Water Margin farming to become powerful

Chapter 168 Cannon Kills Heavy Cavalry
Everyone in the Supervisory Committee sighed instantly when they saw the two bronze cannons weighing two tons.

This thing is purely piled up with glittering bronze, and it has enough visual shock when placed there.

Just looking at the appearance of this thing, everyone is already looking forward to its strength.

Several blacksmith apprentices acted as gunners, carefully filling the bronze cannon with propellant, plugging in the fuse, and then pushing two iron bullets weighing ten catties into the muzzle.

Seeing Tang Long's two blacksmith apprentices pushing the cannon carriage with difficulty while constantly adjusting the cannon wedge to the number on a piece of paper in his hand, Lu Zhishen couldn't help asking: "What is that?"

Sun Xin explained: "This is called a shooting meter. When the same propellant is installed, how much the muzzle is raised and where the shell will finally land are all calculated in advance, so that it is convenient during the battle."

Lu Zhishen had manipulated the long-range shooting weapons of this era, and he immediately understood the meaning when he heard this, and his eyes lit up.

Sun Xin's artillery shooting performance is still very basic, without considering factors such as wind speed at all, but it is enough for the bronze cannon that is only used to defend the fortress.

The two artillerymen took the sextant and the shooting table and adjusted it, and then fired the cannon.

There were two bangs, deafening, which made all the supervisors jump.

The two big iron balls weighing ten kilograms were thrown far away and landed near the big tree that was used as a target in the distance.

Although the accuracy of the two cannonballs wasn't so strong that it directly knocked down the big tree, the deviation of the impact point was only about one meter, and the momentum after the iron ball hit the ground was really terrifying.

When everyone came to the point of impact, they saw that the iron ball hit the ground hard and made a hole, then rolled forward, opening a gully in the dry mud. The soil loosened as if it had been turned over by a plow, and finally the iron bullets went straight into the ground half a palm deep.

Zou Yuan squatted on the ground and looked at a big stone blocking the path where the marbles rolled.

And Luan Tingyu's eyes were even brighter. After looking at it for a while, he asked Sun Xin, "What is the firing rate of this bronze cannon?"

"If it's just firing, a quarter of an hour is enough to fire [-] or [-] projectiles, but in fact, the barrel of this gun will heat up after firing two bullets, and it will be dangerous to put gunpowder again, so it is necessary to cool the barrel to rest. Now it is working To develop a coolant, if we can find a coolant that effectively cools the gun barrel without corroding the barrel, the rate of fire should be able to reach [-] rounds per hour."

Luan Tingyu nodded again and again and asked, "Can you make a smaller one and push it around with a cannon cart?"

Sun Xin said with a smile: "We are preparing for the production now, but we need to approve some workers from the supervisory committee."

The bronze cannons defending the fortress weighed two tons, but the common weight of the bronze cannons in the field in the gun era was only about one and a half tons. Although it was only a reduction in proportion, there were quite a lot of technologies to be referred to. The thickness and caliber of the gun barrel, whether to add an iron cave, and the height of the wheel and axle to be used, all of these need to be studied again and again, and the research process requires a lot of funds.

In fact, Sun Xin wanted to do much more than that, but this time casting bronze cannons has already made him and Tang Long miserable. Without the support of the supervisory committee and the whole village, the next round of cannon casting projects will start I'm afraid it will be more difficult.

Sun Xin had done the casting of workpieces in his previous life. This time, when he first thought of casting bronze cannons, he knew that it would be difficult to make.

Bronze cannons were cast using the lost wax method, which was also a common casting method among artisans at this time. Tang Long also had experience, but it was very difficult to make a huge wax model with a length of more than one meter. It's not easy anymore.

At the time of casting, Sun Xin had actually let everyone avoid many pitfalls in advance.For example, it took Sun Xin a lot of time to explain to Tang Long why the lugs should be cast to the lowest end of the parallel caliber.

This is the experience gained by the Europeans in the previous life. If the position of the gun ear moves up or down a little, it will cause the bronze cannon to overturn due to the unstable direction of the recoil during shooting, and the cannon will jump and jump when it is fired. Yes, once a large copper bump weighing several tons jumps out of the cannon emplacement, it is too easy to crush random people to death.

But even with some experience learned from previous lives, the process of actually making a bronze cannon is still very tortuous.

It takes three or four months to dry the clay molds for bronze cannons every time, and after three or four months, there are many unexpected situations in the clay molds that are dried in the shade, depending on the ratio of the soil, such as external dryness. The inside is not dry, cracked, and even moss and grass grow directly in the mud mold.

Those clay molds that did not crack are not reassuring. During the pouring process, due to the problem of soil ratio, several clay molds exploded directly. Fortunately, Sun Xin and Tang Long buried the clay molds underground in advance. , The explosion of the clay mold did not cause a serious accident.

After a lot of effort, he obtained eight bronze cannons that seemed to be fairly complete. After the water injection test, there were leaks on the barrels of three more, indicating that cracks had appeared in the barrels during the cooling process.

Only the remaining five guns had the opportunity to conduct a safety experiment with a large charge. During the test, two more guns were blown out of cracks and were eliminated.

In the process of the live ammunition shooting experiment, after a large amount of ammunition was applied, another gun failed the quality inspection and exploded directly. Fortunately, there were no deaths.

After making more than [-] wax models, only these two bronze cannons were left intact in the end.

But after seeing the actual combat effect of the bronze cannon, Luan Tingyu still looked forward to it. He finally understood why Sun Xin had repeatedly stipulated that his soldiers could only adopt a horizontal formation and not a column during the march. With this bronze cannon After the appearance of the soldiers, the soldiers in the column on the battlefield will only become human targets lined up in a row, and only the soldiers in the horizontal line can minimize casualties.

"No wonder the owner said before that the peasants and soldiers in our village don't need to rehearse their cavalry. With this cannon, they are more powerful than any cavalry!"

Sun Xin nodded with a smile. This is exactly what he meant. Before the artillery, the king of the battlefield, the army needed to arrange heavy cavalry to attack those powerful and solid spear formations. But once the artillery appeared, those closely arranged spear formations would become one by one live target.

Especially in this northern plain, the effect of the flying artillery shells against the closely lined infantry is terrifying.

Everyone in the supervisory committee is also looking forward to Sun Xin, the artilleryman.

Luan Tingyu sighed: "I'm afraid our Sun Family Village will really have a powerful army in the world in the future."

Sun Xin said with a smile: "Senior brother, you have said this, but it depends on you to do it."

Luan Tingyu: "I'm telling the truth, but it's not like our master, who let such a good Zhuangzi not come, he will suffer for his face."

"Isn't Master doing well in Wangjiazhuang now?"

Luan Tingyu smiled and said: "Young brother, you should persuade Master to come from Wangjiazhuang as soon as possible. It is enough to train the infantry Master Lu and I, but to train the cavalry, this is the most famous skill of our master."

(End of this chapter)