After looking at the two production conditions, Zhao Yu turned to a spacious open space in the back, where several craftsmen were busy around a ballista, which was of course not an innovation, but an improvement. Zhao Yu considered that the ballista should be placed inside the turtle boat, and the hull was oblong, with a large belly and pointed ends, which means that the space between the head and tail is narrow, and the middle space is relatively large. If the same type of ballista is installed, the head and tail are cramped, and the gunner is difficult to operate. However, if a small ballista is used, the power will be reduced accordingly, affecting the shooting effect.

Therefore, Zhao Yu chose to install different types of ballistas according to the different gun positions, and the ammunition fired was also different. There are iron bullets and spears used to 'pierce armor', as well as arrows used to kill and wound enemy sailors. In addition, there are chain bombs used to break the sails of ships, anchor hooks to grab enemy ships, and 'shotguns' to kill and damage relatively concentrated enemy groups. He had only heard of these things, but had never seen them in real life, so he needed to conduct trial production and a lot of experiments in order to find the ammunition that could bring out the maximum power of the ballista.

But what Zhao Yu is most concerned about is a 'bursting' ballista, of course, this is not automatic fire of guns in the modern sense, but continuous firing through the installation of simple mechanical devices. In fact, this is not Zhao Yu's invention, but it is more than a thousand years from the era of the Great Song Dynasty, the craftsmen of the ancient Roman city of Alexandria designed a strange weapon, the principle of which is to store the spare arrow stone in the V-shaped 'magazine', and then through a set of pentagonal gears and chain mechanism of the reciprocating movement, to realize the ballista to be fired, loaded, firing automation.

In order to realize the burst function, Zhao Hao did not work hard. Let's put it this way, if the ballista is an ancient legend, then the repeating ballista is like a cloud of smoke. Because it appeared in a very short time, there is no physical unearthed, there is no historical record, but it has been passed down from generation to generation in the mouth of craftsmen, just like the 'wooden ox and flowing horse' that Zhuge Liang once made, no one can know its true appearance. Amazingly, this self-firing ballista was not used in actual combat, but disappeared in a flash in the pan, and it is said that it was abandoned for the same reason as other automatic weapons when they first came out - a waste of ammunition.

As a modern person, Zhao Yu certainly would not make such a low-level mistake, he hoped that the rate of fire would be as fast as possible, so that one could be ten. Especially when facing the charge of enemy cavalry, what would it be like to weave a net of arrows with powerful ballistas? To achieve this goal, of course, it is necessary to make it first, but it is not so easy to make it with just a hint, and now it is not a material that has advanced processing technology and enough to ensure the strength of the future.

To put it simply, just the chain that drives the gear will stump Zhao Hao, if modern only need to find a rubber belt with a wire can be solved, easy to achieve the required strength and service life, no, you can also use the all-metal structure as a backup solution. But now it takes a lot of effort to just make a metal chain, subject to smelting technology, iron is not easy to process, copper is not strong, and the weight is large, it is not easy to move and transport, and of course, there is a cost problem. After many tests, the combination of hardwood gears and cowhide chains was finally adopted, although the service life is short, but the material is easy to obtain, light weight, easy to process and maintain, but it is the most cost-effective.

Now several key problems have been solved, the use of ten rounds of arrows, the firing speed of Zhao Yu is estimated to reach six rounds per minute, but there is still a poor supply of ammunition, easy to jam the problem, so it needs to be adjusted, modified, in order to achieve the best state, and then consider whether the rate of fire can be further increased. After some on-site 'guidance', he turned to another R&D team, where things are more complicated, but at first glance it doesn't look like a weapon, and on closer inspection, of course, it's not, it's actually a water-powered machine......

Zhao Yu knew that the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty was a period of rapid development of hot weapons, and primitive firearms had appeared and began to be used on the battlefield. And he also intends to develop firearms, and has now developed 'rockets', of course, limited to the current conditions, it is impossible to develop artillery, muskets, and other era-changing weapons of great destruction, so he can only make some firearms with simple structure, easy to produce, and powerful in small steps, and survive this hurdle first. But even then a lot of gunpowder was needed. But the gunpowder of this period ...... Alas, it's hard to say.

Chinese gunpowder originated from the accidental discovery of alchemist Taoists, and the manufacturing process is full of metaphysics. The ancient Chinese did not understand well why saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal together would cause violent combustion explosions. I thought that the sulfur was pure yang, and the nitrate was pure yin, and the two emotions were forced together, and the sound became a change, and this Qiankun conjured up a divine object. Listen to the combination of yin and yang, the transformation of the universe, revealing the breadth and profundity, whether there is a feeling of ancient wisdom coming to the face.

Ancient Chinese military inventors added more impurities to it: Chuanwu, Caowu, Nanxing, Banxia, wolf venom, snake burial, rotten bone grass, broken intestine grass, ginger juice, toad oil...... These components are mainly flammable substances, indicating that the Song people have not fully realized the explosive properties of gunpowder, and they are still immature in terms of composition ratio, and people who do not know still think that they are dispensing medicine. And the effect of launching an attack is also like burning the opponent's Chinese medicine shop, the smoke billowing and emitting poisonous gas, in addition to wanting to burn the enemy to death, he also hopes to choke them to death.

Zhao Yu has modified the gunpowder formula prescribed by the Chinese medicine shop in Jiazi Town to improve the explosive power, but he also found that the gunpowder production process is too primitive, and the gunpowder manufacturing process at this time must first select and refine the three raw materials, and then grind them into powder. The second is to mix the three ingredients together by mixing them in proportion to the mortar and then 'scheming'. In fact, it is indeed scooped out, and the size of the gunpowder particles depends on the feel of the worker.

It sounds very freehand to follow the feeling, but it also shows that this is still completely in the initial stage of manual production. It must be known that the power of firearms is first determined by gunpowder, and the quality of gunpowder is not only the formula, but also the manufacturing process. The current mode of production not only cannot guarantee the quality, but also cannot guarantee the quantity of supply, which also affects the production and popularization of firearms, so it is necessary to improve the production process and production equipment first, so that it can reach the factory production, meet the needs of the operation and the follow-up work.

Of course, the research on the production process is not carried out in the house, and it is easy to make noise and cause chaos, not to mention, and if you don't get it right, you have to destroy your own nest...... (To be continued.) )