The next day, the second uncle sent a signal to let the Feilai Mountain come back, gathered nearly 100 people, moved the winch on the ship, and came to this remote beach together, Li Jing took a metal detector and began to detect back and forth, and quickly determined that this beach, 300 meters long and about 80 meters wide, there were metal foreign objects under the sand.

Due to its location on the seashore, the sand seeped water could not dig too deep pits, so these guns were not buried deeply, about two feet or so. Everyone planted small flags at the location detected by Li Jing, and then began to dig, and when the copper cannon revealed the ears and copper rings used to fix it, they used iron chains and winches to pull it out. By the time it got dark, all the detected sites had been excavated, and a total of 16 medium Franc cannons and seven small tiger squat guns had been excavated. Each Furlong cannon was equipped with fifteen breech guns with handles.

The Franc cannon is the world's first breech gun, and the Franc cannon dug out by Li Jing is a ship version made in Europe, and the overall structure is divided into three parts, the mother gun, the child gun, and the bracket. The female barrel is slender and has a small caliber, and judging from the ratio of the length of the caliber to the barrel, it should belong to the cannon. Li Jing measured it, about 32 times the diameter. The female gun body is equipped with a crosshair and a light door, which can aim and shoot at long-distance targets. So you can aim accurately,

There are gun lugs on both sides of the gun body, which can be placed on the bracket and can be tilted to adjust the firing angle. The rear part of the gun is thicker, and there are long holes and grooves to fill the guns. The sub-gun is similar to the small firearm, each female gun is equipped with 15 sub-guns, which can be pre-loaded with ammunition for backup, and the mother gun is loaded and fired in turn during the battle, thus greatly improving the firing speed.

The bracket is a cylinder that can be fixed on the deck and bulwark, and there is a U-shaped bracket on it, and the bracket can be rotated on the cylinder, and at the same time, the gun lugs of the Furlong cannon can be installed on the U-shaped gun carriage and can be pitched up and down, so that the Furlong cannon can achieve flexible aiming and shooting up and down, left and right.

This batch of cannons is the same size and weighs about 500 catties, which should be cast in the same batch. It was Wu Ping who fished it up from a Portuguese merchant ship that was still difficult to sink. The Franc machine was invented in Europe, and was introduced to China by the Portuguese Republic in the first year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1522), and was named "Franc Machine" according to its name.

It has been almost 100 years since this kind of gun was introduced into China by this time, and the Chinese were clever enough to quickly discover the advantage of this kind of gun, that is, the rate of fire is fast, and every time a normal breech gun is fired, it must first be filled with gunpowder, then solidified, put into the cork seal, and then put round solid lead balls and iron balls. Ignition launch. It is estimated that it will take a minute to fire one round, and then the chamber of the gun will have to be cleared before it can be reloaded. The sustained rate of fire takes one and a half minutes to two minutes, and the effective firing range is generally about five or six hundred meters.

If you face the cavalry, it would be good to be able to shoot three cannons, at this time the enemy has already rushed in front of you, and the last shot of the artillery will generally fire shotguns, and the artillerymen are unarmed and have no ability to resist, and then they can only abandon the artillery and flee behind the shield infantry.

The Fran cannon is different, the shells have been loaded with a gun a long time ago, and they can be fired directly by pressing it, and a bunch of people in the back are loaded with shells, and two people in the front row are aimed and fired, and there is no pressure to fire five or six guns in a minute.

Of course, the disadvantages of this cannon are also very prominent. First of all, the cannon is not big, and the gunpowder that is too big is too powerful, and the gun can't get stuck at all, and it will collapse directly. Secondly, there is a gap in the joint between the child gun and the mother gun, which causes the leakage of gunpowder gas and affects the range, the general range will not exceed 300 meters, and many can only reach 150 meters, which is not much stronger than the Lumi gun.

Li Jing had seen the Furlong cannon in the picture of this era in the book, the early about five feet long, wrought iron hoop reinforced Furlong cannon, with an effective firing range of about 200 meters. Nearly a hundred years later, the cast bronze, more elaborate Franc cannon, had an effective range of about 500 meters. The 3-foot Morterete model also has a lower effective range than 200 meters and is estimated to be around 150 meters for inland waterway vessels. The barrel is shorter, and the range is of course lower.

The tiger squat cannon is native to the Ming Dynasty, this cannon is like a squatting open-mouthed toad, is a kind of close-range use of shotgun, specifically the two ships approach, ready to jump gang, fan-shaped to give each other a profound lesson, hundreds of small stones, iron filings, lead spewed out, sweeping down a large piece.

Therefore, the short-barreled Franc machine is probably used by the Navy to suppress the jumping gang on the ship, so don't have a range but a caliber. If the body tube is not long enough, it has not been burned out of the chamber, the muzzle will have a huge sound, and the flames and black smoke will be violently spewed, which is also very dangerous to the gunner, if the projectile has a longer time in the body tube to be accelerated by gunpowder gas, the efficiency of using gunpowder will be improved, and the firing range will be much farther.

The breech artillery of this era did not have a locking device, and it was very rudimentary, Li Jing looked at the sailors who were scrubbing the artillery excitedly, and felt his chin to test if there was any way to optimize these guns. After all, the sea surface of Fujian is still very dangerous.

The first problem is the problem of sealing, and the best material for sealing is rubber. Li Jing opened the light curtain and asked the customer service sister, "Is there a rubber ring that can be used to seal the gun of the Franc machine?" ”

"This tech tree is very close and can be customized in batches. In addition to the wild rubber trees in Brazil, there are more than 2,000 species of plants in the world that produce rubber, and one hectare (100 acres) of rubber trees can produce 1,000 kilograms of rubber.

There is also rubber grass, which belongs to the dandelion family, and is widely distributed in northwest China, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, and Europe. It grows in floodplain meadows, salinized meadows, and farmland canals. The root contains rubber emulsion, which extracts rubber and is used in the manufacture of general rubber products. This one is relatively far, and you may not be able to get it. ”

The customer service sister continued: "In addition, there is silver chrysanthemum rubber, also known as silver leaf chrysanthemum rubber and Gaoyou rubber. It is also a natural rubber. Raw gum is solidified in plants, mostly concentrated in the bark of the roots. Dark in color with a strong odor. Good viscosity, electrical insulation, and flex resistance. Its molecular structure is similar to that of Brazilian rubber, that is, the molecular structure is cis-1,4-polyisoprene, which is a soft natural rubber. It is made from the latex of the perennial shrub plant silver chrysanthemum (or silver leaf rubber chrysanthemum).

"Mainly native to Central America and Mexico. But a hundred years ago, the seeds were inadvertently brought to Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi by Western merchant ships. This plant has no natural predators and is drought tolerant and salinity-tolerant. It should be regarded as a harmful invasion of species. It is also toxic to human contact. At present, it is widely found in the mountains, and you can buy and process it yourself to make rubber. ”

"If it is cultivated artificially, the stems and roots can be harvested after 2~4 years of planting, and the rubber obtained is silver chrysanthemum rubber after crushing and extracting. Its raw rubber content is high, about 5-10%, and about 900 kg of rubber can be harvested in 1 hectare. It's not much worse than a rubber tree. If the host wants to build a steam engine in the future, the sealing is inseparable from rubber, which can be focused on. ”

Li Jing said: "Where is the time to make it, I am going to order a batch of heat-resistant and fire-resistant ones, which will be used on this batch of Franc machine guns that I dug up, if they are sealed well, I estimate that the firing range can reach 500 meters." ”

"There is no ready-made goods, you can make a reservation, I will scan the data first, a minimum order of one hundred sets, and the price is one piece. Two-day delivery. ”

"Yes, deal," then the value of Li Jing's currency on the light curtain decreased by 200, and the total number dropped from 6452 to 6252. Li Jing had a pain in his flesh, and the money was still not enough to spend. In the future, Li Jing's fleet will be equipped with a large number of artillery, and it is estimated that the 200 sets of sealing rings ordered this time may not be enough. And with such a high temperature and flames, the loss will be very fast.

Li Jing made up his mind, after returning from Nanjing, he would find some saline-alkali land on the slopes of the mountains and artificially plant silver chrysanthemum, since it should not be difficult to transplant and collect seeds in the wilderness along the coast of the three provinces.