In the era when there was no steam engine as the driving force, and even less electricity, it was not easy to process rifling on the inner wall of the barrel, and it was time-consuming.

Even if the quality of the tool steel produced by Huang is much better than that of the same Daming tool steel, the bottom of the defective rate cannot be ignored, and it is estimated that the cost of making a rifled gun in the future will at least reach three or four times that of a bird gun, that is, an arquebus smoothbore gun.

Because the "Red Flag Army" system has produced steel with better quality than Suzhou Iron and Steel and Fujian Iron, the raw materials for making bird guns are now self-sufficient and do not need to spend money to purchase.

Originally, the price of using purchased Suzhou steel to make bird guns was eight taels of silver, but now the cost of raw materials has dropped significantly, which directly leads to a reduction in cost.

Even if Huang Han had adopted the basic principle of treating craftsmen and industrial workers favorably, and had paid blacksmiths and laborers more than 50 percent higher than the industry standard, the cost of a bird gun would now be less than six taels of silver.

In fact, as long as the quality of the bird gun is excellent, and the weather conditions at the time of the battle are good, the fire speed and effective fire rate of a well-trained bird gun are much higher than that of a flintlock pistol.

It's just that the bird gun is a kind of smoothbore gun, and there is no rifling in the barrel, so the round lead bullet that is discharged is rolling forward, and the accuracy is greatly reduced.

Therefore, the two armies that used arquebuses fought in a line and fired face to face, in order to compensate for the lack of accuracy with a dense rain of bullets.

Huang Han and Song Pengfei had already drawn up the basic array of the "Red Banner Army" for the birdsmen, because a group of bird-gunners would have a wheelbarrow, which could not only block the attack of the enemy cavalry, but also provide some cover for the bird-gunners to more or less provide them with some cover.

This also has the great advantage of having an obstacle in front of the Birdman's array in the face of a dense charge from the enemy's cavalry, which greatly increases the Birdman's sense of security.

Although the manufacture of firearms in Kaiping Town is still very primitive, it is a workshop-type factory, but it already has the prototype of modern management, and it is expected that Yang Laoshi will leave the factory this month with 170 bird guns, 15 guns, repair 100 pairs of iron armor, and make 30 new pairs of all-steel cuirasses.

The structure of the cuirass produced by Huang is simple, and the main components are two thin steel plates made of two pieces of steel according to the curvature of the human body.

But it was strong enough to withstand thirty straight shots, and it was able to achieve such strength, of course, thanks to the improved quality of the steel.

The blacksmiths continued to forge the steel through a man-powered hammer to increase the density of the steel to achieve the effect of strengthening, and finally the quality of the cuirass after quenching and shaping was better than that of the unavoidable steel of this era to make armor with the false name of "treasure armor".

As the name suggests, 100 steel is the ancient steel made of fried steel through repeated folding and forging deformation, which is characterized by repeated heating and forging can eliminate or reduce the inclusions in the steel, so that its composition tends to be uniform, the structure tends to be dense, so as to improve the performance of steel.

After the Huang's Iron and Steel Workshop obtained the fully liquid molten steel, the impurities in the steel have been reduced a lot, and then after heavy hammer forging, the hardness and purity of the material obtained are no less than that of 100 steel.

The structure of the manpower jack is not complicated, nor is it Huang Hankai's golden finger, but the blacksmith master brainstormed and designed it himself.

The component is a steel bracket that supports an iron lump weighing up to 1,000 catties, and at one end is a hammer head, which rises and falls up and down along a vertical line that is held in place by the steel bracket.

When using this jack hammer, ten strong men shouted trumpets and pulled ten ropes in their hands at the same time, and the ropes were fastened to the design of the hammer body through a steel connecting ring at the end of the pulley group.

Ten people worked together to pull the hammer body to a step away from the card position when they let go, this iron lump weighing thousands of pounds fell freely into the iron cutting board that needed to be forged with a hammer, and the cycle was repeated, and the method of changing people in shifts was adopted halfway to maximize the use of this large equipment.

Xu Guangqi was also amazed when he saw this sledgehammer, he thought it was too extravagant, the entire jack hammer consumed more than 3,000 catties of steel, and the blacksmith and labor needed to invest 100 people a day.

Scientists saw a difference in the strength of steel forged with a heavy hammer, and then decided it was worth the money.

Because the steel products processed by forging have high hardness, sharp and wear-resistant, good texture and good corrosion resistance, they can ensure good mechanical properties and long service life of the cuirasse.

The knight put on a cuirass, equipped with iron arms, wrist guards, and shoulder pads, and the protection was stronger than the fine iron armor equipped by Jiannu, and the weight was reduced by ten catties, and the flexibility of the body was greatly improved.

After testing, the two knights, who were originally comparable in strength, were equipped with cuirasses and the fine iron armor that captured the self-built slaves and returned to the duel.

They fought with a spear wrapped in a soft cloth, and in the end, due to the weight and poor physical flexibility, the knights wearing the iron armor of Jiannu were finally exhausted and defeated without exception.

It can be seen from this that the replacement of all the cavalry of the "Red Banner Army" with cuirasses will improve combat effectiveness and increase protection.

Even after cost calculation, the cost price of a pair of cuirasses plus matching helmets, visors, iron arms, knee pads, and shoulder pads reached forty taels of silver, and Huang Han did not hesitate to give an order for full production.

What is the silver, as long as it can reduce the casualty rate of the soldiers of the "Red Banner Army", it is worth spending as much as it wants.

Unfortunately, because it is not easy to make cuirasses, it requires many processes, and it is already the limit to keep 100 pairs of factories a month at the current level of manpower and craftsmanship.

It's not that the blacksmiths don't work hard, they have been treated well since they were hired by the Huang family, and they are paid based on the yield and ergonomics, and everyone does their best to work more and produce more high-quality products.

But when manpower is poor, without increasing manpower and technological innovation, this is already the limit.

Now, Kaiping Town under Huang Han's management should be a happy land, because there are no uniformed eaters and cards, no tattooed hooligans and gangsters to collect protection money, and there are still too many jobs here.

The Huang family got a lot of acres of land at once, and also privately swallowed a lot of ownerless wasteland, and needed a lot of labor, so there were no idlers in Kaiping Town, no beggars and homeless people, and everyone exchanged sweat for food.

All the beggars were gathered to participate in labor, everyone was able to eat three meals and seventy percent of the food, and the lazy professional beggars were sent to the brick and tile factory for forced labor, where the demand for labor was endless.

Forced labor is not lip service, and it is really possible for a lazy person to be beaten to death.

Huang Han has no objection to this, because in ancient times, when work efficiency was low, everyone had to work hard to survive, and the destitute beggars who had no property dared not to cherish the job opportunity when they got it, so there was no need to continue to be a parasite.