"You made it so quickly?"
Joseph looked in surprise at his proud father, then weighed the gun in his hand.
The gun was heavy enough to be used as an iron hammer if swung, filled with the solid metallic weight of the steam age.
Louis XVI said happily, "The hammer connecting rod originally had to be welded, and its strength was simply insufficient. But now it can be machined directly with this milling machine. And the Rotating Cylinder—achieving a high level of airtightness through hand-polishing is very difficult."
He gestured toward the Pistol. "With this one, at least, I can barely see even the slightest gap with my eyes."
Then he turned and took another cylinder from the box he had brought. "This was filed by Mr. Aymeric. The difference is obvious."
Joseph took the hand-crafted Revolver. The file marks were visible, and both its smoothness and edge finishing were far inferior to those produced by the rotary milling machine.
Industrialization truly was the most powerful force of arms! he sighed inwardly. With high-precision machine tools now available, the number of new weapons they could attempt to develop had suddenly multiplied.
The first thing that came to mind was the Breech-loading Cannon.
The greatest difficulty in manufacturing a Breech-loading Cannon lay in the airtightness of its Breechblock—
The simplest Breech-loading Cannon used an iron block to plug the rear end of the barrel, then a massively oversized "screw" to press it tight and create a seal.
This required the iron block sealing the barrel to fit tightly against it, without the slightest gap.
Then the bolt had to withstand the enormous pressure within the bore without deforming, while still being easy to unscrew and tighten at any moment.
None of this could be achieved through handcrafting.
Of course, Joseph suspected