At this time, when he was almost exhausted, Chen Xian simply let go of his hands and feet, and through the introduction of his apprentices, he made every effort to recruit fourteen to eighteen-year-old teenagers from Zhuangzi to enter Zhuangzi as apprentices.

In order to increase the combat effectiveness of the new apprentices, Chen Xian made a large number of cost-effective cloth armor on the one hand, and developed new weapons on the other.

In the previous battle between the apprentice and the infiltrator, Chen Xian suddenly found that he seemed to have overlooked a very important aspect when training the Mandarin Duck Array, that is, long-range attacks!

The real Mandarin Duck Formation in history is actually mixed with the arquebusier, and before the Mandarin Duck Formation fights, there will be arquebus snatchers who will strike at the enemy before the formation, and then it will be the turn of the Mandarin Duck Formation to shoot.

After all, Chen Xian is just a lover of ancient wars, and his level is also a lover level, he pays too much attention to the famous Mandarin Duck Array itself, and ignores more important things, until that night's battle, the performance of the Mandarin Duck Formation did not meet his expectations, which reminded Chen Xian.

So this time, Chen Xian needs to develop a suitable long-range weapon.

It's too late for the musket, not to mention that Chen Xian hasn't solved the problem of the nut yet, and he doesn't know what to use to plug the hole at the back end of the barrel, even if Chen Xian solves the problem of the nut, with the level of craftsmanship in this era, he can't produce enough arquebuses in a short time.

Bows are also not good, firstly, it takes a long time to train qualified archers, and secondly, the teenagers are not strong enough.

Then there is only a crossbow, and it must be a crossbow produced by himself, because at this time, the Yang and Bai families will definitely not let him have channels to purchase strong crossbows.

So here's the problem, the strong crossbows of this era are all made of reinforced wood composite bow arms to make crossbow arms, and the manufacturing process of composite bow arms is very complicated, Chen Xian doesn't understand it at all, even if he does, there is no way to make a composite crossbow arm with a production cycle of years in a short time.

So there was only one choice left in front of Chen Xian, and that was the steel crossbow that he had always looked down on.

Making a bow arm out of steel is a Western practice of crossbows, and many people may feel that making bow arms out of steel is an improvement that will make the bow and crossbow much more powerful. In traditional Chinese romance novels, there is also a saying about an iron tire bow, but in fact, steel is actually the worst material for the bow arm.

For example, there are two bows, one made of steel and the other made of composite materials, the weight of the steel bow arm is two kilograms, and the weight of the composite bow arm is 500 grams.

Let's also assume that the force required to pull the steel arm bow is equal to that of the compound bow, and the same is true for the pulling distance.

When we let go of the two bows that are fully drawn, the first thing they have to overcome in the process of rebounding is the inertia caused by the weight of the bow arm itself.

The greater the weight of the bow, the more difficult it is to overcome its own inertia, the greater the energy consumption of the bow arm, the smaller the energy allocated to the arrow, the slower the rebound speed, and the slower the initial velocity of the arrow.

The lighter the dead weight, the greater the energy allocated to the arrow, the higher the rebound speed, and the higher the initial velocity of the arrow.

With steel as a bow arm, most of the potential energy generated by drawing the bow will be wasted on the slingshot arm itself, and the energy allocated to the arrow will be very small.

Therefore, steel sheet is the least energy-efficient bow arm material.

The only way to increase the effectiveness of the steel plate bow arm crossbow is to increase the weight of the crossbow arrow, the greater the weight of the crossbow arrow, the more energy can be distributed in the ejection process, and the same initial velocity, the greater the weight of the crossbow arrow, the greater the energy contained.

Essentially, if you want to give full play to the effectiveness of the steel plate bow arm crossbow, it can only be a heavy arrow, and the effective range is short.

Of course, the steel plate crossbow is not without benefits, the greater the weight of the bow arm, the more stable the crossbow bow.

Chen Xian once made a strong crossbow with a compound crossbow arm with a bow opening weight of nearly 200 pounds, but when he tried firing, the crossbow itself vibrated and jumped out of his hand directly, and his tiger's mouth was cracked, which is the instability caused by the insufficient weight of the crossbow arm itself.

Comparatively speaking, this is not the case with steel crossbows.

Therefore, the characteristics of the steel crossbow are that the arrow speed is slow and the range is short, but it is stable, as long as the arrow is heavy enough, the power can be guaranteed.

When designing the new crossbow, Chen Xian took the big black eagle crossbow in his hand as an object of imitation.

In this era, it is of course impossible to completely imitate the Great Black Hawk, and it is simply impossible to find a replacement in this era with the various modern materials used on the Great Black Hawk.

What Chen Xian wants to imitate is the basic structure of the Great Black Eagle.

Structurally, the Great Black Hawk was more advanced than the crossbows of this era in two ways, the first and most important advantage was the pulley set on the bow arm and the bowstring.

The design of the pulley block allows the Big Black Hawk to double the pull distance with the same bow arm length.

Anyone who has studied modern physics knows that the final kinetic energy of an arrow is equal to the average pulling force multiplied by the pulling distance.

For crossbows, the bow arms should not be too long, and making them too long will affect the flexibility of the crossbowmen, so that the crossbowmen cannot be arranged in a relatively close formation.

However, the bow arm is too short, and the pull distance of the crossbow becomes smaller, and the pull distance is too small, and to maintain the power of the crossbow, it is necessary to increase the pulling force, but the strength of people is limited.

This is a difficult contradiction in the production of ancient crossbows, to solve this contradiction, one way is to use a winch to wind, this era of the god arm bow is to do this, the so-called god arm, in fact, is the winch, Chen Xian in the honeymoon period with the Yang family, once through the Yang steward into the Yang family military village to see the Yang family collection of a god arm bow (the god arm bow is actually a crossbow)

Another solution is to use a pulley block, which doubles the pulling distance of the crossbow and doubles the pulling force, so that the crossbow is within the range that manpower can bear, and the power is greatly increased.

The advantage of using a pulley set is that the winding speed will be faster than using a winch, and the pressure on the crossbow machine will be less.

The second advantage that Chen Xian wants to imitate the Great Black Hawk is his trigger, which has been improved by modern design, which can withstand greater pulling force and is more stable than the traditional triggers of this era.

In terms of the use of materials, Chen Xian can only use steel and wood to replace many modern composite materials used in the modern Big Black Eagle, which greatly increases the weight of the imitation crossbow.

After more than a month of hard work and more than a dozen failures, Chen Xian finally succeeded in replicating a satisfactory heavy Black Eagle crossbow.

In order to create a qualified spring steel plate, Chen Xian and his family tried a variety of processes such as 100 steel refining method, carburizing method, water quenching, oil quenching, double liquid quenching, tempering and other process tests.

The test data was recorded in a book, and finally the best production process was found.