So at that time many poor people in England searched along the roads for the fallen horseshoes of horses, and then sold them to the craftsmen who made firearms, and the price was ten shillings for one hundred pounds and one quintal, which was indeed a relatively difficult livelihood - under normal circumstances it took twenty-eight pounds to make a barrel of this kind of horseshoe nail. In other words, the material cost of one barrel is two and a half shillings.

This price is simply cheaper than the price of casting Lu Mi Gong under Dong Ce's hands now.

One pound is twenty shillings, that is, the cost of materials for casting one barrel is one eighth of a pound sterling.

So in the Ming Dynasty, how much was a pound converted into the value system of the Ming Dynasty?

This cannot be calculated by the proportion of the price of the pound and silver in the later generations, because the pound in the later generations was far less valuable than the pound sterling in the Ming Dynasty.

In ancient England, a pound was a pound of silver. In fact, in the early days, the pound sterling was not used as a coinage symbol, but as a unit of silver. Because this unit is really large, ordinary people don't need it at all.

After the British pound became a regular currency, the value of the currency has also changed many times throughout history. The Tudor dynasty used ninety-two-fifths of silver before, and a pound was about three hundred and sixty grams. During the reign of Henry VIII of the Tudor dynasty, the troy system was gradually introduced, and a pound was about 373 grams. In 1544, the definition of the pound sterling currency was changed to 33.3 percent silver and 66.7 percent copper.

According to the calculation before the restructuring, one pound is three hundred and forty-five grams of sterling silver. And one tael of silver in the Ming Dynasty is equivalent to thirty-seven grams, and there are naturally impurities in the silver of the Ming Dynasty, which is also 92.5 percent of the impurities, so one pound is exactly equivalent to ten taels of silver. Two and a half shillings, or one-eighth of a pound sterling, is equivalent to one tael and two and a half cents of silver.

And Dong Ce's subordinates now need to consume ninety catties of iron to build a Lumi gun, one catty of refined iron is one cent, two or three cents of silver, and ninety catties is almost less than one or two taels of silver.

But the problem is that now it's after the restructuring.

After the restructuring, silver accounted for only one-third of a pound, and copper was obviously not so valuable in Europe.

In this way, the cost of British craftsmen to build the barrel is less than half of that of Dong Ce's men. And Dong Ce is almost predictable, the quality of the barrels made by others will not be inferior to his own at least - after all, except for Spain, Britain is ahead of Europe in this era in the level of barrel manufacturing.

For the British craftsmen who made muskets, they would have a round iron ring with a diameter of about six to seven inches and a thickness of about an inch. The cleaned horseshoe nails are stuffed tightly in the iron ring, then put in the furnace to burn to the point of white heat, and then take them out and forge them, and repeat this process until the horseshoe nails become a dense iron block, and when the nails are connected together, the iron ring must be removed, otherwise it will never be removed again.

These pieces of iron then became the blanks for forging the barrel.

The next step is to forge the iron into a long strip of iron according to the length of the barrel, the length of the iron plate is slightly larger than the length of the barrel, the thickness of the iron plate is basically uniform, the width of one end used as the tail of the barrel is about four inches, and the width of the end used as the muzzle is two and a half inches. The wider end acquires a greater thickness during the rolling, which ensures that the tail of the barrel can withstand the impact of gunpowder explosions.

The anvil used to forge the barrel is different from that used by ordinary blacksmiths, the biggest difference is that the anvil used to forge the barrel has a series of grooves with a semicircular cross-section, and these grooves act as simple molds in the process of forging the barrel. When forging, the iron plate is first heated to a red-hot temperature, then it is forged into a groove, and then a hardened iron rod that is used as a mandrel is placed in it, and the iron plate is rolled into a closed cylinder. The diameter of the mandrel is smaller than the diameter of the actual barrel.

The rolled finished barrel was in the muzzle part, and there should have been a half-inch overlap on both sides of the iron plate, which was to prepare for the forging welding later. The process of forging and welding is not complicated, first the barrel is heated to a white-hot temperature, and then the position of the weld is repeatedly hit with a hammer, and the striking action must be brisk. This process must be repeated because only two to three inches of welding can be done per heat. If the barrel is found to be bent during welding, it must also be corrected at any time with the grooves on the anvil.

The process of welding is drilling, and the drilling steps are far more complicated than those described by Song Yingxing in Tiangong Kaiwu, which is usually not completed at one time, but is completed sequentially through a set of drill bits with gradually increasing diameters. This reduces the amount of cutting force required during the drilling process, which can break the drill bit or drill pipe and lead to the scrapping of the entire barrel. Even so, the process of drilling still generates heat - Joule's law was inspired by the heat generated by cannon drilling. Heating causes deformation of the barrel and must be controlled. The method of control is also very simple: wrap a water-soaked cloth around the barrel and change it frequently.

After the drilling is completed, the inspection is qualified, and after the subsequent finishing, a barrel is considered complete.

It sounds complicated enough, and it is even more difficult to operate in practice, but Dong Ce feels that it seems to be easier than building Lu Mi Gong under his own hands.

Since it is not cast by a specification, but built by people, it is naturally normal for there to be some discrepancies in the length of the time, not to mention, the regulations and inspections for this during the Wanli Dynasty may not be as strict as the current inspection system under Dong Ce on the construction of the Thermal Weapons Group.

However, it is necessary to have the same caliber, after all, no matter the length of the shot, the lead bullets fired are uniformly cast, and it is impossible to tailor the lead bullets for everyone. At this point, the craftsmen are still very qualified.

The barrel is thin in the front and thick in the back, but in fact, the diameter of the inside is the same size, but the thickness of the outer wall is different, and the end of the barrel is as big as an adult man's fist.

I don't know how today, seeing these big guns, these things popped up in Dong Ce's mind. Maybe it's been so long ago that he has completely forgotten when he saw it, or maybe one day in his previous life, he glanced at it boringly when he was browsing the forum, and then forgot it, and he thought he had completely forgotten it, in fact, these things have always been sealed in his brain.

Dong Ce suddenly sounded this stubble, and immediately wondered if he should also find someone to collect the horseshoe. If you use a horseshoe to make the barrel, the amount of iron used should be greatly reduced. But to think about it is to shake your head, the Ming Dynasty originally had fewer horses, where did so many horseshoes come from?

In addition to these four big guns, there is also a bag of lead bullets, which Zhao Mancang found by rummaging through the cabinets, and it is not easy to find them, and finally found them at the bottom of a large box, and I don't know how many years they have been sealed. Fortunately, because it is sealed in the box, it is still very complete, and it is all lead bullet, which is not easy to rust, so after wiping, it is as neat as new.

For this bag of lead bullets, Dong Ce paid another ten taels of silver - Zhao Mancang saw that Dong Ce was very concerned about these big guns, so he sometimes asked for a price, which means that if you don't add some more, even if this big pole is rotten here, you won't be allowed to take it away. Dong Ce had no choice but to pinch his nose and admit it.

But the silver is nothing in terms of the benefits.

There were about 50 pieces of lead bullet in this bag, and each one weighed more than 10 taels, that is, about 380 grams.

As for gunpowder, it doesn't need to be given alone, Dong Ce got a large amount of gunpowder from Zhao Mancang this time, and the fire rope and primer propellant, etc., can be used universally.

After the inspection, Dong Ce asked a few family members to carry the big wooden box and walk outside the warehouse.

He also had to really check the power of these big guns.

While walking out, Dong Ce pondered for a moment, glanced at Liu Daku and Su Dacheng next to him, quickened his pace, and beckoned, "You two come here." ”

"Yes." The two knew that something must be wrong with him, and hurriedly followed.

Dong Ce walked forward for a while, glanced back at the two of them, and said, "How many small partitions is our warehouse area divided into now?" The partition that refers to is only a large category, such as grain, which is a category, silver, which is also a category, and cotton, which is also a category, so you can count it. ”

Liu Daku and Su Dacheng glanced at each other, but Liu Daku spoke, he was obviously more familiar with this, and said: "If you go back to your lord, if you calculate it in this way, there are a total of fifteen kinds of big categories, and some small ones are not counted among them." ”

"Fifteen kinds, not less."

Dong Ce muttered to himself and said, "In the future, the boundary of our Rock Fort will become bigger and bigger, there will be more and more people, and the materials will become more and more abundant, and this warehouse area will become bigger and bigger, and the things will naturally be more complete." Now there are fifteen kinds, which looks like a lot, and by that time, I'm afraid there are more than twenty or thirty kinds. ”

"This warehouse area has to be renamed, and it can't be called a warehouse all day long, and sometimes it's called an arsenal, which is too small to be called." Dong Ce asked, "Do you have any ideas?" It's nice, it's grand enough, and it's loud enough. "This ......" The two big-character generations looked at each other, how could they have the leisure to think about this? If I think about it temporarily, I can't think of anything famous at all, so I honestly shook my head and said that I don't know. Dong Ce thought for a while, and said: "Let's call it the seventy-two treasury, go back and find the carpenters to make a plaque and hang it, it will be bigger and magnificent." These seventy-two does not mean that there are only seventy categories of things in the future library, but that there are many of them. The names of the small libraries and sub-libraries in these seventy-two treasury can be done by the heavenly stems and the earthly branches. ”

One

%77%77%77%2e%64%75%30%30%2e%63%63/