The components of the flintlock machine could be assembled by a craftsman according to the blueprint. The only new item was a hand-pulled bed. However, this kind of broaching machine did not require high precision. As long as the design was drawn, the blacksmiths of Ming Dynasty could make it.
There was no craftsman in Fan Village who knew how to make muskets. When he returned to Tianjin Wei City, he found five craftsmen who knew how to make muskets and asked them to make muskets for him to see.
In the Ming Dynasty, craftsmen were hereditary and belonged to the Ministry of Works. They were divided into two categories: shift craftsmen and resident craftsmen. In the early Ming Dynasty, it was stipulated that the craftsmen in shifts had to serve in the official workshop once a year or five years, and each shift had an average of three months. The resident craftsman had to serve in the official workshop for ten days every month. However, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the craftsman system collapsed. Craftsmen only needed to pay silver to be exempted from military service. Each shift craftsman paid four and five cents of silver per year, while the resident craftsman had to pay one coin per month.
After paying the money, the craftsman was free and could be hired at will. They could hire craftsmen from Tianjin Wei City at will. In the past, Li Zhi had hired blacksmiths for his flying shuttle, and quite a few of them were craftsmen.
The five craftsmen he found were all resident craftsmen. They handed in their silver every month and made a living by forging iron in the citadel. As for the work of forging weapons for the officials, they occasionally did it, but they had never received any money from the officials. When they heard that the Fan family wanted them to make muskets, the five of them thought that it was a business that they had no money to take, so they were unwilling. After understanding the situation, he gave each of them five taels of silver, materials, and wages. The five of them were so happy that they stopped talking and began to make muskets.
He was familiar with the situation in the Fan manor. At the same time, he rode to the Wei City from time to time to see the progress of the craftsmen.
The first thing to make a musket was the barrel: The craftsmen each found a few pieces of wrought iron and made them into sheets. They burned these pieces of wrought iron until they were red. In the middle, there was a round steel bar. They repeatedly turned and knocked in a steel semi-circular groove to knock the wrought iron into the shape of a gun barrel. Then, they used iron powder and tribution to seal the gaps and repeatedly knocked until the welding was firm. After the barrel was roughly formed, the craftsman placed the barrel on a drilling machine to drill holes. The drill bit was oiled, and a larger drill bit was replaced bit by bit. The uneven parts inside the barrel were dug out bit by bit until a smooth inner chamber was drilled out.
The drilling process was the most time-consuming. A craftsman would need to drill for more than ten days to drill out a qualified gun barrel. After the barrel was completed, the musket was almost completed. The stock was simple to make.
After the five craftsmen finished drilling the barrels, Lin Feng asked them to stop the process.
"How do you prevent your muskets from exploding?”
The craftsman named Boss Wang had the best skills among the five of them and could be considered the leader. He said,"Captain, according to the rules, after the barrel is made, we have to put four times the usual gunpowder in the barrel and blow it up. If the barrel doesn't crack after the explosion, then this barrel will be used! The gun barrel with cracks would be disposed of as scrap! After this step of inspection, the musket would not explode.”
After a pause, Boss Wang continued," But these days, the senior officer has been stingy with the materials. The material used for this barrel is insufficient. There must be cracks under the inspection of four times the gunpowder." However, there was no other way. The materials were insufficient! Even the unqualified muskets were handed over. No one had done this crucial test in recent years.”
Boss Wang explained the reason why the firearms system was corrupt in the late Ming Dynasty and no one dared to use muskets. In fact, there was another reason that Boss Wang did not mention. It was that the government would deduct or even not pay the wages for making firearms for the government. In order to support their families and take on other lucrative jobs, the craftsmen could only complete the work hastily and perfunctorily.
The officials of the late Ming Dynasty had already reached an incurable state. The quality of the weapons produced in such an environment could be imagined. It was no wonder that the Ming Dynasty's army was defeated by the Tartars.
Lin Feng nodded to make sure that there were no technical problems with the five craftsmen before asking,""How have you been all these years?”
Boss Wang was stunned. He didn't know why he suddenly asked this question. He said,""To be honest, the five of us have been living a very hard life. Not only did the government deduct the money to buy materials for forging weapons for the government, but the wages that had been owed for several years had not been paid yet. Now that the war was in chaos, there were not many blacksmiths outside. It was difficult to support himself by sitting idly every day.”
Lin Feng nodded." You guys are skilled people. If you work for me in the future, I'll give you two or three months of money every month." In addition, I provide three meals a day, with meat for every meal. What do you think?"
When the five of them heard this, their faces were filled with disbelief. After hesitating for a long time, Boss Wang asked,""Sir, what do you want us to do with such a high monthly salary?”
"I want you to build me a new type of rifle. This kind of gun doesn't need a matchlock and can hit a target 300 steps away.”
Hearing Lin Feng's words, the five blacksmiths were even more surprised. Boss Wang said,"Sir, I've heard of muskets that don't use matchlock, but I've never heard of a rifle that can hit a target three hundred steps away! Did Milord make a mistake?"
"It's not that I'm wrong, it's that you guys are ignorant!" I have the blueprint for this rifle here. As long as you follow my blueprint, you can make it.”
"However, let me say this first. The manufacturing method of my rifle is an absolute secret. Once you take my monthly salary, you are not allowed to leave my faction, and you are not allowed to teach others the manufacturing method of this rifle.”"Once the secret is leaked, I, Li Zhi, will never let you go to the ends of the earth.”
Hearing the warning, the five craftsmen shrunk their necks and replied with some joy,""With such a high monthly salary, we'll go even if it's a mountain of blades or a sea of flames. No matter what, we won't leak the secret.”
Lin Feng nodded and waved his hand."Alright, from today onwards, hire people to move your furnaces and tools to the Fan manor. I'll prepare a house for you in the Fan manor and give each of you ten taels of silver for moving.”
After saying this, he asked the servants to give the five craftsmen money to move. Why would they need so much money to move? When the craftsmen received the ten taels of silver, they went to make arrangements happily.
After hiring oxcarts of various sizes, the five craftsmen moved all their belongings to the Fan manor a few days later.
Li checked the craftsmen's new homes before taking out the design drawings of the flintlock machine and the hand-made rifling machine from his sleeve. The five blacksmiths looked at Li Zhi's blueprints and figured out the structure of the Sui Spear after pondering for a while. They were instantly shocked and looked at Li Zhi with respect.
The five blacksmiths had figured out how to use the rifling machine, but they did not understand what the rifling was for.
However, they didn't need to understand. They just needed to follow the blueprint.. Under the guidance of the five blacksmiths, they made parts according to the blueprint. It took them another ten days to make five broaching machines each.
There was an iron rod fixed on each pull bed. The rod was cast with a screw thread. When the rod moved back and forth, the screw thread had to pass through a fixed door on the pull bed. The rod could rotate evenly under the effect of the screw thread and the door. At the end of the rod, a steel ball was inserted into the barrel. Under the steel ball, there could be layers of thick paper. By increasing the thickness of the paper, the steel ball could be gradually raised to grind the barrel, and a rotating rifling could be slowly ground into the barrel.
This type of broaching machine did not require high accuracy. It was fine as long as the rifling could force the bullet to rotate. Even the later 19th century gunsmiths would use pure handwork to make such a bed.
Therefore, he wanted to build five broaching machines because he did not know how much the rotation angle of the inner rifling of the Mini gun was. The rotation angles of the five broaching machines were different, so the one with the best effect could be selected in the end.
It didn't take much time to pull the rifling. In mid-August, the craftsmen created the first batch of five Mini rifles of this era. The five of them then made a mold according to Li Zhi's design, using lead to create hundreds of mini-bullets with hollow tails.
On the day of the test, the effect of the Mini Bullet almost shocked the five craftsmen.
Wooden targets as tall as a person were erected on the sand outside the Fan manor of Lin Feng. They were placed at 200 meters, 300 meters, 400 meters, and 500 meters respectively.
The five Mini rifles were tested separately, and the worst one hit the target 200 meters away again and again, causing holes to appear on the one-inch thick wooden target.
Such a result had already made the craftsmen exclaim in wonder. One had to know that the Da Ming Bird Musket they were familiar with could only hit a target a hundred and fifty steps away. The accuracy of hitting a target a hundred steps away was only twenty to thirty percent. Shooting a target that was 140 steps away, or about 200 meters away, was purely a random shot. It would be a miracle if he could hit one out of ten shots.
Even the worst of the five rifles could hit a target 140 steps away. How amazing was that? They simply felt that they had wasted half their lives as muskets. It was only today that they felt like they had seen the light.
When the rifle was being tested, many military households in the Fan manor came out to watch the show. When they saw the flintlock shoot through the wooden target 200 meters away again and again, their eyes lit up with excitement.
The best performance in the test firing was the Mini rifle, which made the blacksmiths and military households even more dumbfounded.
This best performing Mini Gun could not only hit a target 200 meters away, but it could also accurately hit a target 200 steps away, or 300 meters away, again and again, turning the thick wooden target into a sieve. Not only that, but this gun could also hit a target from 400 meters away with a 60% accuracy rate. It could even penetrate a wooden board. This gun could even hit a target 500 meters away with a 30% accuracy rate.
Shooting from 400 meters away and 500 meters away was not a matter of whether the gun was accurate or not. It was a matter of whether the shooter could aim at the target from such a distance. In other words, if the shooter was in perfect condition and aimed accurately, the gun would have a theoretical range of more than 500 meters!
Five hundred meters was a mile. Infantry soldiers from the cold weapon era were not even prepared to charge a mile away, and they would have already been shot to death.
If they hadn't seen it with their own eyes, the five craftsmen wouldn't have believed that they had made such a rifle with their own hands.
Even the surrounding crowd stared at this scene with wide eyes. They were so shocked that they did not even exclaim. Taking someone's life from a few hundred steps away, what kind of concept was that? Even storytellers wouldn't dare to boast like this in their stories! The soldiers felt as if they had seen a divine weapon descend to the mortal world. None of them dared to breathe loudly.
Not only that, this Mini rifle didn't need an ignition rope, it used a flintlock. In the past, musketeers would always be on guard against their eyes and eyebrows being burned by the matchlock when aiming. Now, the gunners could aim steadily. Furthermore, with the flintlock machine, there was no need to install a fire rope, a ignition rope, a blown-out fire plate, or a test fire rope when shooting. This saved a few steps and greatly increased the accuracy of the shot.
The craftsmen finally understood why the centurion had placed so much emphasis on confidentiality. This rifle was an unprecedented divine weapon. All existing firearms could only bow down and admit defeat in front of this Mini Rifle. How powerful would an army armed with such weapons be?
With such a Minigun armed army, wouldn't the future of the centurion be bright?。。The five craftsmen were shocked by the effect of the Mini Rifle. They thought for a while and looked at Li Zhi with admiration and respect.
Seeing the effect of the Mini Rifle, Lin Feng was also very happy. This was the first weapon he had successfully forged since he transmigrated. With such a powerful weapon, his future was bright.
However, with the idea of striving for perfection, Li Zhi asked the craftsmen to adjust the angle of the thread of the five broaching machines, and fine-tune the angle of the broaching machine with the best effect, striving to make the most perfect angle of the rifling broaching machine.
Lin Feng knew that the prestige of him testing the Mini Rifle had changed the mentality of many people in the Fan manor.
Jiang Chong, the Zhuang soldier of the Fan manor, finished his training in the morning. He stood at the door of his courtyard in boredom when he saw Little Huazhang walking over. When Hua Zhang saw Jiang Chong, he walked up and punched Jiang Chong's arm.
"Did your uncle reply to you?"
Jiang Chong glanced at Hua Zhang and said lightly,""No news yet!"
"Still no news?" Hua Zhang blinked and asked. Could it be that they don't want you to go and are deliberately delaying the news?”
Jiang Chong and Hua Zhang were discussing the matter of Jiang Chong escaping from Fan Manor and going to Xingji County to seek refuge with his uncle.
The days of the soldiers were too hard. Although the soldiers in Tianjin Town were paid two taels of silver a month, this money was simply an illusory pie. The imperial court's salary was insufficient to begin with, and the officials at all levels still had to exploit them layer by layer. Every month, they received less than five coins. Moreover, this was a good month. Sometimes, when the officials were too greedy, the monthly salary would not be paid at all.
The officials of the Ming Dynasty would not pay their salaries in full until they were ready to fight and fight. Sometimes, even when they were about to go into battle, they would not pay, causing the soldiers to lose their fighting spirit and collapse.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the training in the towns was lax. Although the local soldiers could not get the salary, they could still go home to farm and support their families after training. However, the officers in various places were not willing to let the soldiers off easily. They took over the soldiers and forced them to work in the officers 'private fields during the day, so that the soldiers could only work in their own fields at night. The soldiers had to work for more than ten hours a day. They could only make a living in such a hard life and could not even afford to marry a wife.
Because of their poverty, there were more than 200 men in the Fan manor, but only 160 women. Dozens of old men could not find a wife.
Those who were strong and had a way out had basically all escaped. The rest were either old and weak and did not dare to travel far, or had nowhere to go like Jiang Chong and Hua Zhang. Jiang Chong wanted to seek refuge with the only uncle who had a better family background. He asked someone to send a message, but there was no reply after waiting for several months. Hua Zhang had nowhere to go. His family had only one heir for three generations and did not even have a relative to rely on. He could only stay in the Fan manor and be exploited by the officers. Seeing the power of the rifle, Jiang Chong joined the servant army.
This book comes from：m.funovel.com。