I'm the Dauphin in France

Chapter 373 Father and Son United
"Get some guns ready, let's go to the shooting range."

Joseph signaled to Martinnier and was about to carry the newly completed bulletproof insert to conduct a field test when he heard Emang say, "Your Highness, the King is here."

Joseph turned around and saw Louis XVI walking into the shed with a smug smile: "Well, my dear Joseph, you are here. I guess you must have invented something interesting."

Then he murmured with some resentment: "Why didn't you ask me to come? We are the best partners.

"Oh, never mind. Let me see what my genius son has come up with first..."

However, when he took the bulletproof insert from Joseph, he frowned slightly: "Is this, a piece of iron plate?"

"This is not just a simple iron plate." Joseph pulled his father towards the shooting range, "It can withstand bullets."

Louis XVI weighed the bulletproof insert in his hand in disbelief: "This thing is only 3 pounds at most. Oh, now it has been changed to the standard measurement, it should be 1.5 kilograms. Can it actually block bullets?"

As a "science and engineering geek", he had some knowledge of armor and the like. Even a breastplate weighing more than 10 kilograms would often be penetrated if the bullet hit at a vertical angle.

And the Crown Prince actually wanted to use such a thin thing to block the bullet!
"You'll know just by looking at it."

Joseph gave his father a mysterious smile, and then ordered the guards to fix the bulletproof inserts on the wooden target, and then took a percussion cap rifle from Martinnier - it was recently produced by the Royal Ordnance Factory and had just completed calibration.

Joseph came to 60 steps away from the target, pulled the bolt, installed a primer, and squinted at the bulletproof insert in the distance.

There was a loud bang. It missed the target.

Joseph awkwardly reloaded and fired again.

Bang. Still missed the target.

It's not that his shooting skills are bad. In the era of smoothbore rifles, whether you can hit the target from 60 steps away depends largely on luck.

Finally, after the percussion gun fired for the third time, the bulletproof insert in the distance trembled noticeably.

Two soldiers at the shooting range immediately ran over with the target.

Louis XVI went forward to check out curiously, and saw that the iron plate had a large dent, but it was obvious that there was no hole through it!

He immediately looked at Joseph in shock: "How is this possible? It's only such a thin piece!"

Joseph was not surprised at all. He had set the shooting distance at 60 steps, leaving a lot of room. According to his idea, the insert should be able to block the shooting of the British Brown Bess 30 flintlock rifle at 1777 steps.

He took the bulletproof insert off the target with a smile and explained to his father, "Dear father, this thing is not just a piece of iron."

He pointed at the insert that was broken into layers by the huge impact and said, "Look, there is a porcelain piece behind the iron piece."

"Porcelain chips? What use can something so fragile have?"

"To disperse the impact of the bullet," Joseph said, "You can see from the edge that the porcelain has broken.

"Because the cracks extend horizontally, they can disperse the vertical impact in the horizontal direction.

"And behind this is a layer of silk. Silk is very tough and can wrap around the first two layers, preventing them from being torn apart by the sudden deformation." "As for the last layer of iron, it is used to improve reliability. You see, there are only slight marks left on it."

Louis XVI's eyes widened as he looked over and over at the bulletproof insert in his hand, nodding his head. "The simplest structure often has unexpectedly excellent performance. Joseph, how did you come up with this idea? It's simply...amazing!"

Joseph thought that he had seen it from a documentary, but he still followed his old routine and made the sign of the cross on his chest: "I think this must be a revelation from God."

Upon hearing this, Louis XVI also made the sign of the cross devoutly: "Thank God Almighty!"

Over the past two years, as his son continued to receive "revelations from God," he became a hundred times more pious than before.

Joseph said something that shocked him even more: "This bulletproof insert should still have some power left. Let's shorten the distance to 50 steps and try again."

The new insert was fastened in place, and Joseph handed the gun to his father.

As thick smoke gushed out of the muzzle of the gun, Louis XVI accurately hit the bulletproof insert with one shot, and then raised his eyebrows at his son who had hit the target three times before, as if showing off.

The soldiers quickly brought the target over. Joseph hurried forward to check the insert. The crater was deeper than before, but still not penetrated.

He turned the insert over and saw that there was only an almost invisible dent on the back of the last layer of iron. It was obvious that the wearer would not be in any danger to his life.

This time, before he could speak, Louis XVI spoke first: "Perhaps, we can get closer."

As the test continued, the bulletproof insert was finally penetrated when the shooting distance was shortened to 28 steps.

Then Louis XVI and his son continued to test bulletproof inserts made of several other models. When it got dark, they slept on the same bed in the arsenal and talked about various topics about firearms and machinery until after two in the morning.

In the next few days, the father and son stayed in the arsenal, conducting a series of tests and improvements on bullet-proof inserts of all combinations and different materials, and finally determined several types for mass production.

Joseph looked at the production process document in his hand and told Martinnier: "First produce 6000 pieces of general-purpose type. 2000 pieces of heavy-duty type. 500 pieces of high-quality type."

After several days of testing, he found that double-layer iron plates were not necessary to deal with soft lead bullets from the 18th century.

So, following his father's advice, he used a structure of iron sheets, cotton, ceramics, and silk, and controlled the weight of the bulletproof insert to 1.05 kg, which could stably withstand flintlock fire from 40 steps away.

This "universal" bulletproof insert was the cheapest, costing only 5 livres and 16 sous. If necessary, even the silk could be omitted, and the price dropped sharply to less than 4 livres, but the bulletproof distance also dropped to 55 steps.

The "heavy" insert is the first structure tested before, with double iron plates in front and back, weighing 1.4 kg, and can only be penetrated by a flintlock at a distance of 28 steps. It is specially used by cavalry. The cost is 6 livres 10 sous.

The "high-quality" type is a single-layer iron sheet with a double layer of silk. Its weight is similar to the general type, and its stable bulletproof distance is 33 steps. However, it costs as much as 8 livres and 5 sous, and is generally only available to officers.

In fact, Joseph originally planned to directly produce more than 10 tablets and distribute them to all members of the Guards Corps. However, the bottleneck of adhesives limited his ambitions.

Although casein glue has excellent properties, it can only be produced in small quantities and is very expensive. As for other natural adhesives, they are basically useless.

Joseph recalled the various phenol adhesives of later generations, and his desire to promote gas street lamps as soon as possible and thus light up the organic chemical industry became stronger.

(End of this chapter)