In order to reverse the passive situation, the Great Song Dynasty attached great importance to the development of weapons, and invested a lot of manpower and material resources.

At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the development of weapons was supervised by the Third Division. In the sixth year of Xining (1073), Shenzong abolished the armor case, placed the ordnance supervisor, and after the reform of Yuanfeng, the ordnance supervisor was officially placed under the management of special officials such as the superintendent, the young eunuch, the cheng, and the main book.

The east and west workshops belong to each state, and the states are in charge of making weapons, flags, tents, and other things, according to the prescribed procedures, according to the military school craftsmen to make fine and rough blunt as a reward and punishment.

In other words, the development of weapons in the Great Song Dynasty has entered a stage of relatively systematic and standardized.

Before Yang Yi set out on the expedition, he took two drawings of flintlock pistols and forward-loading artillery to the ordnance superintendent. The grenades he made before have proved to have great power, and this time he brought these two new drawings, and Zhu Shizeng, the superintendent of ordnance, did not dare to slack off, and organized a large number of skilled craftsmen to develop them.

Yang Yi also attached great importance to this, and although he was still on vacation, he still made a special trip to the ordnance prison to see how it was going.

Zhu Shizeng personally accompanied him to the workshop that developed guns, which was heavily defended, and even ordinary craftsmen in the courtyard could not enter.

It wasn't until he entered the gun workshop that Yang Yi asked, "Master Zhu, how are the flintlock pistols and artillery developed?" ”

Zhu Shizeng replied: "Bachelor Yang rest assured, this official organized a large number of craftsmen to develop, the beginning was not smooth, the barrel is very easy to explode, and later after repeated trials by craftsmen, a heavy stone produced in Da Yuling near the Nan'an Army was added, which well solved the problem that the barrel is easy to explode." ”

"Heavy stones?" Yang Yi was very puzzled, he hadn't heard of this name.

"Master Yang, please look, this is Chongshi." Zhu Jinzeng took him to the forging workshop and took out a piece of steel-like object to show Yang Yi.

Yang Yi took it and took a closer look, and couldn't help but be overjoyed, he was roughly sure that this so-called heavy stone was tungsten; Tungsten is a rare metal with a high melting point, and any concentration of hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and nitric acid has no effect on tungsten at room temperature, and its chemical properties are very stable even at high temperatures.

In later generations, tungsten was an indispensable material for high-quality steel, hard steel, guns, nozzles for rocket propulsion, metal-cutting blades, drill bits, and super-hard molds.

China is the world's largest tungsten producer, with wide distribution of tungsten ore and large output.

The smelting industry of the Great Song Dynasty was extremely developed, the steel output was very large, and it was supported by a huge smelting industry, so it is not surprising that craftsmen found tungsten ore.

And they could think of using tungsten ore mixed with steel to make the barrel, which was beyond Yang Yi's expectations.

Yang Yi couldn't put it down: "Lord Zhu, this heavy stone is a good thing, we must increase mining efforts." ”

Zhu Shizeng said with a smile: "Don't pay for Yang's bachelor's fee, since the craftsman discovered that adding heavy stone can increase the hardness and toughness of steel, this official has gone to the imperial court and increased the mining efforts, although it is difficult to smelt heavy stone, but it should not be a problem to ensure the amount of ordnance supervision." ”

"Good, good!"

Yang Yi said hello three times in a row, and looked around, the huge workshop was in full swing, the smelting furnace exuded a strong smell of coal, and the craftsmen were bare-chested and wheeled with sledgehammers to calcine the steel, making bursts of ping-pong sounds, and the various processes were in order, and after the barrel was built, it was handed over to the next process for rifling.

The function of rifling is to allow the bullet to rotate, improving the range, stability, and penetration of the bullet.

Rifling is actually not difficult, what is required is patience and meticulousness.

According to Yang Yi, the craftsmen made a simple manual wooden mechanical bed, and the early American colonists used this manual wooden machine to make rifling by hook knife broaching method.

This hook knife broaching method is to place the hook-shaped cutter on the steel tie rod that is slightly thinner than the diameter of the gun chamber, and the height of the hook-shaped scraper cutting edge can be adjusted by adjusting the screw of the tie rod layer; Each time the pull passes through the barrel, the lever moves a little, and with the uniform rotation of the barrel, a certain winding rifling wire is drawn, and after reaching a predetermined width, the second rifling is pulled in a different position.

Pulling a rifling line needs to be broached dozens of times, and the more times it is pulled, the finer and more precise the drawing groove is formed.

After the rifling of the barrel is made, the next process is carried out to assemble the various components to form a flintlock pistol.

Yang Yi held an assembled flintlock pistol, looked at it with joy, and checked it in his hand, the whole gun weighed about eight catties, the barrel was more than two feet long, and the caliber was about 17 millimeters.

"What about bullets? How are bullets made? Yang Yi couldn't help but shoot a few shots to try.

"Master Yang, please come with me!" Zhu Jinzeng led the way in front and took him to a workshop specializing in making bullets.

Even if there is no flintlock pistol, the current weapons of the Great Song Dynasty are leading the world, so the demand for flintlock pistols is not very urgent, in this case, Yang Yi naturally let them develop the best gun ammunition that can be achieved at present.

Smoothbore guns, don't!

To build rifled guns.

The bullet should be developed, and naturally it is also the best Mini bullet in the development of preloading.

Yang Yi is very familiar with firearms, the breech firing pin gun has a faster rate of fire and greater power, he doesn't want to do it, but there is a key technology for breech guns that has not broken through now, that is, thunder mercury, and only with thunder mercury can you make a fire cap.

The production method of thunder mercury Yang Yi also understands that mercury is dissolved in nitric acid to generate mercury nitrate, and in the presence of excess nitric acid, it reacts with ethanol to form thunder mercury.

The problem is that nitric acid and ethanol can be obtained directly in later generations, but it is not easy to make these two things in the Great Song Dynasty, and he can only tell the method to the Ordnance Superintendent, so that the craftsmen can slowly experiment, and when they can get it, the ghost will know.

As a result, he could now only make front-loading flintlock pistols with mini rounds.

These two are the ultimate of front-loading rifles, and with such weapons, Da Song is enough to sweep the world.

Mini bullet is a kind of cylindrical shell lead bullet, this bullet is slightly smaller than the caliber of the rifle, can be easily pushed into the chamber with a push lever, greatly improving the rate of fire, solving the problem that the front loading rifle is loaded, because the bullet is too large to cause the barrel to be plugged, or the barrel is blocked.

The mini shell is surrounded by threads to match rifling, and there is a conical cavity at the bottom of the bullet, which is blocked with a wooden plug; When firing, the gunpowder gas hits the wooden plug, compresses the wooden plug and squeezes it into the cavity, forcing the bottom of the bullet to expand rapidly, close to the rifling, close the gap between the bullet and the gun chamber, so that the gas cannot leak out; It can also make the warhead rotate at high speed under the pressure of rifling, and improve the range and accuracy of the bullet.

In the original history, before the appearance of the mini bullet, the smoothbore gun was a practical weapon, while the rifled gun was only an experimental weapon, and the main problem of the rifled gun was that due to the rifling engraving, it was difficult for the front-loading bullet to keep the chamber closed, and the power was greatly reduced.

In order to achieve good breath-holding, rifled gun bullets tend to be made of the same caliber as the gun caliber or slightly larger, so it is extremely difficult to load; It is often necessary to hammer the pusher lever with a hammer to propel the bullet into place, which often results in a more dangerous rifle rupture.

With Mini Bullets, none of this is a problem anymore.

Yang Yi looked at it, the craftsmen made the method of Minnie warhead is to inject the steel mold, the steel mold is divided into two pieces, each steel mold has a row of 20 warhead die holes, the lead itself is relatively soft, and it is softer after heating to a certain extent, it can be directly pressed into the bullet mold, made into the shape of the bullet, lift the upper piece of the steel mold, take out the formed bullet, and then manually add the wooden plug at the bottom of the warhead.

Although it is a bit tedious to make it this way, in the era of hand-made, it is already very fast.

Yang Yi took ten rounds of made bullets, and Zhu Shizeng and the craftsmen in charge of the gun workshop came to the test site, and he personally tore the paper shell, charged and loaded the bullets, and compacted them with a push rod.

Mini bullets are slightly smaller than the chamber, but there must be a sense of stasis when stuffed into the chamber, if the bullet is too loose when stuffed into the chamber due to the scale of the production, you need to stuff the paper shell into the compacted to prevent the bullet from falling out when aiming.

Fortunately, the Ordnance Supervision gathered the best craftsmen of the Great Song Dynasty, and Yang Yi felt neither loose nor tight when he pressed into the warhead, just now, there was no need to press the paper shell again.

On the test ground, there is a wooden target at 500 steps, 600 steps, and 700 steps, and Yang Yi first tries a wooden target of 500 steps; Aim.

Pull the trigger.

The hammer with the flint struck the side of the fire door; Bang!

At the same time as a puff of smoke came out of the muzzle, a slight impact sound came from the wooden target in the distance!

Again, Yang Yi fired three shots in a row, hitting three wooden targets with different distances, and the time was probably less than a minute.

In other words, the rate of fire of this flintlock pistol can reach at least four rounds per minute, and Yang Yi is already very satisfied with this.

With such a rate of fire, coupled with the three-stage shooting method, it is completely possible to form a never-ending network of fire, which will become a nightmare for cavalry.

Zhu Shizeng couldn't help but feel a little strange when he saw that he was skillful in operating firearms, like flowing water, but he was relieved to think that even the drawings were provided.

"Let's go! Go and see how the shooting goes? ”

Yang Yi didn't care what Zhu Shizeng thought, and took the lead in running towards the wooden target.

The 500-step wooden target was completely pierced, the 600-step wooden target bullet was half-clamped, and the 700-step wooden target only left a small bullet mark, and the bullet could not even be embedded into the wooden target.

The size of the Great Song Dynasty is as large as about 1.5 meters, that is to say, the effective killing range of this flintlock pistol developed by the Ordnance Supervision is about 750 meters to 800 meters!

That's enough!

The Great Song Dynasty and various technologies are actually no worse than the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty can make muskets, and now the craftsmen of the Great Song Dynasty are under their own guidance, making flintlock pistols, which is not surprising.

But although Yang Yi had already prepared in his heart, after really testing the power of the flintlock pistol, he still couldn't suppress the excitement in his heart, with such a sharp weapon, no matter how fierce the cavalry was, they would only be slaughtered.

Zhu Shizeng and the others seemed very calm, it had been two months since the first flintlock pistol was made, and they had already tried the power, and now they were naturally no longer excited.

"By the way, Lord Zhu, how many bullets can the weapon make in a day now?" Yang Yi asked suddenly.

When asked about the output, Zhu Shizeng replied a little embarrassedly: "Lord Yang, now the ordnance supervisor can make about 30 guns and 20,000 bullets a day, and if you increase investment, the output should be able to increase a lot." ”

Yang Yi asked again: "Has the manufacturing cost of each gun been calculated?" ”

"About one hundred and twenty."

(To be continued)