On the north bank of Yacheng, in the northeast of Xindi Port, there is a big mansion, which was originally the property of a Yuan army deputy thousand households in the original Jiyang Military City. When the Song army attacked the city, the deputy Qianhu was killed in battle, and the mansion was confiscated to reward the meritorious officials.

On the fifth day of the sixth month, a Song army escorted three boatloads of supplies into the mansion, and hundreds of people carried them back and forth for a whole day and a night before the work was completed. Since then, the neighbors have been disturbed by the sound of various banging and firecrackers.

Left and right asked Fang Zhi that this was the weapon workshop of the Great Song Dragon Bird Army.

What is the reason why the weapon workshop is not put in the city, but placed outside the city? Although everyone was puzzled, they didn't dare to ask, so they could only pinch their noses and endure it.

These neighbors didn't know that Shi Yang, Wang Ping'an, Jueyuan, and the Ding family had all asked Zhao Lie about this question, and Zhao Lie just smiled: "You see, Jiang Shiyi and Ma Zhongping have never asked me such a question." Why? ”

Why? Everyone looked at each other, unable to understand for a while.

Zhao Lie only smiled and said, "Wait, you will know soon." ”

Early in the morning of June 18, Zhao Lie personally escorted a batch of iron ingots and iron materials that had been obtained with great difficulty to go to the weapons workshop.

The Xing Dynasty was able to gain a foothold in Yacheng, Zhao Lieju made great contributions, and the Empress Dowager Yang was overjoyed, summoned Zhao Lie, and asked him what reward he wanted. I thought that this clan talent either wanted gold and silver wealth, or a generous beauty. Unexpectedly, Zhao Lie put forward a request that made Empress Dowager Yang jaw-dropping-as long as there are iron ingots, the more the merrier.

Empress Dowager Yang came back to her senses for a long time, and she didn't know what to say, and finally only said: "Meng Bei, Meng Bei, you are really ...... Okay, it will be as Qing wishes. ”

Xingchao fled south in a hurry, and he didn't carry much refining materials, so he gave Zhao Hunt a thousand catties of iron ingots last time, and he had already gone to one-tenth of the treasury. This time, in order to reward Zhao Hunting for his great achievements, he gave another 2,000 catties of iron ingots, which is already the limit, after all, it is not only you Zhao Hunting a dragon bird army that needs steel. The attack on the Jiyang military city took more than a month before and after, and many strong and bloody battles were carried out, not to mention the loss of the non-commissioned officers, the loss of weapons also needed to be replenished, and the expansion of the army also had to create new weapons. And the line of the dynasty is established, all kinds of waste are waiting to be revived, the palace, the court, the festival hall, the office and so on...... There are many places where iron is needed.

Zhao Hunt had no choice but to collect swords, spear tips and other things that were seriously damaged after the war and needed to be reforged, and even arrows. Grinding and hard bubbles, from Chen Zhi, who is also the weapons supervisor, he got hundreds of catties of iron ingots from the original treasury of Jiyang Military City. Finally, he scraped together enough pounds of iron material and sent it to the base, that is, the weapons workshop that was publicized to the outside world.

In fact, Zhao Lie is not short of steel, the steel in his military industrial base is piled up, and it is the best modern high-strength steel in the world. But it is precisely because of this that it should be cherished and not abused. Military steel, which can only be used in the manufacture of breech guns. At present, what the military industrial base can produce is still the breech flintlock pistol.

After three strict access controls, Zhao Lie led the young guards into the base house. As soon as I entered the back house, the sound of various machines piercing and metal grinding filled the eardrums.

Seeing Zhao Lie enter the door, a middle-aged craftsman holding a freshly made flintlock pistol greeted him happily: "Zhao Dutong is here." Sent iron again? Great, great, our workshop is almost out of rice. It's all about the power of machinery, and if it's built by hand, when will it go...... This gun has just been built, do you want Zhao Dutong to inspect it? ”

Zhao Lie smiled and took the brand-new shiny flintlock tube, and first glanced at the number "Two Hundred and Eighty-Three" at the end of the butt, indicating that this was the 283rd gun produced by the base. Later, take a closer look.

The flintlock pistol is basically imitated according to the shotgun of later generations, the barrel is slender, the bolt machine is simple and compact, the flint is used to fire, the lead is used for two coins, the ammunition is fixed for four coins, and the effective firing range can reach 80 steps.

The production of shotguns, the Ming Dynasty has a detailed process, when called birds. First, the pipe is built, the wrought iron of the pipe is burned red, then it is knocked on a steel core, rolled into an iron pipe, and then wrapped in several layers after cooling, and the hammering is fine, and after reaching a certain thickness, the steel core is extracted, and a section of the gun pipe is completed. After making several sections of the pipe, they are welded together one by one, which is the key, and it is easy to blow up and bored if the welding is not good. Once the initial tube is ready, a steel cone is used to drill out the boring to break the crosshairs, a step that takes the longest time, sometimes up to a month if built by hand. After that, the boring is scraped clean with a steel bar, and a qualified pipe is completed.

However, for a flintlock pistol, a good barrel is only the foundation, and the real difficulty lies in the delicate bolt and the most important part, the spring, which seems to be simple.

If the bolt is made by casting, and then refined by hand, it will take longer than the barrel. And the premise is that there must be skilled workers with expertise in this area, so that the training of skilled workers will take at least two or three years.

If the barrel takes time, patience, and a certain amount of craftsmanship can be hammered out; If the bolt is exemplary and referential, and with the ingenuity of the master, it can be built in more time, so the spring is the difficulty that makes a flintlock pistol that takes countless hours fall short and is difficult to break through.

Because whether a spring is qualified or not does not depend on the craftsmanship or the level of the craftsman, but on the material. In terms of craftsmanship, China had a wire drawing process as early as the Han Dynasty, and the gold threads on the golden jade clothes were drawn evenly. Not to mention the level of craftsmen, the divine arm bow made by the Song Dynasty weaponsmith can be called the "fighter" in the crossbow and is the strongest individual crossbow so far. However, steel was the shortcoming of weapons at that time. Although the iron (steel) production rate of the Song Dynasty was far from the Han and Tang dynasties, because of the large use of coal forging, the steel was brittle, and the swords made could not be compared with the world-famous weapons such as the Wuzi knife and the Japanese sword at that time, even compared with the Western Xia sword of the same era, it was also quite inferior.

The so-called clever woman is difficult to cook without rice, and of course she can't pull out a qualified wire spring with such steel. As for the use of steel to pull out a uniform and fine diameter of steel wire and coil it into a spring, this is another difficult process. But there is no reliable steel as a prerequisite, and this item is naturally not mentioned.

Therefore, almost all the parts of the flintlock pistol produced by Zhao Hunt Military Industry use the steel of this era, except for the spring, which uses the steel wire spring provided by the military industrial base.

Of course, the flintlock pistol produced by Zhao Hunt Military Industry is not handmade, otherwise it will only be less than two months, let alone two hundred and eighty-three guns, even twenty guns will not be made. All flintlock guns, from barrel manufacturing to bolt stamping, are made using disc (steering wheel) type manual punching presses as well as electric, manual milling, and drilling (deep hole drilling machines) dual-purpose beds. The efficiency is 100 times higher than that of manual work. And stamping, bending, punching, riveting, shearing, bending, breaking, shrinking, stretching, straightening and other powerful functions are not possible for any tools and craftsmen in this era.

The flintlock pistol manufacturing process in the military industrial base is to directly stamp the wrought iron into a complete barrel, omitting all the time-consuming and laborious steps such as knocking and barrel welding, and forming it in one go. Then the gun boring is drilled out on a deep hole drilling machine. Ancient craftsmen drilled by hand for a month, and with a deep-hole drilling machine in less than half an hour, a barrel was made - this is still the result of the use of punches and drilling machines by hand without electric power.

Bolt manufacturing is the most complicated step, but with modern tools, it has become the simplest step: just put a piece of steel ingot (steel not wrought iron) on the punch die, then pull down the punch, turn the turntable, and then pull up the punch, and a qualified bolt is formed.

After that, the butt is cared out again, and finally the manual assembly is completed. Finally, the last thing to do is to use a steel mold to press a bell mark on the back of the butt, with a number.

From a piece of wrought iron to a gun, the whole process takes less than two hours. It is no exaggeration to say that as long as there are enough raw materials, all the craftsmen of the base can produce guns at a rate of twenty guns per day at full capacity.

If the gang of black guns that had long since turned to ashes saw Zhao Lie using these modern machine tools to make "antique" flintlock pistols in large quantities, I was afraid that they would vomit blood.

It can be said that every flintlock pistol produced here is marked with the imprint of Zhao Hunt Military Industrial Base, which can be called "Zhao Hunt Seal".

Zhao Lie nodded with satisfaction and handed the flintlock pistol back to the middle-aged craftsman to test the gun. Although these guns can be called super-era weapons, what Zhao Hunt really wants is epoch-making weapons. That's what he's here to do today.

Zhao Lie looked around, didn't see the person he was looking for, and asked, "Where is Master Guo?" ”

The middle-aged craftsman looked at the backyard, looked a little worried, and said, "The master has not been out for three days and three nights in the backyard hut, and no one is allowed to disturb him, which is really worrying......

"I'll take a look." Zhao Lie raised his feet and walked to the backyard.