"Damn, such a thick Filipino ebony, how much does it cost!" The problem of shells is basically solved, and there must be barrels. Watching the brothers of the Wen family sawing a piece of hardwood with a diameter of more than half a meter into a short section more than a meter long, Hong Tao's heart was like a knife! If this thing were to be placed in the next generation, it is estimated that a piece of wood would be replaced by a real cannon. But this kind of stimulation he has slowly become accustomed to, there are a lot of precious hardwoods on these boats, many pulleys and small accessories are carved out of red sandalwood, next time if you cross, Hong Tao plans to tie himself to these boats, you must wear it with the boat, all Nima is money!

In this era, there was no boring machine, and it was impossible to drill large-diameter holes, so the Wen family's method was very simple, that is, to break the hardwood pile in two, chisel out two semicircular grooves, polish them smooth, and then use the occlusal tenon groove to combine the two pieces of cannon barrels together, and use the copper hoops to kill with circles and circles on the outside. When the first wooden cannon was built, Hong Tao took a few craftsmen to test it by the river, the effect was very bad, the barrel could be hooped to death, but the tail of the cannon was difficult to seal and leaked. For this problem, Wen Qi proposed a solution, don't plane the stake as a whole, only need to cut more than half of it, dig the tail directly, and then fix the cannon body with a copper hoop, so that the tail of the cannon is a whole, which can be made thicker, and then put on the copper hoop, which should be easy to use.

This is the wisdom of the working people, the new wooden cannon made according to Wen Qi's method really does not leak, and with the flowering bullets that have been produced a long time ago, it can shoot more than 100 meters. Quasi-head, it's okay, the scattering point is in a radius of 10 meters, with the cork support mounted behind the spherical shell, not only can you distinguish the front and back of the charge, better seal the barrel, but also does not affect the flight trajectory of the shell, but plays a role in stabilizing the tail, which is a bit like the principle of badminton.

What about the power of the cannonballs? Hong Tao thinks it is also very ordinary, almost 150 mm caliber shells have a killing radius of only about 5 meters, which is still done by the broken iron pieces filled inside, if you rely on this shell shell alone, the lethality is even lower. But don't really say it, this thing is moving big enough, and the smoke is spectacular enough, since the flood began to test the cannon on the riverbank, and the monkey that has been hitting for more than half a year has disappeared without a trace, and never came again. It is estimated that they have been relocated en masse, and the noise here is too loud, which seriously affects sleep. Not only are the monkeys gone, but the other wild animals have also run away, and the people in the camp are not very happy now, and it is difficult to change their taste for hunting, and they have to run farther away.

150 mm! This will be regarded as a heavy artillery in the future generations, and everyone may ask, are you bragging! In fact, there is a misunderstanding here, the shells of later generations are all whole, and they are cylindrical, and the current shells are a round ball, and the amount of charge and the type of charge between the two are not the same. Moreover, when science and technology are not very developed, it is possible to build a larger barrel, and if you want Hong Tao to build a 20mm machine gun, you can't build it if you kill him. Besides, this is a mortar cannon, the barrel is pitifully short, it can only fire grenades, not direct fire, and if the caliber is not larger, is there still a need for this kind of artillery to exist?

With shells and wooden mortars, will they be able to produce them and equip them for naval battles on ships? After several tests, Hong Tao basically gave up his attempt to load this mortar on the ship. It was so unstable that there were three sample cannons, and one of them was fired less than ten times, and cracks appeared in the wood; One has been launched dozens of times, and it's still good; The other one was okay, and it took more than 20 test rounds to retire. Generally speaking, the chamber pressure is still a bit high, there is no way to do this, the gunpowder contained in a shotgun that fires dozens of meters is definitely different from launching a large iron ball hundreds of meters away. There is no technical way to make up for this, so we have to wait for the blacksmiths here to figure out how to cast the cannon body in bronze.

However, in the past few months, Hong Tao has not tossed in vain, although the wooden mortar is not suitable for large-scale equipment, but it can be used as training equipment, first let the sailors simply familiarize themselves with how to use the front-loading gun, once the bronze cannon can be built, these sailors can directly be gunners, or help Hong Tao to train newcomers, you can save a lot of time.

Another harvest is the flowering shell, although no real artillery was made, these hollow iron balls can only be used as training bullets, but its casting and annealing processes are not in vain. Not only can it not be costly, but it has to be made from time to time, and in practice, it is gradually left to those blacksmiths to explore better craftsmanship by themselves, and strive to make the shell thinner and more pressure-resistant, so that it can be filled with more gunpowder, which directly increases the power of the explosion. Moreover, from the principle of this flowering bullet, Hong Tao also came up with an incendiary bomb that is more suitable for crossbow arrows, that is, heavy oil and mixed oil are filled into a thin bamboo tube, and fixed on the crossbow shaft with a wax seal.

Make a crossbow fuse similar to the timed cork fuse of the flowering bullet, which is also made of cork, but with a larger tip charge, and the delay time and crossbow speed are recalibrated. When using it, you only need to cut the cork stick to a suitable length according to different distances, and then cut the wax seal on the bamboo tube, stuff the cork into it, ignite it and launch it.

Instead of passively waiting for the rocket to ignite, the bolt will be exploded and ignited by the gunpowder at the tip of the cork, like a large firework. But instead of dazzling fireworks, it exploded into slimy, black, heavy oil flames. In order to improve the success rate of heavy oil combustion, after many tests, Hong Tao also poured some mixed oil into the bamboo tube first, and then stuffed the cork fuse, which was basically 100% burning. However, this kind of incendiary bomb must be temporarily added with mixed oil before launching, otherwise the mixed oil will speed up the explosion after soaking the cork, and it is likely to explode on its own halfway.

After tossing the weapons and equipment, Hong Tao had to turn his attention back to agricultural production. It's been five months, and the large sugarcane fields that have been carved out according to his instructions are still small seedlings more than one meter high, and there is no trace of sugarcane in sight. Could it be that there is something wrong with the sugarcane that he brought back from Zhenla? No, I chewed several by myself, and it was very sweet! Or is it the wrong way to grow sugar cane? Shouldn't it, the Americans just cut the sprouted sugarcane into small pieces and bury it flat in the soil, is it different from American sugarcane and Asian sugarcane?

No one can help Hong Tao answer this question, the farmers in Jinhewan have never grown sugarcane, most of the slaves are coastal fishermen, and they have to learn to grow rice, let alone sugarcane. What to do? I have to go to Luo Youde! Hong Tao, who can figure it out by himself, usually thinks about it by himself, but he really can't figure it out, so he can only ask Luo Youde to ask someone who understands. In the Song Dynasty, there was brown sugar, so there must be a sugar extraction industry, and if there was a sugar extraction industry, then there must be a sugarcane planter. If necessary, it is not impossible to tie up a few or cheat a few to settle in Jinhewan.

In addition, Hong Tao had to show Luo Youde his strength. Now that Luo Youde has opened his sixth sesame oil shop in Lin'an, it is said that candles made of sesame oil have been purchased by the imperial court as designated lighting equipment for banquets, and have begun to carry out small-scale wholesale business in Lin'an. He is no longer the original concubine of the Luo family in Qiongzhou, but a proud business giant, the monthly sales of whale oil can reach about ten tons, nearly 16,000 catties in Song Jin, and the price of 500 wen per catty is as much as 8,000 guan, plus soap and candles, the monthly sales can exceed 10,000 guan. Luo Youde occupies 30% of the shares of Huanqiu Universe Development Co., Ltd., and has 10% of the marketing expenses in hand, and he can earn 4,000 yuan a month.

The Southern Song Dynasty was a standard high welfare and high salary, and the prime minister's monthly salary was about 5 or 600 yuan, which is said to be equivalent to 3 or 400,000 US dollars in later generations, which is about the same as that of the president of the United States. In other words, Luo Youde's monthly income is higher than that of a Southern Song Dynasty prime minister or a later American president for half a year, which should be regarded as a step into the wealthy businessman class. Although he doesn't dare to say that he is a top wealthy businessman with a net worth of millions, he is very hopeful to achieve it if he continues to do so, because the sales of whale oil have just opened, and it is still far from popularization, let alone hot sales.

Faced with a sudden success of a wealthy businessman, Hong Tao felt that he could not be too low-key, most businessmen are snobbish, and always like to evaluate others with strength, including their partners. Once your strength is too far away from him, or he thinks that you are not strong, they will use a lot of crooked brains. This is also the balance that Hong Tao has always emphasized, in the process of cooperation, the best state of the two sides is balance, there must be no level differences, otherwise it is difficult to cooperate for a long time.

But how to show Luo Youde his strength? You can't load all the copper coins on the ship to show him, besides, most of the money distributed by Hong Tao and the Tan family has been exchanged for production and living materials. Hong Tao will not be stupid to compare cash flow with Luo Youde, he wants to use a more obscure and shocking way to make Luo Youde dare not despise himself and the Tan family, and at the same time give Luo Youde more confidence, confidence in himself, so that he can cooperate with himself with peace of mind, at least in the short term.