Liu Yan quickly came to the front yard of Baihu Official Hall, saw Tan Xiaoda waiting here, and said with a smile: "Master Tan came here late at night, there must be good news, right?"
Tan Xiaoda clasped his fists sternly and said: "Your Majesty, my subordinates have fulfilled their mission and have finally successfully developed the flint-haired bird gun. I am here to report the good news to you. Please go to the Firearms Supervision and Manufacturing Office for inspection!"
Liu Yan was overjoyed and immediately said: "Thank you for your hard work, Master Tan!"
Then Liu Yan directly asked the Dunjun on duty next to him to tell Miao Shao and Xu Ming, and then he pulled Tan Xiaoda and said: "Master Tan, let's go to the Firearms Supervision and Manufacturing Office. I want to take a look at the successfully developed although the bird pistol!"
"Now?"
"Yes, right now!"
Firearms Manufacturing Department.
Although it was already late at night, the lights in the Firearms Supervision Office were still bright. Accompanied by Tan Xiaoda, Liu Yan went directly to the Firearms Workshop and saw a gun in a room.
Liu Yan took the musket in his hand and looked at it carefully. He found that the long match rope had disappeared. Instead, a fire sickle and a fire sickle spring were installed near the medicine pool. As for the flint, it was installed behind the fire sickle. , held in place by flint clamps.
"Sir, please see, this flint-haired bird gun uses the trigger to drive the hammer through the spring, and strikes the flint flakes. The rapid friction with the flint flakes generates sparks, which in turn ignites the gunpowder in the fire gate medicine tank. Therefore, this flint-haired bird blunderbuss There is no need to drag a long lit match rope like a matchlock gun during combat. It can truly be fired at any time in rain, snow, wind and frost, and it also avoids the shortcomings of being easily exposed by the light of the match rope at night!"
Tan Xiaoda said with great pride: "This flint-haired bird musket developed is basically the same as the one seized by my lord before. Moreover, due to the meticulous workmanship of my subordinates, this flint-haired bird musket is even more powerful." One step ahead. I estimate that the shooting range of this gun is about a hundred paces, and it can break through heavy armor at a distance of about eighty paces!"
"very good!"
Liu Yan listened to Tan Xiaoda's introduction, his eyes never left the musket, and then said: "Let's go, take me to see the construction situation." m.
"yes."
Then Tan Xiaodong took Liu Yan to the firearms workshop and saw that the craftsmen here were still working in full swing. According to the regulations formulated by Liu Yan for the Firearms Supervision Office, these craftsmen can get more wages as long as they make more qualified firearms. Therefore, even though it is late at night, these craftsmen are still making firearms with undiminished enthusiasm. , there is no need for Liu Yan and Tan Xiaoda to supervise from behind.
Liu Yan, accompanied by Tan Xiaoda, first came to the place where the gun tubes were made.
Regarding the making of gun tubes, there is a record in "Tiangong Kaiwu": several wrought iron bars are forged into a short tube, and then two or three short tubes are welded into a long tube, which is the splicing method. The advantage of this method is that it can make long blunderbuss tubes, and the segmented blunderbuss tubes are cooled relatively evenly, and the solidity is guaranteed to a certain extent. But the shortcomings are also obvious. The quality of the gun tube is determined by segmented welding, and this welding technology relies entirely on experience. Without more than ten years of accumulation, qualified products cannot be produced. This is the so-called precision route.
What Qi Jiguang recorded in the "New Book of Jixiao" is another method of direct rolling of double-layer steel plates. The advantage of this method is that the gun tube does not need to be welded, but the disadvantage is that it cannot make a long barrel, and the cooling of the entire tube during forging is not even enough. As a result, there is a difference in texture between the front and rear of the tube. If the cooling difference is too great, it will easily explode.
The gun in Liu Yan's hand was different at this time, and Tan Xiaoda introduced it.
Liu Yan only saw a few craftsmen in front of him who were using a cylindrical steel core to make cold bones. He first heated the wrought iron for the gun tube until it was red hot, then took out the blank and used a hammer to knock the hot wrought iron on the steel. Outside the core, roll it into an iron pipe.
During the iron wrapping process, the steel core is continuously pulled out and cooled with water to prevent the steel core and wrought iron from being welded together. The thickness of the rolled iron pipe should also be about one centimeter. Several craftsmen did this step very skillfully, and the movements were as smooth as clouds and flowing water. The people next to them also cooperated tacitly.
At this time, if you follow the Ming army's method of making gunshots, the second step is welding.
The Ming Dynasty lacked knowledge about ballistics and believed that the longer the gun, the more powerful it would be. Therefore, in order to increase the length of the gun, the body of the gun was rolled into a single cylinder and then welded section by section. In later generations, the Manchu and Qing Dynasties carried guns with even longer barrels. Up to two meters. The blunderbuss tube made by this welding method is easy to blast and boring. Craftsmen regard whether the welding of the blunderbuss tube is seamless as the key to the success or failure of making blunderbuss.
The flint-haired bird gun that Liu Yan seized from the pirates was made in this way.
By this time in the late Ming Dynasty, Ming army craftsmen were opportunistic and caused many accidents. It is recorded in Ji Xiao's new book: "Recently, I have realized that there are very few people suffering from illness, and I have not complained and really asked the craftsman to roll it into an iron cylinder. The thickness is uneven, and even when it is rolled into a single cylinder, it explodes when he lifts it." .”
The easier it was to explode the chamber, the more soldiers refused to use it. In the end of the Ming Dynasty, tens of thousands of muskets were produced, but very few of them were actually equipped for actual combat. The most elite Guan Ning cavalry still used the original three-eyed gun. pistol!
At this time, the method of making firearms was a completely different double-layer composite gun tube. Different from the single-tube welding method, the method of making firearms was to wrap the steel core with red iron. When the first layer of iron was wrapped After that, wrap another layer on this layer of gun body, so that the joint of the inner gun body is wrapped tightly by the outer gun body to form a composite body.
From a technical point of view, the double-layer composite blunderbuss is more scientific than the single-cylinder welded blunderbuss, and the joint between the blunderbuss bodies is stronger. Although it is impossible to make a very long bird blunderbuss tube with this kind of blunderbuss tube, the caliber can be made larger than the first kind of bird blunderbuss. , so it is powerful within a limited distance.
In the process of making the blunderbuss tube, although many craftsmen believed that the short tube could not hit as far as the long tube based on past experience, even though the blunderbuss tube was not too short, Tan Xiaoda disagreed and believed that the bird blunderbuss could not Only pursuit of range should be the product of the fusion of range, power and quality.
Then Liu Yan saw the second step in making a gun, which was to trim the inner bore.
At this time, the gun tube is still rough, the core is not straight, and the inside of the chamber is rough and uneven. In addition to polishing the outside of the tube body, the most important thing is to use a drill to enlarge the gun chamber and make it smooth.
In the Ming Dynasty, drill bits were generally made of steel, which was not very hard, and the bores were drilled manually. Therefore, half of the time required to make a gun was drilling the bore, and only one inch could be drilled per day at most. It can take up to a month to finish drilling.
Ji Xiao's new book records: "The original hole of the bird gun is drilled with a steel drill. It drills an inch a day until it reaches the bottom, and it takes a month to drill it all."
In Liu Yan's view, the production efficiency of Ming army gunfire was appallingly low. There are two solutions, one is to improve the drill bit, and the other is to change the drilling method.
The steel for making drill bits is easy to solve. Now the Firearms Supervision Department can refine high-quality steel. It can not only be used to make drill bits, but also be used to build lathes, punches and other equipment that must be developed in the future.
As for the drilling method, Liu Yan was gratified that Tan Xiaoda had already thought of an effective method, which was a simple lathe using animal power. In the future, when conditions mature, Tan Xiaoda even plans to change the proposed lathe to be made of fine steel.
The so-called simple lathe is an enlarged horizontal hand drill, but it uses animal power instead of a hand drill.
It turns out that drilling is done manually inch by inch, and drilling vertically is time-consuming and laborious. With a simple lathe, the barrel is fixed laterally on a rotatable stand and rotates on its own, and the drill bit and tool are fed horizontally. This makes drilling more efficient than It used to be improved several times. It used to take a month to drill out a blunderbuss tube, but now it only takes five or six days to drill out a high-quality blunderbuss tube with a smooth bore.
The successful production of the gun tube can also be regarded as an improvement on the original process, and the subsequent production will be a revolutionary improvement.
At this time, the fire guns equipped by the Ming army were all primitive matchlock guns. The gun had a metal hook. One end of the hook was fixed on the gun and could rotate around its axis. The other end held a burning match rope. When firing, it was fired by hand. Push the metal hook into the fire door, causing the match rope to ignite the black powder, and then launch the projectiles in the gun chamber.
Compared with mature flintlock guns, matchlocks have many disadvantages. The most obvious one is that the shooting process is very complicated and slow.
Qi Jiguang once recorded more than a dozen procedures for using a matchlock gun in "Qi Jiguang's Art of War". In Europe at the same time, there were also relevant documents describing the steps for firing a matchlock gun, which were divided into twenty-five steps. The Ming Dynasty's matchlock gun was even more complicated.
Secondly, the matchlock gun cannot be used in rainy, snowy and windy weather. The rain will wet the ignition powder in the medicine door, and the strong wind will blow away the ignition powder in the medicine door. Once this happens, it will be fatal on the life-and-death battlefield!
Liu Yan was accustomed to seeing various advanced firearms in later generations, and he hated the cumbersome steps of the matchlock gun.
In Liu Yan's words: "The speed of firing two shots per minute is intolerable and even more deadly!"
Therefore, during the development process, Tan Xiaoda specially designed the mechanism of the flintlock gun to solve the above shortcomings of the matchlock gun.
The flintlock gun is actually not complicated. It just clamps a piece of flint on the jaw of the hammer, and there is an anvil next to the fire hole. When the gunman is shooting, he only needs to pull the trigger and hit the flint next to the fire door under the action of the spring, and sparks will appear, thus igniting the gunpowder and firing.
In this way, the shooting steps are greatly simplified, the firing rate and shooting accuracy are improved, and the firing speed of the gunman can catch up with or even exceed that of the archer, truly suppressing the firepower!
Moreover, what surprised Liu Yan even more was that Tan Xiaoda not only imitated and learned, but also innovated to a certain extent.
In order to allow the new bird gun he designed to be used in windy weather and reduce the impact of rain and snow on flint, Tan Xiaoda also specially installed a cover above the medicine pool. When the gunman pulls the trigger, the medicine The cover on the pool will automatically open to protect the flint and keep it dry at all times.
After reading the manufacturing process of the gun tube and firing device, it means that the main part of the new bird gun has been completed. The next step is to further improve the performance of the new bird gun.
For example, fine steel is used to make gun body accessories to enhance the sturdiness and durability of the new bird gun, and hardwood is used to make wooden butts and gun body guards.
At the same time, in order to shoot effectively, Tan Xiaoda also specially designed the butt of the new bird gun into a rooster neck butt type, which makes it easier to hold and aim with the cheek. A relatively prominent simple front sight is designed at the end of the gun tube to help the fire Gunman takes aim. In addition, Tan Xiaoda is also planning to install two movable gun strap buckles made of fine steel to facilitate long-distance marches by Dunjun soldiers.
Liu Yan was in a good mood at this time. The gun copied by Tan Xiaoda was very similar in appearance to the rifles of later generations. Although there was still a big gap in range and rate of fire, compared with the firearms of this era, it was already It can be said to be an epoch-making product!
Coming out of the firearms workshop, Liu Yan smiled and said to Tan Xiaoda: "What are Mr. Tan's plans for the next step?"
Tan Xiaoda received Liu Yan's affirmation at this time and felt that he was very motivated. He immediately said: "My subordinates are going to recruit a group of craftsmen. The number should be controlled at about a hundred. In addition, the lathe for making flint-haired bird cannons will be needed." By adding five more, my subordinates are preparing to rapidly expand the production of flint-haired bird muskets, so that the old-fashioned bird muskets in the hands of the officers and soldiers of each sentinel army can be replaced in the shortest possible time."
Liu Yan smiled and said, "Okay, then let's have a big production!"
Some people died, but not completely...
