Chapter 96 (1/2)
Although Shi Xiong doesn't know much about the heat treatment process of steel, he has heard about the ”four fires” of the heat treatment process of steel.
Annealing, normalizing, quenching and tempering are four kinds of fire in steel heat treatment process.
Just like when the barrel was made yesterday, when the molten steel was poured into the mold, it was naturally cooled. That is normalizing, which is similar to the effect of annealing. Anyway, it is a way of natural cooling.
And quenching, is in the high temperature state of the workpiece immersed in cold water or cold oil for rapid cooling. Quenching will make the steel used to make the workpiece hard and brittle, which is much harder than the steel under natural cooling.
Of course, because quenching will make the steel brittle, it is better to have a tempering treatment. That is to heat up the quenched workpiece to about 700 ℃ again for a long time, and then cool it naturally. In this way, the hardness of the workpiece is improved, but the toughness is also increased.
Shi Xiong knows a little about the general theory of heat treatment just now, but he really doesn't know how to carry out heat treatment. Even the most common quenching process, he has seen it in movies or TV. He has never operated it himself.
As for the hardness of the tools made by Lieutenant Ferguson, stone bear is not worried. Because the hardness of the hardened workpiece is much higher than that of the original steel. If this tool is too brittle, give him a look at how tempering works, and then let this guy figure it out for himself.
However, looking at the look of lieutenant Ferguson, he obviously knows what quenching is all about.
Of course, it's not enough to know what the quenching process is, especially the barrel just made yesterday. I'm afraid it's not enough for Lieutenant Ferguson to do experiments.
So, as long as this guy is interested in the new gun, he will certainly learn more knowledge to serve his new gun. For example, how to make steel, how to make mold, how to make barrel
All these things complement each other. If there is less than one, new guns will not be produced.
It's only by getting Lieutenant Ferguson interested in more and more things that he'll be able to stay in the high tree tribe for a while longer.
Stone bear has never thought of keeping Lieutenant Ferguson around forever, and stone bear can't do it. Patrick Ferguson is a very loyal soldier to the British Empire. If the British Empire is OK, Lieutenant Ferguson may stay in the gaoshu tribe for a longer time. Even before the start of the independent war, the stone bear is confident of this.
But once the war of independence started, as a loyal British officer, no matter how good the terms offered by stone bear were, I'm afraid it would be impossible to retain Lieutenant Ferguson. He will not hesitate to leave everything here, carrying a gun to the battlefield, even if he is facing death, he will not stop.
In this regard, stone bear had thought of this when he left Lieutenant Ferguson at the beginning.
However, there are still 11 years left between now and the outbreak of the war of independence, and there are no major events in Britain during this period. Therefore, if Lieutenant Ferguson can be left here to develop new weapons for himself, it will surely make a qualitative leap in the weapon system of gaoshu tribe.
Even if Lieutenant Ferguson eventually returns to the British army and brings these new technologies to the UK, the gaoshu tribe will still take the lead.
In addition, stone bear didn't intend to let Lieutenant Ferguson work alone. Both rabbit mouth and hard bone showed strong interest in guns. At that time, he arranged these two little guys next to lieutenant Ferguson. While he was working as an assistant, he learned about the weapons that lieutenant Ferguson held.
Stone bears don't believe that they can't empty Lieutenant Ferguson in ten years' time with rabbit's mouth and hard wit!