On the seventh day of the first month of the sixth year of Chongzhen, Lou Fu had another heavy snowfall, from midnight to dawn, and the snow increased by half a foot.

For Qin Chuanlai, this is not a good sign.

This year's beginning of spring has passed before the beginning of the year, and it is only seven days before the rain, and if there is still heavy snow by then, and it is not warm by then, this year's winter wheat harvest will not be good.

In the fields of the Meng family and the Du family, most of them have sown winter wheat, and Qin Chuan is still waiting for a wave of grain to be harvested in May.

For the Lord of the Ice Age, he probably can't fight.

The progress and results of firearms manufacturing, which Qin Chuan is most concerned about, are not bad.

Since the first flintlock pistol was made, Li Xuejing drilled five barrels one after another, three of which were finished products and two were waste, one of which was irreparable in the process of drilling, and the other was directly blown up when he tested the gun with a large dose of black powder.

Fortunately, Li Xuejing and others hid in the dirt pit when they tried the gun, and there were no casualties.

Five into three, with the technology of the current era, the pass rate is already very high.

The main reason is that there is no deduction of materials and wages, the craftsmen are willing to use materials, but also willing to work hard, and in strict accordance with Qin Chuan's regulations, the twenty catties of iron are smelted to less than four catties, so as to obtain higher quality wrought iron, and the quality of the barrel used for forging is naturally not too bad.

In addition, the high stability of the boring machine, after a series of heat treatment such as carburizing and nitriding, the quality is greatly improved, and the accuracy and efficiency of the drill bore are naturally improved.

The drilled barrel also needs to be nitrided and annealed, and the inner chamber of the copper tube is cooled to greatly improve the strength of the barrel.

Li Xuejing estimated that as long as we spend some time and continuously improve the boring machine and drill bit, we should be able to control the pass rate of the barrel at more than 70%.

Now that the gun factory has ten boring machines and installed two sets of linkage devices, Qin Chuan specially transferred eight strong mules to pull the turntable in turn, and drilled the barrel day and night.

More boring machines are being manufactured, and today's craftsmen are almost proficient, manufacturing efficiency and quality have been greatly improved, and all bearings and slides have undergone a series of heat treatments, and reliability is basically guaranteed.

Today there were twenty blacksmiths in the musket factory, each with five apprentices, because there was a serious shortage of craftsmen, and for the time being there were only those who had to make barrels, bolts, and other parts, as well as drill holes, and make boring machines.

Qin Chuan set them the goal of completing the assembly of 100 boring machines and completing 100 qualified flintlock pistols before the Qingming Festival.

When the time comes, he will take a firearm and go to the three cliffs.

The progress of the cannon factory is also not bad, Chen Zhan built two more Furlong machine guns, one of which is four feet long, after being made by the iron mold preheating method, there was a bubble in the barrel of the gun, and cracks appeared, so it was scrapped.

The other two-foot-eight-inch one was completed, and five sub-guns were built, and Qin Chuan went to test the gun, and did not hide in the dirt pit, but hid in the distance, observing the air leakage at the junction of the sub-gun and the mother gun.

The result was quite ideal, the sheepskin was covered, and there was not much smoke leaking when the cannon was fired.

In the past, Chen Zhan had also built the same large Franc cannon, and the effective range of the solid bullet was only a pitiful 100 steps, which was about the same as the three-foot-long Tiger Squat Cannon.

Now this cannon, with the same large sub-gun, can reach one hundred and thirty steps with the same dosage, first, because the new configuration of black powder is more powerful, and second, the airtightness has increased, and the firing range has naturally increased.

The three-foot-long tiger squat cannon is only 45 catties, but this Franc cannon, which is only 2 feet 8 inches, weighs 250 catties, which still improves the quality of the barrel and reduces the number of iron hoops.

Compared with the Tiger Squat Cannon, the Furlong cannon has an incomparable rate of fire, with five sub-guns pre-loaded with ammunition, which can fire a second shot in less than a minute, and when the number is large enough, it can form an uninterrupted artillery fire suppression.

Therefore, in Qinchuan's artillery blueprint, the status of the Franc cannon is much higher than that of the Tiger Squat Cannon, but only two specifications are manufactured, one is the current 28-inch long female gun, and the other is 4-foot long, both of which can be loaded with two-wheeled vehicles for field warfare.

The six-pounder cannon that Qin Chuan had in mind officially began to be cast on the eighth day of the new year, and he came to the gun factory early in the morning as the project commander-in-chief.

This cannon is four feet five inches long, and it is much more difficult to cast than the four-inch Furlong cannon.

The early Napoleonic cannon was cast with brass, which was very strong, very bulky, and very expensive, Qinchuan did not have so much copper, so it could only be cast with iron, and the blast furnace made must be able to produce more than 800 catties of iron at one time, and also had high requirements for the quality of molten iron.

This is a great test for Yan Sanqi.

From the moment he came to Loufu, he began to make preparations, and it took him two months to build the blast furnace and the large shaft furnace for secondary refining, and there was a large crucible that could hold 1,500 catties of molten iron in the shaft furnace, as well as two improved large bellows and a hot air pool.

The blast furnace began to burn from the fifth watch, iron sand and coke were stacked in the furnace layer by layer, and the heating equipment was not only the bellows to blow hot air, but also the copper pipe to blow the tar to increase the furnace temperature.

At dawn, the molten iron in the furnace began to flow into the crucible of the shaft furnace that had already burned red, and several apprentices blew hot air into the shaft furnace while blowing tar to maintain the temperature of the molten iron.

A few blacksmiths stirred the molten iron in the crucible and blew it in with copper pipes, adding toner and limestone.

Toner is used to balance the carbon content of molten iron, while limestone is used to make slag, which will reduce some impurities to slag and float on the top layer of molten iron.

When the slag floating on the surface is scooped up, and then the iron ring at the point of the crucible is hooked off, and the red molten iron flows out of the wrought iron pipe at the bottom and into the iron mold that has already been burned red and fixed.

Chen Zhan withstood the scorching heat and carefully controlled the casting of the molten iron to prevent bubbles and uneven casting.

Soon, the iron mold was filled with molten iron, and Chen Zhan instructed several apprentices to wrap the outside of the iron mold with burning charcoal, and then carefully observed the cooling rate of the inner and outer iron molds.

Just like when casting the Tiger Squat Cannon, when the iron mold is no longer red, start to pour water into the hole in the inner mold with a copper pipe.

Two mornings later, in Qin Chuan's full expectation, Chen Zhan dismantled the iron mold.

A handsome cannon barrel appeared in front of Qin Chuan's eyes, the same as the barrel style of Napoleon's six-pounder gun he had seen on the Internet.

But after Qin Chuan checked it, he found that the inner wall of the barrel was still made of hemp iron.

Even if he used hot blast and tar blowing to increase the furnace temperature, he still failed to reach the temperature at which the silica melted, and still could not solve the problem that the silicon content was too low to graphitize.

It may be that the hot blast stove is too primitive, the hot blast temperature is insufficient, and the oxygen content is insufficient.

In desperation, Qin Chuan had to use the old method: annealing.

However, the barrel of the six-pounder gun is too long, oxygen cannot enter the barrel, and it is difficult for the toner powder inside to fully burn during annealing, and the purpose of nitriding and annealing cannot be achieved.

To this end, Qin Chuan came up with a new method, mixing toner, iron powder and horn powder, stirring it into a mud with vinegar, coating it on an iron pipe, making a column as big as the gun chamber, stuffing it into the gun chamber, and after the carbon mud solidified, the iron pipe was pulled out.

In this way, a hole is formed in the middle of the carbon sludge in the barrel, and when the barrel is mounted on the open furnace and rotated while calcining, the copper pipe is used to blow air into the barrel to make the toner powder in it sufficient, and then nitride and anneal the chamber.

Qin Chuan's method is feasible.

After three hours of low-temperature annealing, the iron in the chamber has changed significantly, and the strength is significantly higher than before.

After confirming that there were no cracks and bubbles in the barrel, Chen Zhan began to drill the fire door and scrape the barrel.

……

On the ninth day of the first month of the sixth year of Chongzhen, the Jade Emperor was born.

A caravan under the banner of Jiexiu Fan's family went south along the Xinzhou road.

After Yangqu, there was Taiyuan, and suddenly turned to the northwest in the Jiaocheng area, and plunged into Luliang Mountain.