The Rise of Ming Dynasty 1646

Chapter 96

It is because of this fatal shortcoming that the musket still dominated the world battlefield until the nineteenth century.

But Zhu Linmi had in her mind the method of making the invention of the terminating musket—the Minie bullet.

In fact, it is very helpless to say that in the 300 years since the invention of the rifled gun, human beings have been trying their best to figure out how to make the lead beads embedded in the rifling of the barrel, but they have never been able to break out of this thinking pattern.

The Minie bullet is a bold subversion. Instead of using lead balls as bullets, it uses sharpened cylindrical bullets.Dig a conical hollow in the bottom of the bullet and fit a small wooden block in the hollow.

When the gun is fired, the high-pressure gas produced by the burning gunpowder pushes the small wooden block into the depth of the cavity, and the wooden block squeezes the tail of the bullet to expand, so that it gets stuck in the rifling.

With this design, the bullet does not need to be made thicker than the barrel to generate rotation, and the problem of difficult loading is easily solved, and even well-made Mini bullets are easier to load than ordinary lead balls.

It was this invention that soon made the world's smoothbore guns a thing of the past.

A hunter equipped with a rifled gun and a Gamini bullet is the sniper of this era!

In the current era dominated by muskets, no army has the concept of guarding against snipers.All the officers are riding tall horses, wearing clothes that are completely different from ordinary soldiers, and can be recognized at a glance.

Because the bullets of musket guns such as bird guns can't fly in a straight line, no matter how much you aim, you can't hit them.

But as hunters with rifled guns, these officers are very eye-catching targets!

In addition, the targets of the hunters also include the enemy's standard bearers, drummers, messengers, supervisors, and even people who shout to boost morale, which has a huge impact on the entire battle situation.

Take the flag bearers for example. In this era of extremely poor means of communication, soldiers follow the flag. Without the flag, the team will be disorganized in a short time.

Once the flag bearer dies, there will be a replacement flag bearer to carry the general flag immediately, but if the flag bearer is shot down by hunters one after another, who would dare to carry the flag again?If the hunters are efficient and can quickly eliminate the standard bearers of the Jianlu teams, they will collapse without hitting them later.

However, the use of miniature bullets will bring about a problem, that is, the standardization of the barrel.At present, the muskets all over the world are purely handcrafted, and it is impossible for all guns to have the same caliber.

A slight gap between the buckshot and the barrel of a musket has little effect.

However, rifled guns using Minie bullets must strictly control the barrel caliber standard, otherwise the tail of the bullet may not be able to fit into the rifling after expansion.If the columnar bullet is not rotated, it will easily roll sideways, which is not as good as a lead ball.

Fortunately, Suji Iron Works has been manufacturing flintlock guns, and now it has accumulated at least [-] guns. It should not be a problem to select [-] or [-] guns with similar calibers from these guns.

If it weren't for the inability to standardize production, Zhu Linmi would definitely want to replace the entire army with rifled guns.But right now, only a few companies of hunters can be equipped first.

Lu Ning and other gunsmiths had heard that His Royal Highness Chen was coming to the iron yard, and they were about to see him through, when they saw him bringing Song Yingxing.

Zhu Linmi went straight to the point, and first explained the concept of rifled guns to Lu Ning and others.

The craftsmen all had an expression of "no accident" and "predicted for a long time". In their hearts, it is not normal for King Chen not to come up with something new and unimaginable.Song Yingxing, on the other hand, looked like he had "never seen the world", and quickly took notes with a pen.

Zhu Linmi took a freshly made gun barrel from the wooden frame next to it, picked up a branch, and gestured to the craftsmen, "This branch is like a steel rod slightly thinner than the muzzle," he pointed to. At the top of the branch, "open an inclined groove here, put it into a hard steel knife head, and clamp it with screws."

Then he inserted the branch into the barrel, "put the steel stick against the barrel, pushed and pulled the stick back and forth, and carved a very short groove in the barrel. Then he turned the barrel slightly, continued to push and pull the stick to carve the groove, and turned again Gun barrel. Continue this process until the short grooves engraved each time accumulate into a long spiral groove.

"Each barrel requires four of these slots."

Then he talked about the concept of twisting distance and twisting degree of rifling. Of course, these craftsmen only need to understand it, and he has to do the specific calculations by himself.

Then he assigned some craftsmen to pick out gun barrels with similar calibers, and he brought Lu Ning and others to make rifling equipment.

It took another whole day, and with the cooperation of all craftsmen, a simple "drawing machine" was announced to be completed.

Lu Ning took a gun tube, clamped it with two grooved hardwoods on the wire pulling machine, and then tightened the hard wood with several iron hoops, and then inserted a steel rod supported by multiple iron frames into the gun tube.

He scored more than 30 times before leaving a groove of about three millimeters on the gun barrel.At the same time, another craftsman turned the hardwood clamp. The angle of rotation was calculated by Zhu Linming early on. There was a dial at the end of the wooden clamp, and it was enough to turn it one step at a time.

Lu Ning continued to carve a groove.

After nearly half an hour of trying, a thumb-long helix was finally engraved in the gun barrel. Judging by the speed, it would take at least three days to make a gun barrel with four rifling lines.

Fortunately, there are now more than 150 people in the firearms workshop.Zhu Linming ordered Song Yingxing to lead the craftsmen to make a wire drawing machine first, and then everyone processed the rifling at the fastest speed.

He estimated that more than 400 rifled guns could be produced in a month. Of course, the premise was that so many barrels of the same caliber could be found.

After the craftsmen were basically familiar with the whole process, Zhu Linmi went to the workshop for making lead bullets.

Originally, this was the least technical place in the entire ironworks. Lead lumps were melted and poured into molds. After cooling, the molds were opened and slightly polished, and a lead bullet was finished.As a result, this place has always been the world of apprentices, and even the family members of craftsmen do odd jobs here.

However, it is much more troublesome to make miniature bullets. The new molds can be made by blacksmiths, but the degree of precision of miniature bullets is much higher than that of lead bullets.

Zhu Linmi divided the craftsmen into several groups, each of which was in charge of casting, cork cutting, and final assembly.The most experienced craftsmen are responsible for the quality inspection. Each bullet must just pass through a ring, and at the same time, the wooden block at the bottom cannot be inserted too deep and cannot fall out.

Fortunately, the demand for Mini bombs is not very large, and the output of these people should be enough for future hunters.

Zhu Linmi ran back and forth between several workshops like this, so busy that she didn't touch the ground, she was looking forward to the early start of classes in Gezhi Academy.When a new generation of technicians from Ming Dynasty is trained, he only needs to draw a few blueprints or even talk about a concept for similar things, and they will be responsible for implementing them.

　Thanks to Black Saki Falcon and Feng Chuisha, for your generous rewards, thank you very much for your support, you are the driving force for my continuous coding!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)