Scenes like cutting a chicken can easily cause psychological shadow for any man.
So Zhao Mengqi wisely chose to avoid it, walked out of the cabin, and let Dr. Chong and his young apprentice operate inside.
Although Imperial Physician Chong had never done much incision before, he was a famous doctor and had seen the methods of rape in the palace, so he was somewhat confident that he would do this job. As for whether he could succeed, it all depended on Jiang Manhai's own luck.
Turning around and entering another cabin, Wu Qiong and others were picking up a pile of fragments, while Qian Long still held a complete black ball in his hand and studied it under the candlelight.
Zhao Mengqi's eyelids twitched when he saw it, "Little Fatty, are you tired of living? Did you memorize the regulations for nothing?"
Fat Qian was so frightened that his hands shook and he almost lost his grip. He dropped the black ball to the ground and hurriedly pressed it on his stomach.
This made Zhao Mengqi feel frightened again. Although he knew that the black gunpowder would not explode due to impact, the shell of the black ball was made of iron, so it was hard to say whether it would cause sparks or something.
Under normal circumstances, there will be no problem even if it is close to a fire source, because the leads on the black ball are sealed under a ceramic cover, and the cover must be unscrewed before use.
Zhao Mengqi quickly stepped forward and took the black ball over, "You guys are so frivolous. If this thing explodes, I'm afraid you won't be able to pick up half of the two hundred kilograms."
"How can it be so easy to explode..." Fatty Qian smiled, "You're not saying it's not powerful enough, I just want to see what's wrong with this fried egg."
"Haha, do you understand?" Zhao Mengqi didn't believe this nonsense.
The black ball was a bomb that Zhao Mengqi asked the craftsmen to make secretly, but everyone thought it was a fried egg, so he just called it that, and he didn't care.
The structure of this thing is very simple, a three-inch diameter spherical iron shell is filled with four ounces of the best formula of granulated black gunpowder, a mushroom-shaped wooden plug is inserted into the narrow mouth, and finally a pottery cap is added to the plug. , weighing almost a pound and a half.
The reason why the cork is made into a mushroom shape is to arrange a spiral lead channel inside, so as to protect the lead from being extinguished during the burning process.
Zhao Mengqi handed the black ball to Geng Zhi and asked him to take it out and put it back in the storage box. However, he squatted down to study the collected fried egg fragments.
After looking at it for a long time, he felt that he had found the problem.
Maybe the blacksmith didn't know what King Yan wanted the iron shell to be used for, so the iron he used was of better quality. As a result, after the explosion, there weren't enough fragments produced, and the killing effect mostly relied on shock waves, so it didn't seem powerful enough.
This is not difficult to solve. Next time, just use pig iron with poor toughness for casting, and then pre-cut the grooves.
In addition, with its shape and weight, it would be fine if fired by a ballista or trebuchet, but it would be very inconvenient for a single soldier to use it. It seems that another type of weapon needs to be designed, something similar to a long-handled grenade would be quite good.
In addition, the three raw materials may need to be slightly adjusted or purified. After all, the theoretical formula does not take into account the presence of impurities.
"Your Highness, I think these fried eggs are only so big, and they are no less powerful than thunder. When we are defending the city, if we throw hundreds of them below, wouldn't they kill thousands of people?" Qian Xiaopang said with salivation on his face. Come up.
Zhao Mengqi rolled his eyes at him, "That's because you have little knowledge."
Qian Xiaopang was a little unconvinced, "Your Highness, there are no firearms in the army that I haven't seen before. The most powerful ones are thunderous. That thing is three or four times as big as this one, weighs more than ten kilograms, and is so powerful." Not as big as this."
At this time, gunpowder had been widely used in the military during the Song Dynasty. The flammability of gunpowder was generally used to set fires or produce poisonous smoke, so there were many strange things in the formula.
A rocket is to add a gunpowder tube to the arrowhead or the tail of the arrow, and shoot it at the enemy's siege equipment to burn it.
Artillery is to project fire caltrop balls or poisonous smoke balls with a trebuchet. At this time, thunder cannons, tiger crouching cannons, cyclone cannons, etc. are all of this type.
Zhentian Lei is also of this type, but it has been improved to use explosion and combustion. The first people to use it on the battlefield were the Jin people. Both the Song Dynasty and the Mongols suffered losses from this.
As for the musket, it is actually a disposable flamethrower tied to the front end of a long spear or a long bamboo pole. Needless to say, its power is like the traditional musket and the red-coated army Yang Miaozhen's pear flower gun.
There is one more (this chapter is not finished yet!)
161. Firearms
The principle of this sudden musket is similar to that of later generations of firearms. It uses a bamboo tube as a launcher and is filled with sealed gunpowder and shotguns. However, its range and power are quite impressive, and it can even be said to be a melee weapon.
For Zhao Mengqi, although he knew the best formula for gunpowder, the only thing he could make in the short term was this kind of bomb.
As for tubular firearms, they are temporarily limited by materials. It seems that they can only make bronze cannons and copper firecrackers, but the Song Dynasty was short of copper!
If it is impossible to mass-produce equipment, it is better to hide it first, otherwise the Mongols will learn from it and there will be no place to cry.
Hey, the technology tree is not that easy to climb, so let’s do it step by step.
Speaking of lack of copper, Zhao Mengqi thought of Japan, a volcanic country with active geological movements and metal minerals that really made people drool, and they couldn't let it go.
At this time, the relationship between Japan and the Song Dynasty was not bad, so it was not necessary to use force to open the way. It was not bad to use "fair" trade to achieve the goal, and to convince people with virtue.
In later generations, the Japanese nation advertised their lack of resources every day, but in fact they had ulterior motives to justify their invasion. Later, after their defeat in World War II, they bought minerals all over the world if they couldn't grab them. Even if they couldn't use them for a while, they would treat them as land reclamation materials and bury them first. Reserved.
Relatively speaking, Japan is a small country, but on a per-territory basis, it is definitely richer in natural resources than China.
Millions of years of volcanic eruptions have brought fertile volcanic soil to various parts of the Japanese country. The climate is moderately hot and cold, mild, with abundant precipitation and few floods and droughts.
Theoretically speaking, the yield per unit area of farmland in Japan is higher than that in China, especially in the fertile alluvial plains of Kanto, Kinki, and Nomi, which are rare high-yielding farmlands in the world.
There are also pastures, fisheries, forest vegetation, etc. As for mineral resources, the Japanese state-owned mineral museum is known as the Mineral Museum. The total amount of minerals is not large, but the types are extremely rich. The reserves of gold, silver, copper, coal and sulfur are astonishing. It is not the country of gold mentioned by Marco Polo. Kidding.
In places like this, agriculture, fishery, and animal husbandry should be developed, and mineral deposits should be mined to export resources, instead of taking the evil path of urbanization and industrialization, which is simply a waste of natural resources.
Zhao Mengqi believes that as an advanced civilized country, the Song Dynasty still had an obligation to help the Japanese people return to the right path even if it faced huge external threats. This is a great sentiment and a true internationalist spirit.
161. Firearms
