(Ask for a red ticket, ask for a collection!) ）

After a few days, Xiao Tianjian arranged all kinds of affairs in Shuangfeng Village, and only waited for the next step Zhang Chao to supervise the progress of these projects according to his established plan.

And Xiao Tianjian is concerned about the new type of bird gun, after a few days of testing, the brand new bird gun finally exploded after a reload of overcharge, announced scrap, but also figured out the maximum charge of this bird gun, and after the discretion, set the standard charge, so that compared with Xiao Tianjian's test shot, the power of this bird gun has been improved, at least after facing the officers and soldiers who also hold the bird gun, the fire gun of the Xingtian Army can basically shoot at it without fear.

However, Xiao Tianjian arrived at this time, and began to be dissatisfied with the charging method, because in the past, their fixed ammunition was packed in some sawn small bamboo tubes, although this can be done, but the local bamboo resources are limited, and it is more labor-intensive, so Xiao Tianjian thinks that it is necessary to improve it again, and completely use paper shell ammunition in the future.

Paper shell ammunition is an important thing for the development of muskets, in the Western era, such a charge has begun to appear, the principle is the same as the bamboo tube fixed ammunition, roll into a small paper tube with wax paper, which is packed into a small paper cylinder according to the required amount, and then put into a projectile made in advance uniformly, usually stored in the soldier's skin, it will not be damp when it rains, when used, the firecracker takes out a such fixed paper shell ammunition, bites open one end, pours the gunpowder into the chamber, and the projectile is finally put into the chamber, Then take the cane to tamp it, and then pour the remaining bit of gunpowder into the medicine pool as a primer, so that the gunners can greatly shorten the charging time, at least in the time of the enemy's reloading, they can be loaded and fired twice, and there is no need to worry about repeated reloading, or the problem of overloading gunpowder, so that the safety of the gunners is also guaranteed.

Wax paper is not a difficult thing to find here, although they have not yet established contact with Fan Yutong's family, but in the local Yangcheng County, this kind of wax paper can also be bought, even if there is no wax paper, ordinary paper can be made into wax paper by itself, and the conditions are already completely available.

There is no need for Yang Changshou to take care of this matter anymore, now Xiao Tianjian has a ready-made talent under him, that is, Gao Cheng, who he has not seen for a long time, has been making fireworks since he was a child.

Gao Cheng now gave him a nickname called Gao Cannon, on the side of Shuangfeng Village, there is a special workshop for him to play with some novelties in the back mountain.

Xiao Tianjian came to Gao Cheng's gunpowder workshop on this day, and it is still the old rule here, no fireworks are allowed, and no idle people are allowed to enter.

As soon as Gao Cheng saw Xiao Tianjian coming, he hurriedly came out to greet him, Xiao Tianjian patted him on the shoulder and said, "How is this time?" I'm too busy to come over to you and tell me! ”

Gao Cheng scratched his head and smiled and hurriedly replied, "It's pretty much the same!" The kind of paper mine that the general came up with at the beginning, the small one made a hundred and ten, and the small one tried many times, and found that the iron slag was mixed into the gunpowder, and after it exploded, it was not very powerful, and the small one thought of a way, rolled the paper shell into two layers, stuffed the iron slag in the middle of the two layers, and then loaded the gunpowder into the hole in the middle, so tried a few times, the iron slag exploded was more powerful, and the dispersion was much more even! It's a pity that I can't do it anymore! It's been down for a few days! ”

Xiao Tianjian was happy at first, because Gao Cheng said that this method is indeed very effective, basically a kind of preset fragmentation grenade, which can indeed make the fragmentation density of iron slag more uniform after the explosion, and the lethality will naturally be much greater, so he admired this guy's intelligence, and was about to praise him, but he heard him say that he couldn't continue to do it, so he was stunned for a moment and immediately asked: "This method is not bad, so why did you stop?" ”

Gao Cheng frowned and replied, "What else can there be?" Now there is no gunpowder in the army, and naturally there is no rice to put in the pot for the small ones! What can I do without gunpowder! ”

Xiao Tianjian then understood that it turned out that (a great harmonious society, even these two words can't be together!) After this period of time, they fought again and again, and after arriving here, they fought several big battles one after another, and the gunpowder that was originally reserved and seized in the army has basically been consumed, and now not only Gao Cheng has no gunpowder here, I'm afraid Huang Shengqiang has not much to use anywhere, and the existing little gunpowder is all left to Huang Shengqiang and the gunners in the army to use, and Gao Cheng naturally has no goods available here.

So he immediately frowned, thought for a moment and comforted Gao Chengdao: "I see, it seems that I have ignored this matter during this time!" That's a big deal! It seems that we need to find some more ways to solve this problem quickly! ”

Because of this incident, Xiao Tianjian didn't have the heart to talk about his paper shell bullets, and after sitting down, he asked Gao Cheng: "Let me ask you, do you know the method of boiling soil nitrate?" ”

When Gao Cheng heard this, he immediately nodded and patted his chest and said, "Of course I know, I followed my father when I was a child, and I boiled it myself!" How could it not be known? As long as the general gets me enough nitrate, I can boil it out! As for the sulfur, I have no choice, so I can only go to the pharmacy to buy it, and get me some willow charcoal, with these three things, I can naturally make gunpowder! ”

After Xiao Tianjian heard this, he immediately patted his ass and left, and returned to his temporary residence in Shuangfeng Village without delay, and instructed Tietou: "Tietou, you send someone to find Mr. Fu immediately, and ask him to inform his subordinates that in our local village, we will buy a large amount of soil nitrate around the dung heap of the pig house in front of the people's houses and behind the house, and the pricing can be a little wider. ”

Tietou was stunned, not knowing what the soil nitrate was, Xiao Tianjian immediately led Tietou and a few guards, ran to the original pigsty in Shuangfeng Village, next to a large pile of dung, pointed to a layer of pale yellow soil on the ground, scraped some down, put it on a tile, and folded it with fire, and some small sparks immediately appeared from these yellow soils.

"See? This thing is soil nitrate, what I want is this thing, let Fu Deming quickly arrange someone to collect it for me, the more you collect, the better, but remember, no one is allowed to adulterate, otherwise, don't think about letting us collect their soil nitrate in the future! Xiao Tianjian clapped his hands and stood up and said to these guys.

Tietou immediately understood what this was, and quickly ordered two of his guards, let them go out of Shuangfeng Village to do this, originally this kind of thing they compost by themselves, scraping soil nitrate is more appropriate, but now they are new here, time is too late, plus this season is just the best time to scrape soil nitrate, once the spring rain passes, it is not easy to scrape soil nitrate, calculate the surrounding villages, it is estimated that after mobilizing the villagers, a large amount of soil nitrate can be obtained in a short time, at least the current problem of saltpeter can be solved.

As for the matter of sulfur, there is no way, so he can only send someone to risk going to Yangcheng County, or the big medicine store in Zezhou City to purchase it, there is no sulfur in this area, and he Xiao Tianjian can't do it.

Fortunately, now Xingtianjun has plenty of money, and it can still solve this kind of problem locally by spending some money, and after the amount of money needed in the future, then they can only hope to find a way out, Fan Yutong's father seems to be their hope.

As for willow charcoal, it is simpler, there are many willow trees here, find some people to burn willow charcoal, and then crush it and hand it over to Gao Chengxing, as for how to prepare gunpowder, Xiao Tianjian does not need to show Gao Cheng.

In fact, the formula of gunpowder in the Ming Dynasty has been quite mature, basically reached the most reasonable formula level, the reason why the quality of gunpowder in the hands of the official army will be unstable, one is because the manufacturer is not careful, the supervision is not effective, the craftsmen try to save trouble and do not fully prepare in accordance with the reasonable formula, the second is because the raw materials are not completely purified or completely crushed, especially the impurities in the nitrate are many, of course, there is no need to think about the power of gunpowder to the greatest extent!

In addition, a lot of gunpowder, not made into granular gunpowder, long-term storage or transportation, the heavy raw material powder in the gunpowder barrel sinks, the light raw material powder floats on it, even if the proportion of gunpowder is very good, it also becomes an uneven formula of gunpowder, so that the quality of gunpowder can be imagined.

The granular gunpowder is not the invention of Xiao Tianjian to this era, the Ming Dynasty people have already used shochu to wet the gunpowder, and then knead it into granules, but this process is not used in many places, so that the quality of gunpowder in the hands of the Ming army is quite unstable.

And there will be no such problem on the side of the Xingtian Army, all departments of the craftsman battalion have formulated detailed processes, and all craftsmen must make them in accordance with the established process, Gao Cheng is a very serious person, and the quality of the gunpowder produced will be more than one grade higher than the quality of the captured gunpowder that they used in the past, so even if the Xingtian Army uses the bird guns and artillery made in the previous form, after being equipped with their self-produced gunpowder, the power will also go up a level.

Since there is a shortage of gunpowder at the moment, the matter of paper shell ammunition can only be put on hold for the time being, and Xiao Tianjian has already arranged the things that should be arranged, and when the gunpowder begins to be produced in batches, at least until the sulfur is bought back and the soil is purified, then in terms of time, I am afraid that it will be too late before the year, and I can only wait until after the New Year.

And Xiao Tianjian knew that his time was very tight, and the beginning of spring would come quickly, after the beginning of spring, if Feng Xi did not complete what he ordered, then when spring came, Zezhou would probably send an official army to attack them, in that case, there would be less than two months left for them.

There are too many things to do in the past two months, so Xiao Tianjian did not stay in Shuangfeng Village for long, handed over the affairs here to Zhang Chao to continue to supervise, and asked him to boldly use some smart people among the craftsmen to be assistants if he was not enough, in short, all affairs must be quickly pushed forward.

And he himself immediately brought a team of guards, out of Shuangfeng Village, towards Dongye Town, the current iron-making furnaces in this area are basically concentrated inside and outside Dongye Town, that is also the foundation of his foothold here, so he can't be careless.