There are still many differences between the cannon casting industry and the fire gun, including the clay mold, the boring fire door and other things, but Shen Yong never cast the cannon back then, mainly because there are a large number of craftsmen in Dengzhou who cast the cannon and build the fire gun, plus there are Portuguese as instructors, Sun Yuanhua did not mix these craftsmen, and Shen Yong was also a little ignorant about the cannon casting and other things.

However, most of these skills are all-encompassing, after a period of communication between the two sides, Shen Yong felt that he had found a way to think about things that had been bothering him for a long time, and his mind was clear and thinking quickly, and after he was completely thoughtful, a sense of ecstasy came to his heart.

At this time, Min Yuanqi was still studying those machine tools, Shen Yong walked quickly in front of Min Yuanqi, didn't even hug his fists, and said directly: "My lord, I have eyebrows about the drill pipe!" ”

Under the excitement, even the humble titles such as below, villain, and small are useless.

Fortunately, Min Yuanqi didn't care at all, he was looking at these machines here, also because he had some ideas and breakthroughs in his head.

These things, looking at the atlas or just listening to people say that there is no intuitive impression, only when these things are in front of you can really make a breakthrough.

Just when the light flashed in Min Yuanqi's mind, Shen Yong, who had a smug face, also happened to come over, Min Yuanqi smiled and said, "Don't be busy first, I also have gains, I'll talk about mine first, and then you will talk about yours." ”

"Please speak first."

"I look at this punch, which uses a drill bit to drill the barrel out of the fire door, and the barrel is clamped on the drill floor to fix. I took a look at it, and I felt that if the drill floor was restructured, the bottom bed would be changed to the shape of a round hole, and the iron sheet made of fine iron would be placed on it, so that a drill would be a fine iron ring......"

Speaking of which, Shen Yong had already understood.

"What your lord says is extreme, extreme, extreme!" Shen Yong's voice trembled a little, he thought about it carefully, and after a while, he hugged his fist to Shen Yong and said: "Congratulations, congratulations, this time the chain mail manufacturing can be carried out quickly, as long as there are enough people, enough fine iron, and even enough pig iron, we can make at least more than 1,000 sets of chain mail before the end of the year!" ”

Unlike the iron blades that need to be finely polished in the scale armor, and also different from the large iron pieces that tie the armor, the chain mail is interlocked with iron rings.

A good chain mail can protect most of the body, and if it is equipped with an iron helmet and a necklace, arm guards, and shin guards, the protection ability is also quite good.

At least it is more than cloth armor, not inferior to cotton armor, and even in the defense of bows and arrows and slashing, chain mail is stronger than cotton armor.

Of course, it is slightly weaker than the piercing and scaly armor.

There is no way to divide the labor and have a force.

Due to the lack of wire drawing technology and machinery, China has never been able to mass-produce chain mail on a large scale like in Europe.

From the Middle Ages to the popularization of firearms, Europe was not the kind of plate armor that everyone wore like a tin can like in film and television dramas, which was too expensive and only real knights could equip it.

Plate armor with chain mail, the knight's defensive ability is amazing, but ordinary soldiers do not have the opportunity to equip such gorgeous equipment.

Large-scale equipment is chain mail, wearing an iron helmet, such a protective ability is actually good.

China has not solved the problem of wire drawing, resulting in almost no equipment for chain mail before the Ming and Qing dynasties, to the Ming Dynasty can barely make chain mail, the output is very low, and the protection can not be compared with the iron scale armor, so the Ming Dynasty more than 200 years, it has also manufactured quite rare chain mail, and it is mainly assembled for the forbidden army of the Beijing Division, and the local military town is rarely rationed.

If Min Yuan is allowed to choose, he will definitely give priority to equipping the troops with plate armor, followed by iron scale armor and piercing armor, and then he will choose between chain mail and cotton armor.

The cotton armor is also good against bows and arrows and chopping, the cloth surface is inlaid with iron blades, and the placket cotton armor is almost the whole body armor, and the protection is not bad after assembling the accessories.

But this is not bad compared to cloth armor and leather armor and other things, to put it bluntly, the so-called armor, including paper armor, is because iron armor is not easy to manufacture and too expensive to make things, worn on ordinary soldiers, just to buy peace of mind for these cannon fodder.

The scale armor made of fine iron is the pinnacle of protection, and the real elite is not only a layer of iron scale armor, often wear a layer of cotton armor or leather armor first, and then put a layer of iron armor outside, double armor or even triple armor in the body, plus infinite strength, sensitive response, this kind of elite can often kill and injure many people on the battlefield, their own most wounded, can survive on the battlefield many times, extremely experienced, these veterans who wear heavy armor and hold soldiers on the battlefield are the most precious treasures in the army.

Matching armor, matching armor to all the soldiers, this is definitely a crazy idea among the generals of the Ming army, and it is unlikely that anyone will really think and do this, but this is Min Yuanqi's obsession.

Like Wu Xiang and Zu Dashou, as well as Li Chengliang's Li family, they enslaved a large number of military households, cultivated a large amount of farmland, and cultivated each Neiding into a small landlord, with the same interests, and used many methods such as dividing up military salaries and privately occupying land to enslave military households and marrying, thus creating an unbreakable gate and forming a complete community of interests.

Liaoxi Jiangmen was formed in the Wanli period, and the light was greater than the Chongzhen period and the Southern Ming Dynasty.

Even in the Kangxi period, after a few decades, it was the Liaoxi Jiangmen who followed Wu Sangui to oppose the Qing Dynasty because of the reduction of the domain, and the generals who followed Wu Sangui were either born in the Liaoxi Jiangmen, or were inextricably linked with the Liaoxi Jiangmen.

Even if such an armed group with common interests is not possible for generals to arm all the Nadines.

Most of the Neding's armament is self-inflicted, and they will try their best to use strong soldiers and wear heavy armor in order to save their lives on the battlefield.

But not all of them have the ability to do this, and with three thousand iron riders, there are only a few who can wear iron armor. Most of them are the placket armor, which is also the mainstream choice of armor for the cavalry in western Liaoning.

Especially at the end of Chongzhen, the imperial court was unable to invest more money and food energy in Liaozhen, and the generals completely abandoned the land around Jinzhou and no longer had the idea of pioneering.

The Neding are also the same, the fine wine and fat sheep are not enjoyed, so they have to spend the money on armor weapons and war horses?

If it weren't for the fact that the imperial court still had more than one million dollars and grain invested a year, I am afraid that the remnants of Liaozhen soldiers and horses would not even have the strength to fight Li Zicheng for a few days.

Min Yuanqi's idea is crazy enough in the eyes of most people.

All men are rationed chain mail, and the swords and cavalry are all chain mail and piercing.

The pikemen were chainmail with piercing armor, and the rear row was equipped with cotton or leather armor with chain mail.

The Gun Hand is all chain mail with an iron helmet.

Such an army, although not as brilliant as the full plate armor or iron scale armor, is definitely a wonderful flower in the late Ming Dynasty.

As soon as he thought that he could do such a thing, Min Yuanqi trembled with excitement.

Of course, if you can wear all the plate armor with a layer of chain mail...... Min Yuanqi didn't dare to think about this picture at all.

Shen Yong dared to think: "My lord, it is indeed a good way to impact the wrought iron sheet to make an iron ring like this." If we have enough water power, we can use the hammer to forge the iron pieces and create the kind of plate armor that adults want. ”

Min Yuanqi was excited in his heart, but he still shook his head.

Hydraulic impact plate armor is a correct idea, but it involves a lot of problems, water power, the machine that drives the hammer, this thing is simple to say, but it is very complicated and difficult to do.

At least there is no hydraulic stamping, and the plate armor on the European side is only played with a hydraulic mallet to make the plate armor smoother and brighter, not the imagined hydroforming, which is impossible.

More like the Chinese folk use of trampling method of pounding rice mallet, the wooden frame is suspended with a wooden mallet, one end is empty, one end is put on the rice, so keep beating, remove the rice to get polished rice, the principle of forging plate armor is similar to the mallet rice, but the wooden mallet is replaced with iron, from light and heavy.

The European plate armor mallet weighs more than 200 catties, and the sponge iron can be continuously beaten and kneaded, and it can be made into a low-carbon steel with a fairly uniform carbon content in a very short time.

However, the carbon content of steel made by frying steel in China is extremely uneven, the sulfur content is too high, and it is extremely easy to crack when making thin iron plates with a large area.

Min Yuanqi had long considered the problem of making plate armor, and then he figured it out, the Europeans directly beat the pig iron block into a thin iron plate with a hydraulic mallet, and the next forging still requires a large number of craftsmen and time, there is no hydraulic forging and pressing integrated molding, that is a hydraulic press, how is it possible in this era?

However, in the future, there will be abundant funds, and the purchase of a large amount of fine iron to directly make plate armor is actually more time-saving and iron-saving than iron scale armor, but at this stage, with Min Yuanqi's funds and connections, it cannot support this large-scale purchase of fine iron, and the matter of making plate armor can only be discussed later.

was vetoed by Min Yuanqi, Shen Yong was not depressed, but said with regret: "It's a pity that the adults thought late, if I thought earlier, this time the Shandong guest soldiers came, we can at least have a few hundred more chain mail!" ”

This kind of punch technology is not complicated, according to the ability of Shen Yong and others, it will be clear in a few days, and ten or twenty days of hard work is enough to imitate many units.

The punch is enough, the mold is better, and the fine iron is ready-made, so I have been buying the fine iron for several months and storing it.

Min Yuanqi buys strategic materials, just to consider whether it is good or not, whether it will be used, as for money considerations is the second step, and even as long as you have money in hand, you can buy and buy.

Otherwise, the income of tens of thousands of taels a month will definitely exceed 200,000 taels so far, and the imperial court will only give a town a year's discount of 200,000, which is just Min Yuanqi's income for a few months.

So much silver is used cleanly, pig iron, wrought iron, fine iron, cycademia, sulfur, war horses, the purchase of these materials has always been the top priority, as long as there is a buy word, not to consider anything else.

Now I am afraid that there are tens of thousands of catties of fine iron and hundreds of thousands of catties of wrought iron and pig iron, all of which are purchased from the south of the Yangtze River by boats, and the cost of transportation is very low.

It is also fortunate that Jiangnan is also an iron-producing area at this time, and the output is very high.

If you want to wait for Fujian Fujian Railway, although the quality is high, the purchase cycle will be much longer.

Fujian Iron has stockpiled goods in Jiangbei and Jiangnan, but the price is high, and the land is too scattered, so it is better to go directly to Jiangnan Iron Field to buy it on a large scale, which is much cheaper and affordable.

With so much pig iron and wrought iron plus refined iron, plus the purchase channel is not broken, it is estimated that it will be quite easy to make armor in the future, and it should be relatively easy to equip at least all members with chain mail.

Then the cavalry, sword players and front pikemen were equipped with plate armor, a layer of plate armor and a layer of chain mail, which in this era was the standard heavy cavalry and heavy infantry.

Thinking about that scene, Min Yuanqi couldn't help but boil his blood......