recalled a famous video on Bilibili, which showed the entire process of a European and American craftsman handcrafting a musket.
The whole video was breathtaking, but Chen Er only had two things that left a particularly deep impression on him: the master's enchanting skills and the fact that he solved the rifling twist problem with a wooden tool.
Oh, and that shrapnel device.
The carpenter understood immediately after drawing a simple diagram, but how many rifling lines should be drawn?
Among Chen Er's classmates who settled in the United States, some loved collecting firearms. It seemed that some had several rifling grooves, but none had more than six. Let's test it out.
A good habit has formed in the workshop: based on the craftsmen's past experience, they will make whatever they want it to be, and even if they have several methods in mind, they will choose the one they think is the best to put into practice.
If this method fails to achieve the expected results, the entire plan is often abandoned because of insufficient research funding and the lack of scientific experimental methods.
But it was different in Chen Er's workshop. Disagreements didn't matter. Everyone made the products according to their own ideas first, and then they compared them.
Tang Tong has been here for over a year, and he has been studying the method of casting cannons ever since it was proposed.
But no matter how he improved it, the problem of white cast iron could not be solved. Sometimes a batch of more than a dozen cannons were all white cast iron, and the larger the cannon, the higher the white cast iron rate.
According to caliber standards, the ash yield of artillery pieces exceeding 10 centimeters is extremely low, less than one or two out of ten.
This made Tang Tong feel very uncomfortable. It was a good idea, but it was extremely inefficient. Fortunately, his employer was very supportive and allowed him to experiment with whatever materials he could find.
Although the white mold rate of iron-cast cannons is very high, it has a great advantage: the tolerance of the cannon barrel is extremely small, and each cannon is like it was poured out of the same mold.
In his experiments, Tang Tong discovered that as long as the amount of gunpowder was precisely controlled, the small gap between the shell and the cannon barrel could compensate for some of the differences in power and range.
For the past year or so, Tang Tong has actually been doing extremely well in Liangshan, because no matter what ideas he has, his employer will always say to do a few first and see how it goes.
In the past, Tang Tong could only discuss problems with his father and brothers, but now he has a group of craftsmen working together to find solutions.
Tang Tong knew that the problems with cannon casting mostly stemmed from the iron material and the cooling process, but the owner said it was a chemical problem, claiming that the iron material had reacted with something else.
Chemistry... Chen Er only knew that steel was related to its carbon content, and that alloys were mixtures of metals. He didn't know anything else.
Plain arrows are fine. They're just not as good as gray arrows, but they're not unusable. As long as their range is longer than that of a bow and arrow, Chen Er thinks they'll be useful.
Just kidding, even the worst white-mouthed iron cannon can still easily shoot several hundred meters.
Since casting has a numerical advantage, it should be utilized. Given the current road conditions, using artillery in the field is impractical.
Nowadays, operating a single artillery piece requires several people: aiming, loading propellant, loading shells, and clearing the gun; the most time-consuming part is repositioning.
Since launching a satellite is currently complicated, we need to find a way to simplify it.
The idea that ammunition could be combined into one unit excited the craftsmen. They could wrap the gunpowder in silk and tie the powder cartridge and the projectile together.
But how do you start it?
Is it difficult to make a fuse? Just mix together scraps of paper, gunpowder, cotton thread... and you'll have a fuse.
How do you put the fuse into the medicine bag? It's simple. Place the fuse inside a hollow bamboo tube, then poke it through the medicine hole to puncture the silk medicine bag, pull out the bamboo tube, and leave the fuse inside.
Since artillery ammunition can be pre-loaded, muskets can naturally be as well.
This three-day meeting directly determined the future path of weapons development.
Heavy matchlock muskets began mass production, but the next step was to skip directly to flintlock rifled muskets with bayonets! Because that would eliminate the need for armor.
The meeting decided to focus all efforts on manufacturing large artillery pieces in the near future, as a war with the Dutch was inevitable.
Artillery production increased because clay molds, iron molds, and machine drilling were carried out simultaneously. Machine-drilled artillery had the best performance, smaller tolerances, and smoother inner walls.
During the experiment, even with three times the amount of propellant, the barrel did not explode, something that cast cannons could not do.
He was so busy every day that he was overwhelmed. The six concubines he had bought were directly turned into secretariats, each in charge of a section, mainly responsible for information collection and organization.
Zheng Yuqing brought her back, but she couldn't stay at home any longer, because Qi Mei had already moved to live at the school, and Chen Er was out early and back late all day, so Zheng Yuqing simply moved to the school as well, where it was much more lively.
The vast majority of the fleet's ships had not been modified, and they had very few cannons. Because the Dutch blockaded the southern shipping lanes, the number of ships passing through Ryukyu, apart from those belonging to the Huaxia Group, decreased significantly.
The Mobile Fleet has three ships that have been modified and equipped with cannons, making it the strongest fleet at present. The Kamikaze and Hirado Fleets each have only one modified ship.
There are plenty of ships; what we need to do now is modify them and then refit them.
That day, Song Yuzai came to report again that more than 5,000 sets of military uniforms had been made, and asked when they could be distributed.
This is the problem caused by the lack of an effective administrative mechanism. Often, Chen Er would ask to do something when he remembered it, but no one would follow up, and over time he would forget about it himself.
The Li Dan Group originally had a very large workforce, but it was not involved in administrative issues. Apart from business matters, almost all other issues were handled autonomously by the subordinates.
Fortunately, a secretarial team had been established, and for more than half a year, these female "college students" from the Ming Dynasty mainly learned new knowledge from Qi Mei.
By the way, because the name Qi Mei'er sounded too delicate, she changed her name to Qi Mei herself.
During the day, I'm busy with various specific tasks, and when I come back in the evening, I start to establish an organizational structure, formulate rules and regulations, and work processes with my secretaries.
Before he knew it, the Spring Festival was almost here. Chen Er realized that this was the first time he had celebrated the New Year in his own home in the Ming Dynasty since arriving there.
How should we spend the Spring Festival? This is the first Spring Festival since the group was established, but the senior executives are scattered all over the country, and it is difficult for them to get together.
In modern times, what company doesn't hold an annual meeting? At least, no large company doesn't hold an annual meeting.
After a busy year, Chen Er wanted to relax. If it weren't for the sudden invasion by the Dutch, his year would have been relatively easy.
Although the company was established, it was impossible for it to get on track immediately. It needed to be observed and worked out. But at this critical moment, it was suddenly discovered that a powerful force was poised to attack from behind.