After improving the most critical barrel, Chen Xian tried and tested again, and made some subtle improvements to the arquebus, in terms of rate of fire, he sat on the trigger of the arquebus, and added a small reed to the trigger, so that the trigger obtained the automatic reset function, making it more convenient to operate.

At this point, Chen Xian was finally satisfied, and he solidified the drawings and processes of the arquebus and began to organize mass production.

In fact, Chen Xian had already found flint on the fire sickle sold in the grocery store, and it was not impossible to improve the flintlock pistol with the level of craftsmanship he had mastered now, but Chen Xian did not plan to do so.

The flintlock pistol is almost the most advanced firearm that Chen Xian can make with the level of craftsmanship of this era, and the technical difficulty of the flintlock pistol is not very great, if it leaks out, he will lose his technical advantage.

So he plans to improve the musket technology little by little, and when the arquebus technology leaks out, he will develop a flintlock pistol, and play with others little by little.

When organizing the mass production of muskets, Chen Xian divided the production of arquebuses, the production of raw materials, the forging of the barrel, the grinding of the outer circle, the reaming of the inner circle, the production of the wooden butt, the triple charge test of the barrel, and the final installation and commissioning.

In order to ensure the quality of the barrel, Chen Xian required that the barrel of the arquebus should also be made of 100 steel.

Unlike the 100 steels required for katanas, the 100 steels of the arquebus barrel are folded and forged more often, the material is purer, and the carbon content is lower.

If the 100-smelt steel used in the katana is high-carbon steel, then the 100-smelt steel used in the arquebus barrel is low-carbon steel.

Of course, there is a reason why Chen Xian dared to use 100 steels as the barrel material.

Because the ten waterwheels in the factory building east of Zhuangzi have begun to be put into use.

Each of the ten waterwheels drove a long shaft more than three meters long, through the bearings on the wall, into the interior of the workshop, supported by bearings on two cast-iron brackets fixed to the ground.

On this long axis, there are four sets of gear-like paddles, and when the waterwheel outside the wall rotates, the long axis will rotate with it, and the paddle will rotate.

Chen Xian asked people to install an iron handle hammer mounted on the bearing in front of each pair of paddles, the bearing can slide on the base, when the bearing is close to the direction of the paddle, the end of the hammer iron handle will be overwhelmed when the paddle rotates, the end of the hammer iron handle is subjected to pressure downward movement, under the support of the bearing, the front end of the heavy hammer will be lifted, when the paddle continues to move downward, it will suddenly detach from the end of the iron handle of the heavy hammer, and the heavy hammer that loses support will accelerate and fall under the action of gravity and smash on the anvil below it.

After trial and error, Chen Xian and his apprentices made the hammer surface of the heavy hammer parallel to the top of the anvil when it was smashed on the anvil.

With this simple hydraulic forging hammer, the folding and forging of 100 steels saves a lot of manpower.

The hydraulic machinery can lift the heavy hammer that cannot be lifted by manpower, produce a strong vertical forging force, and the efficiency of folding and forging can also be guaranteed.

With these hydraulic forging hammers, the production efficiency of raw materials is suddenly improved, and it is no longer the bottleneck process that occupies the most labor.

In the process of developing the arquebus, Chen Xian designed and restored a Ming Dynasty firearm "three-eyed gun".

The three-eyed gun is actually three short torch barrels tied to a wooden handle, and when fighting, charge in advance, insert something similar to a cannon fuse in the side hole, and use the fire rope to light the fuse and fire the lead during the battle.

The advantage of the three-eyed gun is that it can be loaded with three rounds in advance, and after the start of the battle, it can be fired intensively, forming a dense firepower for a short time.

The disadvantages are that the bullet is less powerful, the firing range is short, the charge speed after firing is slow, and the sustained fire is inferior to the arquebus.

Chen Xian made some improvements to the three-eyed gun, he designed a gun head for the front end of the three-eye gun barrel, the tip of this gun head is a relatively thin pointed cone, and behind the gun tip is a section of iron rod with three evenly distributed grooves, and the three barrels of the three-eye gun can be fixed in the groove with a stable strapping of iron wire. There is a sleeve at the end of the gun head, which can be mounted on a wooden handle.

In this way, the Three-Eyed Gun has become a multi-functional weapon with the triple function of stabbing, smashing, and firing bullets.

Chen Xian also gave this weapon a nice name, called the Three-Eyed Divine Musket.

If possible, Chen Xian wanted to treat this weapon as an item of arms trade.

The Three-Eyed Gun was quite deceptive, and some of the apprentices wondered why Chen Xian didn't equip them with this ox-fork weapon, but instead let them use the arquebus, which didn't look very good.

As more and more people put forward opinions, Chen Xian had to pay attention to it, and he organized the apprentices and conducted two experiments.

He used bricks embedded in the clay figurines instead of human bodies, wrapped them in ordinary cloth visor, and tested their power with an arquebus and a three-eyed gun.

Chen Xian's improved arquebus caliber is 15 mm, the barrel length is 1.2 meters, and the tail end barrel wall thickness is 4mm.

The caliber of the three-eyed gun is 10mm, the barrel length is 35 mm, and the barrel wall thickness is 4mm.

Because the wall thickness is about the same, there is not much difference in the charge of the two.

But when tested, the power of the two showed a difference of three or four times.

The reason why, in the case of a similar charge, the power differs by three or four times, on the one hand, because of the caliber, and on the other hand, because of the length of the barrel.

The bullet is pushed by the huge chamber pressure generated by the gunpowder combustion reaction in the chamber, and the moment the bullet leaves the barrel, the chamber pressure dissipates, and the bullet is not pushed by the force, but decelerates under the action of air resistance.

From this process, it is not difficult to conclude that the longer the barrel, the longer the bullet will be subjected to thrust, and the greater the muzzle kinetic energy.

The arquebus has a barrel length that is more than three times that of a three-eyed gun, and the muzzle kinetic energy can be more than three times that of the latter.

In addition, because of the air resistance, the higher the velocity of the bullet, the greater the resistance in the air, so the kinetic energy attenuation of the velocity after the bullet is discharged is directly proportional to the velocity of the bullet.

The weight of the bullet is related to the weight of the bullet, the heavier the bullet, the lower the relative velocity of the bullet under the same muzzle kinetic energy.

And the weight of the bullet, in turn, depends on the caliber of the barrel.

That is to say, the larger the caliber of the gun, the lower the discharge speed, the slower the kinetic energy attenuation, and the longer the effective firing range under the same muzzle kinetic energy.

Because of the weight control, the caliber of the three-eyed gun is only 10mm, and the lead bullet fired is only about 6 grams, while the bullet fired by the 15mm musket weighs more than 15 grams, which is twice as much as the former.

In the test, the bullets fired by the arquebus, which was also a target 100 meters away, not only pierced the cloth armor, embedded the bullets in the mud, but also shattered the bricks inside, which was absolutely deadly.

The bullet fired by the three-eyed gun only broke the cloth surface of the cloth armor, leaving a dent on the armor, and at the same time leaving an insignificant dent on the mud dummy under the cloth armor, and the bricks inside the clay figure were naturally unscathed.

Thirty meters of close-range shooting, the arquebus directly pierced the dummy and its two layers of armor, and although the bullet fired by the three-eyed gun left a deep dent on the dummy's armor, it still did not break the armor, although it left a deep dent on the clay man's body, but did not shatter the bricks inside, which shows that at this distance, the three-eyed gun is still not fatal to heavy armored units.