The Soul of the Han Dynasty in the Late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 189

In the age when there was no steam engine as the driving force, and even less electricity, it was not easy to process rifling on the inner wall of the barrel, and it was definitely labor-intensive and time-consuming.

Even if the quality of the tool steel produced by Huang’s family has improved a lot compared with the contemporary Daming tool steel, the defective rate cannot be ignored. It is estimated that the cost of making a rifled gun in the future will at least reach the cost of a bird’s gun, that is, a matchlock musket. Three or four times.

Since the "Red Banner Army" system has produced steel with better quality than Sugang and Mintie, the raw materials for making bird guns are self-sufficient and do not need to spend money to buy them.

Originally, the bird gun made of purchased Suzhou steel was priced at [-] taels of silver, but now the cost of raw materials has dropped significantly, which directly leads to a reduction in the cost.

Even if Huang Han adopts the basic principle of treating craftsmen and industrial workers favorably, and pays blacksmiths and laborers more than [-]% higher than the industry standard, the cost of a bird gun is less than six taels of silver.

In fact, as long as the quality of the blunderbuss is of high quality and the weather conditions are good at the time of battle, the firing speed and effective firing rate of a well-trained blunderbuss hand are much higher than that of a flintlock.

It's just that the blunderbuss is a type of smoothbore gun, and there is no rifling in the barrel, so the round lead bullets that are released from the chamber are rolling and moving forward, which greatly reduces the accuracy.

Therefore, when the two armies using matchlock guns fought, they stood in line and fired face to face. The purpose of this was to compensate for the lack of accuracy with the dense rain of bullets.

Huang Han and Song Pengfei have already formulated the basic battle array of the "Red Banner Army" gunners, because a team of gunners will have a unicycle, and having this thing in front of the gunners who line up to shoot will not only prevent the enemy cavalry from attacking , and can more or less provide some cover for the gunners.

This also has a huge advantage. When facing the enemy cavalry's intensive charge, there is an obstacle in front of the gunner's array, which will greatly improve the sense of security of the gunner.

Although the firearms manufacturing in Kaiping Town is still very primitive, and they are all workshop-style factories, they already have the prototype of modern management. It is expected that Yang Laoshi will produce 170 bird guns, [-] carrying guns, and repair [-] pairs of armor this month. Forge thirty pairs of all-steel breastplates.

Huang's breastplate has a simple structure, and its main components are two thin steel plates, the front piece and the back piece, which are made according to the curvature of the human body.

But the strength is enough to withstand thirty steps of the step bow, and the strength can be obtained, of course, thanks to the improvement of the quality of the steel.

The blacksmiths continued to forge with human jackhammers to increase the density of the steel to achieve a strengthening effect. The quality of the breastplate after quenching and shaping was better than that of the rare and hard-to-find armor in this era.

As the name suggests, Bailian Steel is a fine steel made by repeatedly folding and forging fried steel in ancient times. It is characterized in that it can eliminate or reduce inclusions in steel after repeated heating and forging, so that its composition tends to be uniform The structure tends to be denser, thus improving the properties of the steel.

After the Huang's Iron and Steel Workshop obtained the fully liquid molten steel, the impurities in the steel have been reduced a lot, and after being forged with a heavy hammer, the hardness and purity of the obtained material are no less than that of Baisteel.

The structure of the human jack hammer is not complicated, and it is not Huang Hankai's golden finger. It is designed and finalized by the master blacksmith after brainstorming.

The component part is that the steel bracket supports an iron lump weighing a thousand kilograms, and one end is a hammer head, which rises and falls along a vertical line fixed by the steel bracket.

When using this jackhammer, ten strong men shouted and pulled ten ropes in their hands at the same time. The ropes were fastened to the pull ring designed on the hammer body through a steel connecting ring at the end of a pulley block.

Ten people work together to pull the hammer body to the position of one step away and let go together. The iron lump weighing a thousand catties falls freely and hits the steel that needs to be forged with a heavy hammer. Get the most out of this large facility.

Xu Guangqi was also amazed when he saw the sledgehammer. He thought it was too extravagant. The entire jackhammer consumed more than 100 catties of steel, and a blacksmith needed [-] people a day to add labor.

Scientists see the difference in the strength of steel after forging with heavy hammers, so they think it is worth the money.

Because the steel products processed by forging have high hardness, sharp wear resistance, good texture and good corrosion resistance, it can ensure good mechanical properties and long service life of the breastplate.

The knight put on the breastplate, equipped with iron arms, wrist guards, and shoulder pads. The protective power was stronger than the fine iron armor equipped by Jiannu. The weight was reduced by ten catties, and the flexibility of the body was greatly improved.

After testing, the two knights who were originally equal in strength were equipped with breastplates and fine iron armor captured from self-built slaves, and remounted for a duel.

They fought with long spears wrapped in soft cloth. In the end, due to the heavy load and poor flexibility of the body, the knights in Jiannu fine iron armor finally lost their physical strength without exception.

It can be seen from this that all cavalry of the "Red Banner Army" will improve their combat effectiveness and increase their protection by changing their breastplates.

Even after cost calculations, the cost of a pair of breastplates plus matching helmets, visors, iron arms, knee pads, and shoulder pads reached 40 taels of silver, Huang Han did not hesitate to issue an order for full production.

Money is nothing, as long as it can reduce the casualty rate of the "Red Banner Army" soldiers, it is worth spending any amount.

It's a pity that it is not easy to make breastplates and requires many processes. With the current level of manpower and craftsmanship, it is already the limit to keep [-] sets of breastplates out of the factory a month.

It's not that the blacksmiths don't work hard. Since they were hired by the Huang family, they have received good treatment, and they are paid based on the yield and work efficiency. Everyone does their best to work more and produce more high-quality goods.

But when manpower is limited, this is already the limit without increasing manpower and technological innovation.

Now, Kaiping Town under the management of Huang Han should be a happy land, because there are no uniformed eaters, no tattooed hooligans and hooligans collecting protection fees, and there are too many jobs here.

The Huang family acquired a lot of fields at once, and also privately appropriated a lot of unowned wasteland, which required a lot of labor. Therefore, there were no idlers, no beggars and refugees in Kaiping Town, and everyone exchanged sweat for food.

All beggars are gathered to participate in labor, and everyone can eat [-]% of their meals. The lazy professional beggars are sent to the brick and tile factories for forced labor, where the demand for labor is never-ending.

Forced labor is not just a matter of lip service, lazy people are really likely to be beaten to death.

Huang Han has no objection to this, because in ancient times when work efficiency was low, everyone had to work hard to survive, and a poor beggar with no property dared not cherish a job opportunity, so there was no need to continue to be a parasite.

(End of this chapter)