Five or six gunner apprentices were arranged for each artillery, and the Portuguese gunners who were proficient in gun handling personally commanded the firing of the guns. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

All kinds of artillery in the Ming Dynasty have design drawings, how much is the length of the gun, how much is the thickness of the tube, there are strict standard sizes, want to be shoddy, it is not easy to cut corners, unlike the musket manufacturing can be arbitrary, so the quality of all kinds of artillery in the Ming Dynasty is barely possible.

However, the artillery at this time is not strictly standardized after all, the same type of gun, the inner diameter of the gun chamber is difficult to be consistent, and the difference between the shell and the barrel is inevitable.

Moreover, the artillery of the Ming Dynasty has no ruler, not even basic ranging tools, and the gunners shoot at direct distances relying on their many years of experience in operating the gun, and skilled gunners are rare. The artillery life at this time is only a few hundred shells, and to train a group of qualified gunners, many cannons will have to be scrapped, and it will take a long time, perhaps as high as several years, which is really unimaginable.

Fortunately, a group of Portuguese mercenaries came, many of whom were proficient in handling guns, and they knew how to use the general rules to measure distances, and also specified the size of each type of cannon, which greatly reduced the time and cost of training qualified gunners.

The only thing that is more pitty is that the aiming and shooting of artillery is very difficult, and it requires a series of basic mathematical knowledge, and the Ming gunners are mostly illiterate and can't read words, let alone arithmetic. Therefore, while letting them operate the gunner, they also have to teach the gunner apprentices to read and write, teach some simple arithmetic, and the training of new gunners takes a lot of time, so it is impossible for them to become qualified gunners, so they can only take their time.

After watching the gunners maneuver the guns, Zhu Youlang rode out of the barracks and went to the artisan weapons workshop next to the wharf.

Out of the barracks, the field of vision suddenly widened, and an official road four or five meters wide led directly to the Xijiang Wharf a few miles away.

At this time, there were few people on the official roads, except for some beggars in ragged clothes, there were only some convoys of merchants carrying goods to and fro.

On both sides of the official road there are many low and dilapidated houses, surrounded by private fields, some of which are planted with rice or seasonal vegetables, and some are overgrown with withered grass, which has obviously been abandoned for a long time.

Xijiang Wharf is a civil wharf, all kinds of merchant ships are moored in the harbor, there are many merchants, and even Taixi Hongmao can occasionally see a few.

Before that, because of the weakening of the Ming Dynasty's rule, there were often water thieves along the river in Liangguang, robbing merchants, resulting in fewer and fewer merchants trading in Zhaoqing.

After Zhu Youlang repelled Li Chengdong and returned to Zhaoqing, he ordered Yu Long to clear out the water bandits and maintain public order in the two provinces, so Yu Long led his sailor fleet to suppress the bandits everywhere, and in a few months, several large water bandits in the upper and lower reaches of the Xijiang River were exterminated one after another, and the rest of them rushed into the rivers crisscrossing the three rivers one after another.

At this time, the river bank of the wharf is full of power sticks, hundreds of force rods will surround the wharf and the water is impassable, in addition to dozens of large and small merchant ships next to the wharf, there are many flower boats, the girl on the boat stands at the bow of the boat and waves, soliciting business.

The brothels and courtyards of Liangguang are mostly opened on boats, and their boats are mostly painted boats, so they are also called "flower boats". In fact, the flower boat started as Yanhu (also known as egg households and Tan people) in the area of Chaozhou and Jiaying Prefecture (now Meizhou City), and because they were discriminated against as "untouchables", most of their adopted daughters were boat prostitutes. They use boats as their houses, pretend to be wives and daughters to entertain guests, and make a living. After a long time, gradually all the people of Liangguang formed this mindset, as if prostitutes had to go to the ship. As a result, flower boats became popular.

Zhu Youlang was dressed in a Confucian robe and civilian clothes, standing on the dock, the gust of river wind blew, blowing his robe fluttering and flying, hunting sounded, blowing away a lot of fatigue in his body, and his spirit couldn't help but be lifted.

After crossing the wharf and heading westward along the riverbank, less than five miles away, he saw the armory workshop of the craftsman's camp.

The weapons workshop is adjacent to the Xijiang River, built along the water, hundreds of temporary expansion houses, dozens of large factories, covering a large area, just entered, a thick smell of smoke came to the nose, more than a dozen rivers with gates flowed happily, impacting the waterwheel, through the gear transmission, changing the direction of the force, flowing into each square.

The emperor came to the workshop in plain clothes, and the owners of the craftsmen's camp came forward to pay respects, and after the salute, Zhu Youlang let them settle down in their places, without having to wait, and then went straight into the iron-smelting workshop not far away.

In Zhu Youlang's sight, a forging hammer was driven by the hydraulic force, striking the red-hot wrought iron at a uniform speed and force, and a rough-looking, shirtless blacksmith next to him was scooping a spoonful of liquid pig iron with a wooden handle iron spoon and pouring it on the wrought iron. Zhu Youlang could see at a glance that this was the steel filling method passed down from Qi Wuhuaiwen.

In his impression, although the steel filling method is good, it is not as good as the Suzhou steel method in the previous life.

In line with the idea of improving the efficiency and quality of iron-making, Zhu Youlang called an old blacksmith named Ding Er, the head of the iron-smelting workshop, and half-recalled to teach them the general principles of the Suzhou Iron and Steel Method.

The old blacksmith followed closely behind Zhu Youlang and listened carefully.

"When I was studying before, I saw a new method of iron smelting, first of all, we must prepare a blast furnace, the shape of the blast furnace is like an inverted vase, with wrought iron as the material iron, placed in the furnace, the pig iron plate is placed at the mouth of the furnace, the furnace temperature rises to the pig iron plate when the pig iron plate begins to melt, use the fire tongs to clamp the pig iron plate to move left and right, and constantly turn the iron, so that the iron is evenly poured into the pig iron liquid, so that the iron can be carburized, and the iron and slag can be separated, and the refined iron with less slag and uniform composition can be produced.

I also inadvertently learned of this new type of iron smelting technique, and the specific method still needs to be explored by myself, so I will refine a few key points, one is that charcoal can be used to refine coke in imitation of charcoal, and the furnace temperature can be increased with coke, and the second is to use a blower with a good degree of closure, fresh air will enter, pig iron will be more easily dissolved, iron and slag will be separated more thoroughly, and even fine iron can be produced without forging. ”

The Sugang method was still in application before the liberation of the previous life, and its influence was far-reaching. However, Zhu Youlang also knows a rough idea of this, and the principle of small blast furnace soil steelmaking is also something that he accidentally saw when he was in the library in college in his previous life, which is impressive, but not profound. So he didn't dare to command blindly, and left the craftsmen to explore on their own.

Ding Laojiang was respectful in front of him, and did not dare to have the slightest rebuttal, and he did write down the emperor's words in his heart, planning to give it a try after the emperor left, to see if it was really feasible.

Adjacent to the ironworks is the Armor Workshop. As soon as I entered, I heard the sound of "ding ding dong dong" forging endlessly, Zhu Youlang only watched quietly on the side under the personal guard of Ruishi, the emperor had been in the craftsman camp several times, and the blacksmiths knew his temperament, emphasis on practicality, and false etiquette, so when he saw the emperor coming, he still looked focused on making armor, and was very respectful when he looked up to meet the emperor's sight.

The pinnacle of Chinese armor belongs to the Buren armor of the Northern Song Dynasty, which is composed of more than 1,800 armor leaves, which are made of leather strips or nails and cast. Coarsely ground. There are many processes such as piercing and fine grinding, and it is necessary to make masks, and to wrap leather around the neckline, cuffs, etc., to prevent hanging damage to clothes and skin. It takes nearly a month for craftsmen to make a suit of armor.

Zhu Youlang didn't have any good ideas on this, and it was also very difficult to make chain mail in the West at the same time, and it would take several months to make a pair of chain mail, and after the rise of Western plate armor, it would take a month to build ordinary plate armor.

Restricted by raw materials and technology, the workshop's armor-making capacity is limited, and less than a hundred pairs of iron armor can be produced in a month, and the production process of leather armor and cotton armor is relatively simple, and three or four hundred pairs can be produced every month, but compared to the forty or fifty thousand Beijing camp forbidden army, including the original Western Army, there is still a drop in the bucket, and it can only give priority to the sergeant of the Badu and Gongsheng Battalion and the military academy of Zhuzhen.

At present, not counting auxiliary soldiers, the total number of soldiers in the Beijing camp in the five towns is more than 30,000, and the armor rate in the army is less than 30 percent, and the armor rate of the Beijing camp sergeants from the original Western Army is even lower, and it is only one or two percent.

The auxiliary soldiers of the ordinary Beijing battalion war are still mainly based on mandarin duck battle jackets, but they have added a lot of local protection, and the auxiliary soldiers have a layer of iron net protection inside the jacket, and there is a double-layer iron net inside the soldiers' jackets, and there is a set of sleeveless single-layer iron blades outside, all the way to the waist. In this way, although the protection capacity is still limited, it is finally better than nothing.

In addition to manufacturing all kinds of armor and mandarin duck battle jackets, the armor workshop is also responsible for the production of helmets for soldiers in Beijing, and there are many types of helmets in the Ming army.

The reason is very simple, the eight-petal hat iron tip helmet has a wider outer edge, and it is better to resist bows and arrows than the phoenix wing helmet. Sergeants use this kind of helmet in combat, and in close combat, the sword and shield hands of each team can protect the close range of the Qing soldiers, and the throwing of the Qing soldiers has an eight-petal hat and an iron-pointed helmet, which can also protect the head well.

Out of the armor workshop, the next one is the fire hammer workshop, which is the workshop with the largest number of craftsmen, with nearly 1,000 military craftsmen and apprentices.

According to the technology of the Ming Dynasty, the bird gun, commonly known as the arquebus, is not easy to make, and the above is only the part of the barrel of the rifle, and this process alone takes a month. If you consider other processes such as barrel forging, splicing, trigger group and other processing, it takes about two months to make a bird gun. Of course, if there are hundreds of military craftsmen who specialize in making bird guns, there is no problem with a monthly output of thirty or fifty strokes, but the process of a batch will take at least a month.

Zhu Youlang knew that the reason why the Ming army's bird guns were often damaged was that the materials were insufficient, or the craftsmen were clever in manufacturing, and the thickness was uneven, especially in the welding of the gun pipes, and many craftsmen were not skilled enough, which caused the bird guns to be easily fried and bored.

However, there are no such problems in this weapons workshop outside Zhaoqing City, and the craftsmen Zhu Youlang has enough food and salary, and the raw materials are also tried to meet, and they always go to the workshop to inspect the production, sampling inspection, if the craftsmen still dare to steal and play tricks, it is really with their own lives.

However, even if there are thousands of people in the workshop, the output is still a little low, first, due to the number of qualified gunsmiths, he has already collected all the guards in Liangguang and even Huguang to Zhaoqing, and only then has he gathered more than 500 gunsmiths who can make bird guns. The second is that it is subject to qualified iron materials, swords, guns, and armor are inseparable from iron, and they all have to be fine iron. (To be continued.) )