Liu Hong gradually patted the cannon with the hilt of his sword, and his voice was obviously much brighter than the previous iron cannon.

Zhang Feng behind him praised the overturned cannon, which was only cast and polished the night before yesterday, and he didn't fire a few shots at all.

And helplessly, he just overturned the car, and he was caught by the big stall head and boss.

"Well, it's a lot farther than the Furlong cannon, two hundred yards farther than the redcoat cannon, it's not bad!" Liu Hongjian finally praised a little.

In fact, Liu Hongjian is still very satisfied, after all, the Europeans started from scratch, and constantly improved, and it took two hundred years to gradually eliminate the old-style mortar.

And these Ming craftsmen, who have never seen a cannon, have realized the transformation of their families for two hundred years in just one month.

Although his cannon paper and open-hearth steelmaking method is the key, if there are no these Ming craftsmen and let him tinker by himself, it is estimated that he will not be able to make it until the New Year.

The Ming artillery is too backward, this mortar is the main gun of the Ming Dynasty, this kind of cannon has a short body, a large firing angle, a low muzzle velocity, and a short firing range.

If you want to shoot far, you can only increase the dose of gunpowder, and in order to prevent the bore from exploding, you can only thicken the cannon body, which is extremely inconvenient to move, and the effect of field warfare is also very small.

The large Hongyi cannon that Jianyu engaged in a few days ago is an example.

The newly developed cannon is a typical field gun, and the material is still made of steel, which does not need such a thick gun body, which greatly reduces the weight of the gun body.

With the addition of the gun carriage and the front carriage, only three or two horses in parallel were needed to keep up with the speed of the infantry.

Coupled with its ultra-long range, it is simply a must-have weapon for conquering cities.

"But it can still be improved, for example, this gunpowder, isn't our musket a fixed load?" Liu Hong gradually finished halfway through his words.

"Your Excellency, do you mean that this method can also be used for the gunpowder of this artillery?

Well, this method is good, the quantitative gunpowder can not only stabilize the range, but also speed up the reload, and the adult is really a god! Song Yingxing instantly understood the trick in the meantime, and did not forget to shoot the fart.

"It's not enough! Look at these projectiles, or solid iron balls, how can this lethality work?

For example, can we replace it with a cylindrical-conical shell, will this become more lethal?

And if the material of this projectile is also replaced with steel, will it be more interesting? ”

Liu Hong gradually drew inferences from one another, and stunned Song Yingxing and Zhang Feng behind him.

Why do you feel that Grandpa Guo seems to know how to make cannons better than us?

"My lord, it's not impossible to make the cannonballs look like you said, but if you want to change the material to steel, I'm afraid it's a little difficult......

Iron round projectiles have been used for hundreds of years, and that is proven in practice.

The first point is not good, the hardness of the iron is not enough, the lethality is not as great as imagined, and the accuracy is difficult to control, and the distance between the shell and the gun body is too large or too small......

This is not the most important thing, after all, the second gear head has been improved with vernier calipers, and the accuracy problem is okay.

But the hardest part is this steel!

Ordinary firewood or coal and stone cannot make good steel, and in the words of later generations, the temperature or heat energy of wood and coal is not enough, and iron smelting is not satisfactory, let alone steel.

If you want to make steel, you must first heat and purify the coal and stone, dry distill, refine coke, and then use coke to make steel, and the heat generated by coke combustion is several times that of raw coal, so as to make good steel with qualified carbon content.

In the final analysis, the equipment can't keep up, not to mention the steel, it's the coke, which has already made these artillery craftsmen very troubled.

Although there was a full set of illustrations, it took them some time to refine enough coke to produce a single cannon, and the coke production was so low that it curbed the refining of steel.

It was precisely because of this that it took them a full month to forge the only cannon.

The hardships are not enough for outsiders.

"I don't care about my country, I want you to speed up the test of this cannon, and find out the maximum effective range and maximum endurance of this cannon.

A crosshair was also added to improve accuracy, and the shells were to be replaced with steel shells with cylindrical cones.

In short, the national government wants you to speed up, and the coke is not enough, so add manpower, equipment, and silver!

Do you understand that your country wants a lot of artillery and a lot of shells? ”

Time is running out, this cannon is not advanced, the Europeans have used it for hundreds of years, maybe the howitzer has been tinkered with.

Therefore, he had to invest more energy, manpower and silver, but fortunately, the Europeans certainly did not have steel at present, and even if there was steel, the purity of the steel would not be able to achieve the effect of the coke open-hearth steelmaking method.

After all, this is the result of the first industrial revolution, and this is more than 100 years before the industrial revolution in Europe.

"My lord, there is not enough money in the account......" Song Yingxing whispered inappropriately.

Recently, the expenses have been a bit large, and the various workshops of the Ordnance Institute are expanding, and the number of research projects is also increasing.

In addition to the fact that the migrant workers never stopped working, two miles outside the armory, rows of houses rose from the ground, and these houses were to be used for the families of the craftsmen and the workers.

If you are not a producer, you will not understand how much R&D expenditure and effort it takes to build a weapon from scratch

Silver is needed everywhere, and the entire ordnance station is like a bottomless pit, constantly investing, developing, and reinvesting......

"Don't worry about the silver, don't you have to worry about it, doesn't the household still owe us 300,000 taels? The prince will look for them in a while!

Well, if it's not enough, the Duke of Japan will go to the emperor to ask for it, and he still has a lot of silver in his inner pocket......"

Liu Hong gradually looked at the direction of the imperial city and smiled maliciously.

The little silver he got from Shanxi was long gone, plus the hundreds of thousands of taels injected by Uncle Chongzhen more than a month ago, alas, he can't make ends meet!

Song Yingxing and Zhang Feng stayed on the spot, daring to love the most difficult silver to earn in their eyes, in the eyes of Grandpa Guo, this household is a money bag.

And His Majesty the Great and Wise Emperor is another money bag...... This is so terrifying that I can't imagine it!

Over the next few days, Liu stayed at the ordnance office with nothing to do, overseeing the production of grenades, as well as the refining of coke and steel.

Fortunately, after a few days of proficiency, the production has gradually stabilized at 3,000 pieces per day.

And this cannon, for several days, only one was made.

Just when Liu Hong was gradually worried about the output of steel, the family of Anguo Mansion stumbled.

"Sir! Master! Raw! Madame is born! It's a son...... "This Ding dismounted at the door of the armory, and his feet were unsteady and he fell.

But he ignored the pain in his body and shouted at Liu Hong in the courtyard.

"I'm a dad?" Liu Hong gradually became stunned for a moment.