Li Yong had no way to get off the ship's timber in a hurry, and his team finally gave a more feasible and only way at present, that is, to send people to the Yangtze River basin to find it, and then transport it to the Yangtze River by hand, and transport it back by boat, as for the problem of ship and transportation, Li Yong thought about it for a few days, or decided to divide a 1,000-person logging team composed of laborers, led by some senior old shipwrights, and protected by fifty black soldiers, to find the area of the Yangtze River basin, and let the caravan go to the Qinling Mountains to buy, as the saying goes, Money can make the ghost grind, in this era of no environmental awareness, those big trees in the ridge can still buy a good price, naturally someone to do it, and then the caravan is transported by waterway, this is also the way Li Yong can imagine, the first phase of the wharf of Huating Port has been completed almost half, according to Li Yong's expectations, the first phase of the wharf can dock ten of them at the same time, if it is a little smaller, you can dock about fifteen, the navy's barracks and military ports are also under construction, The recruited sailors have begun to receive military training from the Black Army, as for the training at sea, there must be a ship, Li Yong let them start recruit training first, these veterans of the Black Army are familiar, that is to practice to the death, those sailors who were originally begging for a living at sea can stand it, and they will have to fight against their instructors in two days, but they are only handsome for three seconds to be subdued by those veterans, which also leads to the future when the army and navy of the Black Army fight together, the Navy fights better than the Army, this is of course a later story, Now the weak navy can only be abused by the army like chickens, and the families of those sailors have also moved into Xinhuating City, which also makes them have no worries. Everything is going on in an orderly and fast way, but there is one thing that makes Li Yong, grab his hair in the study every day, for the busy Li Yong, Li Lizhi and his daughters do not bother him, and they stay in the courtyard every day and do not go anywhere, because they go out more, they will definitely be sent by her father to find her everywhere Baiqi to find out, although it is very boring not to stay in the other courtyard anywhere, but it is not very boring to have other daughters who want to accompany her, so Li Lizhen has a deeper understanding of Zheng Liwan, and the relationship with her can be regarded as alleviated.

"Childe, the research of firearms is still difficult to break through because of the problem of materials."

"You show me the drawings, and we'll work on them together."

Although Li Yong learned the firearms of the ancient times when he was studying, but because he was not very proficient in learning, he still knew a little bit about some theoretical things, after all, the thermal weapons from ancient times to modern times were not very complicated, but the production process and materials were different, and there was a big difference in safety, such as the Ming Dynasty, which was widely used in firearms, and their advanced firearms could be said to be the first in the world, but later the Ming army did not dare to use those firearms that they were proud of? It was not the end of the Ming Dynasty, the quality of those firearms was not good at all, a little better, a few shots or a few cannons without blowing up the chamber, if you were unlucky, it was directly exploded, and before the enemy rushed up, you would die first, so who would dare to use it, in fact, the production of muskets is simple after all, the most primitive is the arquebus, also called the bird gun, this kind of gun has a simple structure and is easy to make, but Li Yong did not see this simple and inefficient firearm in his eyes, at this time some people will say that the protagonist is thirteen, this is really not, In the era of cavalry, the arquebus is slow to fire, not to mention, and the range is not far enough, if it rains or something, it is no different from a burning stick, and you will be gone with a charge of cavalry, so Li Yong formed a black army based on light cavalry and heavy cavalry at the beginning, and his target for firearms is still a flintlock pistol, this kind of musket that has dominated the world for hundreds of years, regardless of performance, completely crushes the arquebus, but the production of the broken pistol is complex, the most critical core part, the spring that fires the fire door, Li Yong's steel-making technology has been ahead of this era, but it is not so simple to make a spring that can be placed on the gun, don't look at the small spring is very simple, on the level of craftsmanship of his era, it really can't be made, if it is not elastic, or it can't be made so small, Li Yong took the latest spring in his hand and looked at it, and then pressed it hard, feeling that it was still not elastic enough.

"Still not up to the best requirements, is there any other way on your side of the workshop?"

"We've tried a lot of things, and this one is the closest we've come to asking for recently."

"I have a simple idea, you can try it, first of all, set the size of the steel wire with fire red, natural cooling, so that the wire loses elasticity, of course, the steel wire with our kind of carbon content is the least kind, and then use the size we want to use the round rod, the annealed steel wire is wound into a spiral on the round bar, make it into the spring shape we need, and then put the unfinished spring on the fire to burn red, immediately immersed in water to complete the quenching, the purpose is to restore the elasticity of the steel wire, the key is quenching, quenching temperature is high, put into the water quickly."

After listening to Li Yong's words, the masters of the steel workshop began to think about his production, because they were all experienced blacksmiths, and then learned the new steelmaking methods taught to them by Li Yong, so a lot of steel was innovated, such as the black army's reinforced armor and extremely sharp weapons came out of their hands, several masters thought for a while and discussed with each other, and felt that they could try it, because this is really not complicated, it should be said that it is very simple, and it cannot be a test of the blacksmith's grasp of the fire, For them, it's as simple as drinking water, and then they went on to discuss the artillery, as for the material of the cannon or the barrel, if you use a bronze cannon, it's naturally simple, but Li Yong doesn't have so much money to burn it like this, what about bronze making an international joke? So a lot of formulas were not well solved, Li Yong looked at the drawings of the artillery and frowned, feeling that this group of people seemed to have misunderstood their meaning, so Li Yong asked what they used in the casting method, and they said in unison that it was the clay casting method, which did not make Li Yong angry and vomit blood, no wonder he said that it would blow up the chamber, Li Yong had to patiently say to these people.

"I probably know where the problem is, first of all, you have to know the mud casting method, this method is right, from the process is simple, the cost is also very low, it is indeed a good choice, although this method of casting guns has many advantages, such as the thin wall of the barrel, light weight, low cost, etc., but the defects are also very large, due to the use of mud film manufacturing, the gun body often appears uneven and even pits, plus we now use more coal in steelmaking, the coal in the north has a higher sulfur content, at high temperatures, sulfur and metal in the air chemical reaction, The generation of new sulfides, so that the steel impurities are more, the ductility is poor, and the brittleness is higher, that is, our artillery has a fatal flaw - easy to blow up, in fact, I have a kind of iron mold casting method here, first according to the size of the artillery, divided into four to seven sections, to make a mud cannon, and then according to the number of mud cannon sections, the iron mold mud type is divided, each section of the mud type is divided into two petals, and the inner surface is rotated with a car plate to make the surface smooth and clean, the shape is regular, and then dried for later use. A prefabricated handle is placed in the clay mold, and it is cast into one piece with the iron mold when poured. When turning the cast iron mold with the mud type, first put the section of the muzzle upside down on the mud plate, fill one of the petals with mud, after drying, cover the mud plate, tighten the mud mold, and get a petal of the first iron mold after pouring. Then remove the filling mud, and cast another iron mold in the same way. In this way, it can be cast into a complete set of iron molds with layers of tenon and tenon. When casting iron cannon with this iron mold, it must be noted that the inner surface of the mold is first brushed with the paint synthesized with fine rice husk ash and fine sand mud and water, and then the second layer of paint prepared by extremely fine pulverized coal is painted, and then the iron mold is tightened, the mud core is heated, and the molten iron is poured. After solidifying, immediately take off the iron mold, while the gun body is still red-hot, remove the burrs, remove the mud core, you can follow my idea to do a look. ”

After three days and three nights of talking, these blacksmith masters and the people of the research institute were willing to leave, leaving only Li Yong who was like being drained, Li Lizhi saw Li Yong so tired, and let Chunlan boil nourishing chicken soup for several days, and Li Yong, who ate it, now sees everything like a chicken, and wants to vomit when he thinks of chickens, but fortunately, he has left the blacksmith and the people of the research institute for more than a week, Finally rescued Li Yong, who was still drinking chicken soup in the other courtyard, Li Yong received news from Xinhua Pavilion City, saying that the model flintlock pistol and artillery had been made, I heard that the effect was very good, Li Yong was the speed of the carriage running up to catch up with the plane, Li Yong rushed into the naval barracks in a hurry, because in order to keep it secret and protect Li Yong's precious talents, so the institute was temporarily placed here, Li Yong looked at the long and broken flintlock pistol on the table, just like the antiques when he visited the museum were almost identical, There is also a murderous artillery on the side, although there is only one small-caliber artillery, but Li Yong believes that soon he will be able to have artillery of various calibers, Li Yong touched the two long and short flintlock pistols and the cannon like a lover. Seeing Li Yong's expression, the craftsmen and the people in the research institute knew that they had finally made the firearms in Li Yong's mind, and they were all very happy, and then it was time to test the three firearms, under the protection of fifty black soldiers, they came to a mountain forest nearby, even if the cannon was fired, no one would hear and find it, the first test was a short flintlock pistol, a brave test gunner put on the Xishan armor, pulled down the mask, and protected himself tightly, everyone present held their breath, Watching the test gunman began to put paper cartridge shells into the barrel, the paper cartridge shells are loaded with the bullet and gunpowder together, which can speed up the loading and firing speed, after the test gunman loads the paper cartridge shells, he pokes the muzzle with a strip, and then pulls off the flint clamp and is slightly nervous to aim at the target twenty meters ahead, "bang~" A sound makes all the birds in the woods fly, everyone only sees the short gun in the hands of the tester after a puff of white smoke, and then they hear the sound, the first shot is successfully fired, Of course, the target of twenty meters was not hit, after all, the accuracy of the flintlock pistol is so high now, so at that time, it could only be shot in line with the queue, relying on intensive shooting to make up for the accuracy, the tester shot twenty shots in a row, there was no problem, so the short gun in his hand was handed back to the gun inspection table, all the craftsmen and researchers looked at the short gun picked up by Li Yong, and a sense of pride arose, the successful test firing of the short gun, followed by the long gun, the result was the same as the short gun, but the range was much farther than the short gun, They found lead bullets in books about eighty meters away, Li Yong was also very satisfied with this range, because the barrel was like this before there was no rifling, at least it was farther than those bows and arrows, and there was no need to practice like archers, the terrible thing about muskets was that even a child who didn't know anything could easily learn how to shoot, and then it was the main event, the five-pound small steel cannon was pushed up, everyone hid in the trench in the distance, and the two gunners began to divide the division of labor to fill the muzzle with gunpowder and shells, and then ran to the back of a thick plank and faced Li Yong who was hiding in the trench and shouted,

"Ready."

Li Yong and they hurriedly opened their mouths wide, this is what Li Yong told them, so as to protect their ears and bodies, for Li Yong's words, these people believe them unconditionally, because he didn't miss what he said.

"Ready~put!"

The two gunners pulled down the rope in their hands, and the flint needle at the tail of the gun hit the gunpowder inside, and there was a loud sound of "boom~", like thunder, the tail of the gun and the flintlock gun emitted a large amount of white smoke, and the muzzle of the gun came out like a fire, and then a forest in the distance was destroyed by a solid cannonball, everyone was stunned when they saw such a destructive power, only Li Yong fell into contemplation, he still opened this demon door in the end, the successful use of firearms, and the future war will be the world of firearms, Everyone hugged each other and jumped happily, because at this moment they made history, after nearly thirty shells in contact, the artillery was directly exploded, which also allowed them to record the limit of the artillery, after the successful test firing of the musket and artillery, Li Yong rewarded each of these contributors with one hundred taels each, you must know that one hundred taels of silver in the Tang Dynasty, that is a rich man, and the craftsmen and researchers who were rewarded were very happy.

"Firearms have been successfully developed, I like everyone to continue to work hard to develop more advanced and powerful firearms, when the time comes, you will get more rewards, and most importantly, your firearms will protect the lives of our soldiers, and the heroic spirits of the martyrs' cemetery in Xishan are still watching us."

Therefore, the craftsmen and researchers have expressed their stance that the military workshop will speed up the production of muskets and artillery, and provide them to the Xishan Army as soon as possible, as for the navy, we can only wait, because you don't have any ships, and the weapons must be installed in the Xishan Army first, as for the research institute, it will also step up the design of various calibers, not only to meet the needs of the army, but also to meet the needs of the warships to be installed in the navy in the future, and even to install the artillery on the Xishan city wall and Xinhua Pavilion City, the task is heavy, but these technicians are like chicken blood, Started their crazy research again.