Chapter 129 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Second update, please subscribe)

Facts have proved that if men are strong enough, they don’t need to eat leeks to replenish their bodies.

However, for the country, it is still possible to harvest leeks.

Of course, if we harvest more leeks, it will also be good for the country!

Why is the United States so powerful that it is being exploited all over the world?

Facts have proved that the way to make a country strong is to cut down on the Philippines’ vegetables.

When your own skills are not good enough, you need to cut the leeks even more. Of course, some leeks are more stubborn, especially Western leeks, and may not be willing to be cut. But even so, you have to find a way to cut them.

For example, for a "leek" like Storm, even if you know that guy is not a good leek and looks down on the Chinese in his heart, you can't just kick him out. After all, there are too few Zhang butchers in Nanhua. Kick out Zhang butcher, although you won't be able to eat hairy pigs, it will definitely affect Nanhua's technological development.

Sooner or later, all those bastards will be kicked out!

But before that, we have to squeeze out all his value! Only in this way can we do him justice.

However, not all Westerners are bastards. There are always some good people. Smith, the chief engineer of the ammunition factory, is a good guy. He was an engineer sent by the manufacturer when Buffett ordered ammunition production equipment from the United States. He was responsible for guiding the installation and production of equipment and training workers. At that time, all factories would have similar on-site training services when receiving orders.

Among those ammunition production equipment, there are two sets of equipment for producing rimfire bullets. This set of equipment includes nearly 60 machines such as rolling machines, extruders, and shrinking machines, but these equipment are not suitable for the production of new centerfire bullets.

After learning about Zhu Xianhai's design, Smith immediately led his fellow engineers and technicians to modify one of the equipment and added several more devices including a primer machine. After nearly half a year, thanks to the efforts of Smith and his colleagues, the Nanhua Arsenal finally produced the world's first batch of center-fire bullets.

"That's it!"

Looking at the bullet with a bottle-shrunken diameter and as thick as his thumb in his hand, Zhu Xianhai seemed a little excited.

"With it, we can definitely conquer this grassland."

However, before he could get over his excitement, the production of the new bullet was discontinued during the trial production period.

The reason for discontinuation of production is not because of the poor performance of the bullet.

In fact, this new .56.45 caliber bullet dazzled everyone with its excellent performance as soon as it was tested. The 14.22 mm thick and 32 mm long bottleneck cartridge case is enough to hold 2 grams of propellant. Although it is not as good as a rifle, it can allow a 15-gram 11.43 mm caliber bullet to reach an initial velocity of 320 meters. The effective range for human targets is close to 500 meters, which is almost as good as the P1853 rifle.

With this kind of bullet and the Spencer rifle, they are definitely weapons that sweep the era!

The only problem is - brass is too hard.

Taking out a few new bullets with copper casings, Smith, an engineer at the arsenal, once again made a suggestion.

"In order to ensure smooth production, my suggestion is the same as before. We should use copper shells for now. There is no other choice!"

As an engineer, Smith was undoubtedly very responsible and directly pointed out the root cause affecting production.

"Copper is too soft and easily overheats and jams. Bullet cases must be made of brass."

Whether it was dealing with gaucho cavalry or the expedition to Araucanía, there had been many cases of rifles jamming due to overheating of copper cartridge cases, so Zhu Xianhai insisted on using brass cartridge cases.

"But sir, when the extruder is extruding the brass cartridge case, the steel mold is easily damaged and the precision becomes poor. At present, a set of molds can only be used 200 to 300 times, while copper can be used thousands of times. At the rate of producing 10,000 rounds a day, the molds need to be changed dozens of times a day."

Smith's explanation made Zhu Xianhai think for a while, and then he spoke.

"Since it's a mold problem, let's find a way to solve it."

When the words were on the tip of his tongue, Zhu Xianhai realized that the knife steel of that era seemed to be just ordinary carbon steel, which was also the mold of the extruder. Its performance was only slightly better than the steel bars used for building houses.

Well, let’s find a way to solve the problem of tool steel first!

Industry is a systematic project.

Leapfrog development is simply unrealistic.

Not only did workers need training, but even the most humble tool steel limited not only the performance of machines but also certain new inventions.

Fortunately, the crucible for steelmaking was readily available - machine factories these days often used graphite crucibles to make high-hardness carbon steel for the production of cutting tools, which made it convenient for Zhu Xianhai to trial-produce new tool steel.

He chose to test the most "primitive" high-speed steel, a tool steel with high hardness, high wear resistance and high heat resistance, which was not invented by Americans until 1898. It is also called high-speed steel, commonly known as white steel. Its formula and manufacturing process are very simple.

It was during the trial of high-speed steel that Zhu Xianhai realized that the reason why steel was so expensive at that time—as high as $167 per ton, and the cost of shipping each ton of steel to Nanhua would increase by several dollars—was because the "crucible steelmaking method" used not only took a lot of time, but also consumed a lot of raw materials.

"If we build a steel mill and use open-hearth furnaces to make steel, we will make a fortune!"

Zhu Xianhai's eyes lit up.

"By now, the converter steelmaking process should have been invented! However, it seems to have some technical problems..."

Although the converter steelmaking method invented by Bessemer was put into use as early as 1855, it could only use high-quality low-phosphorus iron as raw material because it could not dephosphorize and desulfurize. In addition, nitrogen in the air had a great impact on the properties of molten steel, which limited the types and applications of converter steelmaking. This is why the open-hearth steelmaking method later became the mainstream steelmaking process.

"Siemens open-hearth furnace... It seems to be only used to melt glass now. Well, Nanhua seems to have a glass factory... I just don't know if the glass factory uses Siemens open-hearth furnace."

The beginnings of industry are sometimes more difficult than imagined, and sometimes very simple, just like the Siemens open hearth furnace, which is a high-temperature flame furnace with a heat storage chamber. It took nearly ten years of melting glass before people used the Siemens open hearth furnace to make steel.

In fact, many times, technological development is always like this. When some new technologies are just invented, it takes a long time before they are developed in another aspect. Before that, they are only locally applied in certain aspects, and may even be buried in history until they are "salvaged" from old technologies many years later.

(End of this chapter)