According to the agreement, both sides have half a month to prepare, and the game will officially start half a month later.
Anthony said that he couldn't install the machine tool to drill the barrel by himself, and he needed someone to help him.
Chen Yue assigned him ten blacksmiths as assistants.
Of course, to be fair, he also gave Liu San the same ten people.
Liu San was so happy that he personally selected the ten best blacksmiths in the Ordnance Department.
Everyone was a good hand at making gun barrels.
In order to ensure the fairness of the competition, Chen Yue announced that the winning team would each receive a bonus of ten taels of silver.
This decision suddenly eliminated Liu San's other thoughts.
He had wanted to secretly order the few people assigned to Anthony to manipulate the game, but now for the sake of the bonus, no one would listen to him anymore.
Only Chen Yue knew that this was not a fair competition at all.
One party used a machine tool to drill the barrel, while the other party made it purely by hand.
The technical skills were beyond what manpower could make up for.
But Chen Yue's purpose in setting up this competition was to see Anthony's abilities and force him to use all his abilities.
At present, the technology of the Ming Dynasty has lagged far behind the West.
Take firecrackers as an example.
The firecrackers made by Ming craftsmen are far behind Western muskets in terms of range and accuracy.
Otherwise, Zheng Chenggong would not have led an army of 20,000 to defeat the Ming Dynasty twenty years later.
Although he was a member of the army, he was unable to break the castle held by the Dutch and had to rely on siege for eight months to force the defenders to surrender.
The Dutch numbered less than a thousand, while Zheng's army numbered tens of thousands.
Zheng's army naturally also had firecrackers and artillery, but their range and power were far behind those of the Dutch.
Of course, the Dutch castle is strong and is not conducive to the attacking side on the island, which is another reason.
Chen Yue was determined to build a powerful army, exterminate the bandits, expel the Manchus, and spread the power of the Ming Dynasty across the world.
In this era of combining hot and cold weapons, if you want to build a strong army in a short time, you can only rely on the development of firearms to make up for the shortcomings of soldiers' personal combat skills and physical fitness.
When developing firearms, it is natural to learn from the strengths of Western firearms.
The current technology of the Ming Dynasty is not too far behind that of the West.
It is not as big as the gap will be two hundred years later.
It does not take much time to catch up.
Another purpose of establishing this competition is to make Ming craftsmen aware of their own gaps.
In fact, the people of the Ming Dynasty are not like the Manchus, who are closed to the outside world but still think that they are the emperor of heaven.
They were beaten to the throne by the Western powers but still call them barbarians.
The people of the Ming Dynasty are actually very willing to learn advanced technology, as long as they see the advancement of others. , don’t mind taking it and using it.
For example, the Hongyi cannon, after seeing the power of Western cannons, they immediately began to imitate them.
Blacksmiths such as Liu San made gun barrels entirely by hand, and they have been doing this work so far.
There is actually nothing to prepare for.
It’s Anthony who needs to prepare.
After all, machine tools need power to work.
The steam engine has not been invented yet, and electricity is out of the question.
The power of machine tools needs to rely on human power, animal power, or water power.
This machine tool on the verge of elimination at the Portuguese Arsenal in Macau is driven by water power.
Hydraulic drive naturally requires water.
Fortunately, there is a stream in the valley of the Ordnance Department.
At Anthony's request, Chen Yue ordered hundreds of people to be recruited and spent ten days building a dam upstream of the stream to block the river water.
The water flow became turbulent, forming a drop of ten meters high.
At the same time, according to the drawings provided by Anthony, the Carpenter Battalion of the Ordnance Department built a waterwheel.
Of course, this waterwheel was not used to lift water, but relied on the impact of water flow to generate power and drive the machine tool to rotate through the connection of wooden bearings.
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Such hydraulic machinery was not uncommon in the Ming Dynasty.
Making such a waterwheel would not be a problem for the Ordnance Department.
It took ten days to install the machine tool, but when he saw the iron material provided by the Ordnance Department, Anthony frowned again, thinking that the quality of the iron material was extremely poor and not suitable for making gun barrels.
So at Anthony's request, another blast furnace was erected by the stream and began to resmelt the iron.
There are a lot of iron ores in the Ming Dynasty, but high-quality iron ore is not enough.
After iron smelting, when making iron tools, the blacksmith door needs to be forged repeatedly to drive out the dross in the iron material, so that good iron tools can be obtained.
The iron tools and weapons of the Ming Dynasty were all made in this way, as were the barrels of firecrackers.
However, using a machine tool to drill a gun barrel requires drilling uniform holes in the iron rod, not forging, so the quality of the iron rod is extremely important and requires high-quality iron materials.
Of course Chen Yue himself didn't know how to make iron, but there were people in the Ordnance Department who did, such as blacksmiths such as Liu San and Pan Xuezhong and Chen Yujie.
According to Pan Xuezhong, the blast furnace built by Anthony was a common refining furnace in Europe, and its style was slightly different from that of the Ming Dynasty.
It took five days to set up the blast furnace.
During this period, Anthony made some more molds.
The half-month preparation time mentioned by Chen Yue was up, and the competition officially began.
Liu San led several of his men and divided them into three groups.
The iron furnace lit up a raging flame, put the iron materials into the fire to calcine, and then began to forge them.
The process of making a gun barrel by hand is like this.
First, beat the iron block into a thin and uniform iron sheet, then roll the iron sheet on a round iron bar, and then weld the edges.
The whole process requires a small hammer.
It requires immense patience and superb skills to make it, and the speed is extremely slow.
A good blacksmith can make a barrel in half a month, and the speed is not slow.
Of course, some blacksmiths in workshops under the Ministry of War, due to extremely poor remuneration and deductions from their superiors, would spend a few days beating a gun barrel just to cope with their errands, but such a musket could not be used at all.
In the Pingnan Army, the quality requirements for fire blunderbuss are extremely high, and such situations as blasting and boring are absolutely not allowed to happen.
The Ordnance Department has regulations to strictly control the quality.
If there is a problem with the made fire blunderbuss, the maker will be held accountable.
Craftsman's Responsibility.
This time, the competition was not only about the speed of making firecrackers, but also the quality.
Liu San didn't dare to play any tricks.
While making the barrel of the gun, Liu San actively paid attention to the situation of his opponents and often sent people to the river.
On the third day, Liu San showed a satisfied smile when he saw that the iron block under the hammer had been beaten into thin and uniform iron sheets.
"Third brother, third brother," Qiu Ba, the subordinate sent to investigate the enemy's situation, returned.
"How is it?"
Liu San asked quickly.
"There seems to be something wrong with the red-haired ghost smelting iron.
He is jumping on his feet and muttering curses," his subordinate Qiu Ba reported with a smile.
"Hahaha" Liu San looked up to the sky and laughed, "Drilling a gun barrel is something I have never heard of.
The red-haired ghost is fooling around, and Lord Marquis is actually accompanying him."
"Qiu Ba, how can you understand the red-haired ghost swearing?
Do you understand the language of birds?"
Another subordinate smiled and cursed.
"I couldn't understand what he was mumbling, but I secretly asked Mr.
Chen, Secretary of the Ministry of War, that there was something wrong with the iron smelting."
Qiu Ba said with a smile
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