Chapter 293 The Birth of Tungsten

In the equipment department, Song Changping took his place with his artillery production team.

After making Song Changping independent, Song Changping only brought the artillery production team that used to follow him.

Standing in front of the blackboard of the Equipment Division, Xiao Ming drew the structure diagram of the flintlock gun.

Both arquebuses and flintlocks are muskets, the only difference being the way the gunpowder is fired.

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

It was just for Xiao Ming that it was no longer necessary to reproduce the arquebus, and the arquebus could not be effective against cavalry in the wild. The firing volume of two rounds in three minutes was just like the three-eyed fire gun of the Guanning Cavalry in the late Ming Dynasty. But two bullets, the rest is hand-to-hand combat, and once the matchlock of the matchlock gun is extinguished, it needs to be re-ignited. At this time, the matchlock gun is no different from the fire stick.

The flintlock gun avoids the situation where the matchlock is extinguished when the matchlock is fired, and has higher stability, which is why the flintlock gun quickly eliminated the matchlock gun.

"In general, the outside of the bolt of the flintlock gun is divided into four parts: the striker, the main spring, the buckle spring, and the gunpowder pool. The striker is used to fix the flint, the main spring provides power for the striker, and the buckle spring is the The iron pieces hit by the flint, and the powder pool is used to preload a small amount of gunpowder to ignite the gunpowder in the barrel."

"And inside the bolt is the trigger, the movement, the sear and the sear spring, the snap reed, the inner main spring, where the trigger is used to fire, the movement holds and releases the power of the main spring, and transmits the power to the striker , the sear is when someone pulls the trigger, engages the movement, and then releases it, the reed is fixedly connected to the cover of the reed on the gunpowder pool, so that the flintlock can withstand the wind and rain, in general, this principle is when When the trigger is pulled to build a strong force on the main spring, the sear engages with the movement. When the trigger is pulled, it pushes the sear forward until it releases the movement and causes the striker to push the flint toward the Front impact."

On the blackboard, Xiao Ming pointed to the structure of the flintlock gun and explained it little by little. Song Changping and the other craftsmen memorized it carefully and engraved all the structure of the flintlock gun in their minds.

At the same time they wrote down the dimensions of the various structures of the flintlock on the blackboard.

In Song Changping's opinion, forging the small parts on the shot is a very troublesome thing, whether it is the striker, the spring, the movement or the trigger.

In general, the entire structure of the flintlock gun was described, and Xiao Ming said at this time: "Now you can raise the difficulty."

"Your Highness, it's the spring, how to make the steel elastic?" Song Changping raised the most important question.

It seemed to him that if the spring could not be made, the flintlock could not be produced.

At this time, Xiao Ming laughed, and he said, "It was not possible at first, but now it is possible."

"Oh, why?" Song Changping asked strangely.

"Do you know why this king is looking for tungsten ore, but has not started to produce flintlock guns?" Xiao Ming asked.

Song Changping and others shook their heads.

Xiao Ming said at this time: "The barrel is only one of the problems, the barrel can be made by hand, but at that time you could only produce arquebuses, not flintlock guns, because there was no spring steel at that time, because spring steel needed Carbon and manganese can only be produced, even if there is a barrel at that time, it will not be of much use, but will waste a lot of manpower and material resources.”

After a pause, Xiao Ming said, "So now you all know why this king has always been paranoid about tungsten ore, not only for knives, but also for spring steel."

Song Changping nodded slowly. As craftsmen, they naturally knew that the gun barrel could be made by using rolled iron. However, the hand-made gun barrel also has drawbacks, that is, the gun barrels made by different craftsmen will have errors, and it is very consume time.

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

Now that there is a lathe, the next step is to carry out assembly-line production. With the precision scale, the standard is formulated to allow the craftsmen to divide the labor and manufacture different parts and finally assemble them, so that the production speed of the flintlock gun can be increased.

After all, using the old-fashioned method, he can't compare with Western countries, or even Japanese countries, because his fief is only 600,000 households, and all his labor comes from limited slaves.

In addition to increasing the degree of mechanization, it is impossible to compete with its own enemies at all.

"His Royal Highness, I will be responsible for this spring steel." Song Changping took the initiative to provoke the most difficult part.

Xiao Ming showed a look of praise, and he said, "If that's the case, let's go find Zhang Liu."

Asking the personnel of the Suifa gun research team to 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 are prepared, just waiting to extract tungsten ore.

"Prepare some charcoal, calcine the tungsten ore powder and charcoal together, and use the iron-making temperature to calcine." In the backyard of the Equipment Division, Xiao Ming found Zhang Liu who was discussing the problem together.

After receiving Xiao Ming's order, Zhang Liu and the craftsmen immediately acted, and they could have been waiting to extract the tungsten.

Based on the current scientific and technological conditions, Xiao Ming can only use the carbon reduction method to extract tungsten. According to historical data, in 1783, the Spaniard Depuja discovered wolframite. In the same year, he obtained tungsten for the first time by reducing tungsten trioxide with carbon. powder, 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 to be used in this era.

Even let his Qingzhou lathe craftsmanship may be side by side with the West, or even surpass it.

After mixing tungsten ore powder and charcoal into the blast furnace heated by the regenerator, Zhang Liu, Xiao Ming and others began to wait.

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

Although these particles are few, it has been demonstrated that the charcoal reduction method successfully extracts tungsten.

"His Royal Highness, are these silver-white particles tungsten?" Zhang Liu asked. When mixing materials, he had never seen such silver-white particles. The only answer was that this kind of thing was tungsten.

Xiao Ming nodded with joy in his eyes. This is another technological breakthrough in Qingzhou. He said, "Yes, this is tungsten, and now we can produce tungsten steel."

Zhang Liu and other craftsmen had a thick smile on their faces, and he immediately said: "Go get a sieve to sieve the tungsten out, and then take some charcoal to continue extracting the tungsten."