No matter how the children in the village frolicked, Zhang Mengcheng, the teacher in the cottage, was busy playing hammers at the blacksmith shop in the village again.

Since Zhang Mengcheng received his eldest brother's order, the leader of the cottage has been busy with more than 20 craftsmen in the village to study the matter of making bird guns. In fact, before Zhang Mengcheng and his gang accepted the appeasement, he also organized people to try to make arquebuses. However, Zhang Mengcheng and the craftsmen in the cottage had no practical experience, so after he invested the limited resources at hand, the final harvest was only a sad failure.

When Zhang Mengcheng applied for resources from his eldest brother again, Zhang Mengjin, as the big boss, directly rejected his request. Regarding Zhang Mengcheng's "not doing his job", the big bosses who don't know enough about the bird gun will naturally not support it. Zhang Mengjin would rather spend all this time and resources to make iron armor, at least most of the previous battles of the cottage armed forces have solved everything by hand-to-hand combat.

Even after Zhang Mengcheng went around collecting bird guns and showing the power of the arquebus to his eldest brother, Zhang Mengjin just found a random reason to send Zhang Mengcheng away.

Until last month's battle at Duhe Fort, the outstanding performance of Zhao Wankui's Bird Gun Team, and several leaders after that, highly praised. Zhang Mengjin finally began to accept this object, which in his eyes, was more troublesome to operate than the three-eyed gun.

After Zhang Mengcheng was finally appointed, he finally had enough manpower and resources. After several trial productions, he finally developed a set of more effective processes. In the subsequent re-production, as long as this set of processes is strictly followed, the yield rate of the birds in the village can be guaranteed.

Jindingshan is also very simple to say, first use an iron bar the thickness of chopsticks as a forging mold, wrap a red-hot iron block on the outside of it, and beat it into a barrel. The barrel is divided into three sections, and after reddening at the interface, hammer forging is continued for bonding. After that, a four-edged steel bar is inserted into the barrel and rotated, and the barrel is slowly bored.

Although it doesn't seem very complicated, it is still a test of craftsmanship. If something goes wrong somewhere, a painstakingly crafted pipe is likely to become a defective product.

After a month of hard work, the village finally produced three qualified bird guns. Although the output is relatively low, with the increase of the craftsmanship of the production personnel, as long as the manpower is allocated to learn the production, the output in the village will definitely double in the future. The problem that plagues the cottage now is whether the various materials consumed in the production of bird guns can keep up.

After Zhang Mengcheng and several blacksmiths hammered and forged a pipe, they asked people to take the pipe to the next set of processes. He walked to another workshop and checked a gun tube that had been disposed of.

The tube has been test-fired, and then it will be installed on the bed with other processing. Zhang Mengcheng planned to keep this bird gun for his own use after it was assembled. The bird guns he had captured from the official army had long been handed over to Zhao Wankui, and he had not been equipped with an arquebus during this time.

"Xiucai, the newly made batch of gunpowder is ready, come and take a look." Yu Baocheng walked over at this time and shouted to Zhang Mengcheng.

"Wait a minute, I'll come here." After Zhang Mengcheng heard Yu Baocheng's greeting, he put down the gun in his hand. After tidying up his clothes, he picked up the three prepared bird guns and walked to the test shooting range of the cottage, and he also found an opportunity to drink a sip of water on the way.

Due to the increase in the number of firearms and equipment in the cottage and Duhebao, and in view of the poor quality of the gunpowder rationed by the imperial court, Jindingshan privately set up a gunpowder workshop.

The gunpowder ingredient is mixed with water in the ratio of 40 taels of saltpeter, 5 taels of sulfur, and 7 taels of willow charcoal. Because there was a fire accident when mixing with stone mortar, it is now uniformly changed to wooden mortar in the village.

When processing gunpowder, when the water is dry, add water and pestle, and the pestle will end after tens of thousands of pestles. After that, the gunpowder is taken out and dried in the sun, and then broken into the size of a bean. Then, various gunpowder particles of different sizes are screened out with carrot sieves of different thicknesses, which are used as firearms such as artillery and bird guns.

The non-granular ones are used as fire primers, and the remaining fine powders are all removed. There is actually nothing new in Jindingshan's process, but it insists on boiling it three times in total, and then adding a total of 30,000 pestles of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. Due to the serious persistence in the cottage workshop, the gunpowder made by Jindingshan is very good.

After seeing Zhang Mengcheng arrive at the shooting range, Li Yang took a part of the prepared gunpowder and put it on a piece of paper and lit it. The gunpowder burned out on the paper in an instant, but the paper did not burn.

Ma Xiangbo, who was responsible for supervising the production of gunpowder, was even more confident. Directly put a part of the gunpowder on the palm of the hand to ignite the experiment, and passed the test without burning the hand.

For the good performance of the cottage in making gunpowder, several leaders present were very satisfied. Che Jibao, who had returned from injury, and Li Yang, the leader of the infantry team, respectively took the two bird guns handed by Zhang Mengcheng, and they began to prepare for the test firing after checking them.

Zhang Mengcheng first took out a cylindrical paper bag wrapped in three coins of gunpowder and blew the gun with his mouth. Then bite open the paper bag and pour the gunpowder into the bird's gun, compact it with a cane, take out a lead pellet, send the lead weighing three coins down with a cane, and then stuff the paper into it and compact the lead. Then the fire door was filled with fine gunpowder, and the fire rope was installed after the fire door was closed.

After that, Zhang Mengcheng held the gun frame in his front hand, opened the fire door again with his back hand, and pulled the trigger on the target eighty paces away. A flash of fire flashed, and the shot of lead accurately hit the target eighty paces away.

Seeing that Zhang Mengcheng hit the target accurately, Zhang Zhaoen, who also returned to the cottage to recuperate, immediately said happily: "Uncle Fifteen, give me a bird gun." This time, I want to practice my hands well, and I must get back to Dazi in the future. ”

Zhang Zhaoen, who has always disliked the troublesome operation of the bird gun in the past, has made up his mind to work the bird gun after suffering a loss last month. Although the specific configuration of the cavalry and bird gun troops, the leaders of the cottage have not yet discussed. But as one of the leaders, Zhang Zhaoen can still have some privileges.

"Now there are only three freshly made bird guns, and there are not so many to divide. You take care of the wound on your shoulder first, and take care of your horse at the same time. Zhang Mengcheng, who was very satisfied with his marksmanship, whistled, and said to Zhang Zhaoen while handing the bird gun to Yu Baocheng, who was planning to practice his hands.

Zhang Zhaoen failed to cultivate a full tacit understanding with the war horse that was originally captured from Du Wenhuan, which was also an important reason for his injuries in the previous battle to intercept the Mongols. So this time he returned to the cottage to recuperate, and Zhang Mengcheng, who learned that he had fought before, had always emphasized that he should pay attention to cultivating the tacit understanding of his new mount.

At this time, Che Jibao also completed the test shot with the bird gun, and when he saw that his shot hit the target, he was very satisfied with the accuracy of the bird gun in his hand. However, he has another version of the actual combat effectiveness of the bird. "It's a really good thing, it's far and accurate. It's just too cumbersome to make, so it's better to use it for dismounting. I think it's easier to use a bow and arrow when riding a horse, so I support the argument put forward by the three masters that the cavalry infantry is a bird-shackler, and it doesn't have to be fully equipped if the sentry rider is horse-mounted. ”

Che Jibao's cavalry and archery level is also good, and he also achieved results in the last battle against the Mongols. In the previous battle, he didn't change into the cold forged armor that had been transported from the cottage, and because he forgot to check his original armor, the armor, which was already quite old, rusted in the rain and snow weather this year, and happened to be hit by an arrow in the weak point of protection.

"There are really too many things to be rectified, and if you don't pay attention to the battle array, you won't be able to fight." In the test firing just now, Li Yang failed to shoot the first time because he forgot to open the fire door before firing, and he only succeeded in shooting after being reminded by Ma Xiangbo.

"If you practice more, you'll remember that you have this thing in your hands. It's much more accurate than a bow and arrow, and it doesn't take much effort to learn. If the bow and arrow have to be shot so accurately, it will take people to practice for a few years? After Yu Baocheng took over the bird gun in Zhang Mengcheng's hand at this time, he also expressed his opinion while cleaning up the bird gun. Yu Baocheng also plans to bring a bird gun to battle in the future, and he often appears on the school field to practice after recovering from his injury.

"The big boss said that he wanted to concentrate the bird guns and form a bird gun infantry team and a bird gun cavalry team. But now there are only more than 50 birds in Duhe Fort, and only one team can be formed. So let's do what the three masters say, and form a horse riding team. Ma Xiangbo also admired the birds, but he knew very well that there were not so many resources in the village to produce them.

So after he took Li Yang's bird gun and sorted it out to shoot again, Ma Xiangbo opened his mouth again and said to Zhang Mengcheng: "Xiucai, now there are not many materials left in our village, and I am afraid there will not be many birds in the village in the future." I'm going to take the team out to run a business later, and I'll make a list of how many materials you need, and I'll try my best to bring them all for you. ”

Zhang Mengcheng, who was instructing Zhang Zhaoen on how to operate the bird gun, said after hearing Ma Xiangbo's words: "I really want to run a business, but there are some short-sighted guys around, and they made trouble again a while ago." I'm going to take someone to take care of them first, or you'll be in trouble when you go out. ”

Thinking that after Zhang Mengguang and his younger brother Ma Xiangzhong rushed to Jiangduhe Fort, they did not clear the surrounding territory for a while. For the sake of prudence, Ma Xiangbo also agreed to choose to go out to run a business after Zhang Mengcheng cleaned up the surrounding area.

Although Ma Xiangbo is now wearing the skin of an official army, there are many people in the world who do not want to die, and he went out with a few truckloads of grain and salt, and it is difficult to guarantee that nothing will happen.

In the following time, the leaders of Jinding Mountain, who stayed in the cottage, discussed the construction of the bird gun force and other problems faced by the cottage one after another. After everyone's opinions were unified, they immediately reported to the big boss of Duhe Fort.

The leaders of Duhe Fort integrated the ideas of many leaders, and finally decided to organize a cavalry infantry according to Zhao Wankui's ideas, and all of them were equipped with bird guns to deal with various problems on the battlefield. It's just that before their idea of reorganizing and training new troops could be implemented, the Mongols in the north began to attack Yansui West Road again.