Chongzhen revived the Ming Dynasty

After determining the first research task, Zhu Youjian immediately arranged the second task, which was the development of new bullets.

The Ming Dynasty's fire blunderbuss was often criticized for its quality, lack of power and too close armor-piercing distance.

In Zhu Youjian's view, this was a very speechless thing. After all, they used firearms, so how could they not be powerful enough?

As the saying goes, "Caliber is justice, range is truth." If the power and range are insufficient, just increase the caliber.

Therefore, he had already decided to make the caliber of Ming Dynasty's standard fire gun thicker. As long as the soldiers could bear it, the thicker the tube, the better.

He even planned to choose a fire gun with the largest caliber and imitate the Qing Dynasty's raised gun. Operated by two or more people as an anti-material weapon.

As a result, the discarding sabot armor-piercing projectiles used in anti-materiel weapons were included in the research and development sequence by Zhu Youjian.

This bullet is very armor-piercing and is suitable for use in muskets. The revival of smoothbore artillery in later generations was largely due to the reliance on discarding sabot armor-piercing projectiles. Nowadays, the firearms of the Ming Dynasty are basically smoothbore, so of course Zhu Youjian will try to make one.

Therefore, he took out the sketch of the armor-piercing shelling projectile he drew and said to Lu Xiang:

"You are a carpenter, so you should be familiar with wood."

"Can you find a kind of wood, wrap a steel needle, and fire it as a bullet?"

"That's probably what it looks like."

The discarding sabot armor-piercing projectile may sound a bit complicated, but the principle is actually very simple. It uses a bullet holder to wrap a hard needle and fire it as a bullet.

Needle is an adjective here, describing the large length-to-diameter ratio of this kind of bullet. The projectile is like a needle, which is easy to break through the surface and penetrate the target object.

In order to have stronger armor-piercing ability, this needle needs to be very hard, and later generations usually use tungsten alloy to make it.

However, the element tungsten has not yet been discovered, and Zhu Youjian does not feel the need to use tungsten alloy armor-piercing bullets to deal with Jianlu's armor. Steel projectiles are completely sufficient.

Even because the armor-piercing ability of bullets based on the discarding sabot system is too strong, Zhu Youjian felt that it might be necessary to thicken the projectile body and increase the lethality to the flesh, which would be more in line with the needs at this time.

This type of armor-piercing discarding sabot is actually closer to the sub-caliber single-head bullets or single-shot flechette bullets used in later shotguns. But Zhu Youjian still called it an armor-piercing shelling bullet out of habit.

After extreme simplification, he divided the discarding sabot he wanted to make into two parts: the projectile body and the bullet holder——

Even the tail wing has been omitted for the time being, leaving it for future development.

In his plan, the tailless armor-piercing projectile was the first phase, focusing on armor-piercing capability and lethality within 100 meters. There will be a second phase in the future, which will focus more on armor-piercing capabilities and be used to deal with shields and distant armor. At that time, it will be necessary to add a tail fin to make the missile fly more stable and have a longer effective range, becoming a tail-stabilized discarding sabot armor-piercing projectile.

The difficulty in development is not the steel projectile body, but the wooden support that wraps the projectile body. It must be fixed to the projectile body, and it must withstand the impact of gunpowder in the barrel. At the same time, it must separate from the projectile body after the bullet comes out of the chamber and complete the shelling——

This step is also the origin of the name of the discarding sabot armor-piercing projectile, otherwise it would simply be called an armor-piercing projectile.

Moreover, because the firearm at this time was still a muzzle-loading gun, it was necessary to load the ammunition from the muzzle and push the ammunition in with a purge. The stock and projectile body need to be more tightly integrated, and the purge may also need to be specially made to prevent it from being poked open during reloading.

Zhu Youjian handed all these problems to Lu Xiang, hoping that he would use his strengths in carpentry to find a suitable ammunition holder. After Zhu Youjian repeatedly explained, Lu Xiang gradually understood the picture and knew that developing the bullet holder was his biggest task.

But he believes that there is no need to cut down on the rear wing and can start building it now. Casting the projectile using the lost wax method should not be too simple for him.

For Ming people who often see bows and arrows, the tail fin is also very easy to understand. After all, there are tail fins behind the arrows.

Zhu Youjian was not as optimistic as he was, and said:

"The tail is easy to add, but the shape of the tail requires constant experimentation."

"It may take a long time to decide what kind of rear wing to use."

"Find out the suitable ammunition holder and projectile body materials first, and we'll talk about the tail fin later."

In the absence of even a shadow of aerodynamics and ballistics, how to determine the ammunition depends entirely on experiments.

Therefore, although Lu Xiang felt that manufacturing the tail fin was very simple, Zhu Youjian still put it behind him. After the ammunition holder and projectile body materials were determined, he would add the tail fin through extensive testing.

And in Zhu Youjian's view, adding a tail to increase the range is not the most urgent thing. The discarding sabot armor-piercing bullet is a pointed bullet after all. Compared with the lead bullets currently used by the Ming Dynasty, its effective range is likely to be longer.

So the next research task is to improve the current lead bullets. Improve the current round-nose ammunition to pointed-nose ammunition. The object of reference imitation is the famous mini bomb in history.

The principle of minimun ammunition is also very simple, which is to leave a conical cavity at the bottom of the lead bullet and put a wooden plug. In this way, when the ammunition is fired, the gunpowder gas will push the cork into the cavity, forcing the bottom of the bullet to expand and completely close the barrel. In this way, the energy of gunpowder can be fully utilized, making the ammunition more powerful and having a longer range.

It can be said that Mini bullets are greatly improved compared to previous bullets. But the firearm with the most powerful minigun is the rifled gun——

Because the rifled gun has rifling, when loading from the front, you need to use ammunition with a diameter slightly smaller than the caliber of the barrel, so that it can be easily loaded.

Now that Ming Dynasty uses smoothbore guns, there is no such problem with loading ammunition. Zhu Youjian just asked Lu Xiang to imitate the appearance of the Mini bullet and first develop a lead bullet with a sharper warhead and a longer range.

In the subsequent development of rifled guns, a complete Mini bullet was developed. The difficulty is still with the cork, finding the right material.

Therefore, Lu Xiang, who is good at carpentry, can really play a big role at this time. Zhu Youjian valued his ability very much.

In addition, when Lu Xiang studied lead plate technology, he was very familiar with lead as a material and its casting process. In Zhu Youjian's opinion, no one is more suitable to study ammunition than him. The development of two types of bullets, armor-piercing bullets and Mini bullets, was handed over to him for this reason.

At the same time, Zhu Youjian also explained the concept of gunpowder charge, and asked Lu Xiang to test oil paper, silk and other materials, determine the quantity of gunpowder for each portion, and standardize the gunpowder dosage for various firearms. Soldiers cannot be allowed to charge solely based on experience, causing blunderbuss and artillery to explode.

There are also the shape of the gun body, the ignition and firing methods, the classification of fire gun handguns, etc. Zhu Youjian proposed a lot of concepts, hoping that Lu Xiang would realize them for himself after understanding them.

For this reason, he also asked the living notes official to copy a copy of the record and asked Lu Xiang to ponder it carefully.

He also asked Wang Chengen to find a confiscated house and give it to Lu Xiang, and asked the Jinyi Guard Security Department to arrange several guards to ensure Lu Xiang's life and safety.

This kind of treatment, which was comparable to that of a court minister, made Lu Xiang burst into tears of gratitude. Determined to think out everything the emperor said and implement it one by one with both hands. (End of chapter)