The rifle workshop can now produce two hundred rifles per month. By the beginning of April, Li Zhi already had 3,200 Mini rifles equipped for the army.
The two thousand veterans of the Selection Regiment have their own special rifles. They train with their own rifles every day and maintain their own rifles. The soldiers of the Polu Regiment have not yet produced all their rifles, so they can only take turns using the rifles for training. On weekdays, the Polu Regiment
Soldiers carried wooden sticks to simulate rifle training queues. During target practice, more than a thousand rifles were placed on the shooting range for the use of soldiers from the Polu Regiment who took turns to practice target practice. Soldiers from the Polu Regiment practiced target twice a week, each time
Twelve rounds were fired, and in three months each person had hit the target 300 times.
Compared with traditional soldiers, musketeers have the advantage of forming an army quickly. The soldiers of the Polu regiment fired 300 rounds of ammunition, and they can basically hit the human-shaped target 200 meters away during target practice. After a few months of training, they can form an army.
Already.
Mini rifles have trouble with lead: after long-term friction between lead bullets and the rifling of the rifle, the lead on the edge of the bullet will be adsorbed on the rifling, causing the rifling to fail. Therefore, each rifle must be taken to a rifle workshop for cleaning after firing two hundred rounds.
Hang the lead and let the gunsmiths use a broaching machine to pull out the lead attached to the rifling.
Fortunately, lead is relatively soft and can be quickly cleaned with a steel broach. Gunsmiths can clean twenty rifles a day.
Mini rifles use softer lead bullets, and the life of the barrel is about a thousand rounds. The soldiers of the Selective Group have done less target shooting since they became an army. Most of the rifles have not reached the end of their service life. They can only destroy mountains.
The first batch of 125 rifles dispatched during the free time had more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and were scrapped.
There are few scrapped guns, and the number of usable rifles is still increasing at a rate of 200 per month. In a few months, all soldiers of the Polu Regiment will have their own rifles.
However, for Li Zhi, this production speed was still too slow. To plan ahead, Li Zhi sent people to various prefectures and counties in Gyeonggi to recruit craftsmen and ordinary blacksmiths who could make muskets.
The people Li Zhi sent out were headed by Zheng Hui. Zheng Hui is the grandson of Li Zhi's grandfather's brother and is considered Li Zhi's cousin. He is a shrewd and steady man. He used to be a manager in a textile workshop, but now Li Zhi transferred him to the government office.
The head of the official staff is the Lisi. Li Zhi would let Zheng Hui take care of all the trivial paperwork in the official office.
This time, Li Zhi gave each of the gunsmith apprentices recruited by Zheng Hui 20 taels a month and 10 taels of moving expenses, and asked them to rent a villa built by Li Zhi in Fanjiazhuang. After being apprentices for a period of time, every time they produced a gun,
The reward for the rifle is seven coins.
The high salary offered by Li Zhi attracted many craftsmen. Every time the recruitment officials went to one place, they basically attracted all the local craftsmen to the job fair. The scene was very lively. The recruiters visited six prefectures and counties.
Li Zhi's recruitment target was achieved. If Li Zhi hadn't emphasized the need for interviews and asked officials to recruit only honest craftsmen, more than a thousand craftsmen from six prefectures and counties would have poured into Fanjiazhuang.
In the end, Li Zhi ushered in more than 80 gunsmiths who were good at making muskets and more than 210 blacksmiths, a total of 300 people, and asked all these blacksmiths to move to Fanjiazhuang to become gunsmith apprentices.
Of course, in order to keep it secret, Li Zhi did not tell the new gunsmith apprentices the secret of the rifling. The gunsmith apprentices only learned to make smoothbore flintlock guns with thicker tube walls. After completing various inspections in accordance with the rules, they would make
Good muskets are handed over to experienced gunsmiths for rifling.
If the rifling drawing work is concentrated on the old gunsmith, Li Zhi's confidentiality work will be much easier.
Precision cannot be guaranteed in the manual era. There are always some differences in the caliber of guns handmade by different gunsmiths, but this does not affect the rifling operation of the broaching machine. The broaching machine designed by Li Zhi is very flexible. If the gun bore is one millimeter wider, it only needs
Just put an extra layer of thick paper under the broach of the broaching machine to raise the broach, and vice versa.
Li Zhi gave the old gunsmiths an average monthly salary of four taels, and the confidentiality requirements for them were also very strict. Li Zhi personally told these gunsmiths that if anyone leaked the secret of rifling to the outside, the leaker would be shot directly.
The ruthless gunsmiths of Lord Shou all know that nine thieves from the glass workshop have been killed by Lord Shou. No one is willing to abandon the good life in Fanjiazhuang and risk their lives to betray the secret of rifling.
The new apprentices are not involved in drawing the rifling, nor are they involved in the secret work of Minie rifles, so their income is naturally no more than that of the old gunsmiths.
After the new two hundred gunsmiths are recruited, they will be paid 2 taels per month during the apprenticeship. After completing the apprenticeship, they will make unrifled rifles and receive a bonus of 1 tael for each gun they make. Of course, three of the taels of silver bonus are given to the master craftsman.
Yes, only 7 cents goes to the apprentice. But no matter what, the monthly income of 2 taels and 7 cents is quite considerable.
You must know that Li Zhi also provided three meals a day for the gunsmiths and apprentices.
Among these new apprentices, the craftsmen who were good at making muskets began to learn how to make smoothbore flintlock rifles when they arrived at Fanjiazhuang, and a month later began to independently produce unrifled rifles. The blacksmiths who were not able to make muskets did not
He immediately began learning how to make flintlock muskets, and was instead organized to make bayonets for existing Minie rifles.
Li Zhi wanted to equip the musketeers with bayonets.
The infantry in Li Zhi's army only had musketeers, and there were no pikemen or sword and shield soldiers to protect the musketeers. Once in close combat, they relied on the musketeers to fight hand-to-hand. Previously, Li Zhi had equipped each musketeer with a long knife, but obviously the long sword
The sword has no lethality against cavalry and is not conducive to maintaining the morale of the musketeers when facing cavalry.
Li Zhi decided to follow the practice of later generations and add a detachable bayonet to the Minie rifle as a cold weapon for musketeers.
The bayonet blade designed by Li Zhi is fifty centimeters long, with the blade at the bottom and serrated teeth engraved on the back. The bayonet can stab or cut. Once it penetrates the enemy's body, the serrated teeth will tear the skin and make the wound extremely difficult to heal. There is a handle behind the bayonet blade.
, twenty centimeters long, allowing the bayonet to be detached from the rifle and used as a one-handed short knife.
The bayonet is installed on the wooden stock under the barrel. An iron rod with concave and convex teeth is installed on the rifle wooden stock. A hole is made at the end of the handle of the bayonet, and an embedded hole is designed inside to match the iron rod. Install the bayonet.
When the time comes, insert the hole at the bottom of the bayonet into the iron rod on the wooden support. After inserting it all the way, rotate it 90 degrees. Then press it down and rotate it 90 degrees again. The bayonet will be fixed on the rifle.
In the future, when infantry or cavalry armed with long weapons rush towards the musketeers, the musketeers will fix their bayonets after shooting. With bayonets, the musketeers will have long weapons that can fight against the enemy infantry, and they can even challenge the cavalry with it.
It is of great significance to improve the morale of the musketeers.
In order to make bayonets, Li Zhi bought several kilograms of Su steel from the iron merchants in Tianjin Acropolis and provided it to the blacksmiths. Su steel is an iron smelting technology of the Ming Dynasty, which is an improvement of the steel filling method. When Su steel was produced
The oxygen in the "wrought iron" is used to oxidize the silicon, manganese, and carbon in the pig iron, thereby removing inclusions, and the quality of the fine steel produced is good.
More than two hundred apprentice gunsmiths did not learn to make guns. Instead, they set up furnaces and made tools in the newly opened blacksmith workshop area in the south of the city. They hammered day and night to make bayonets for the soldiers of the Selection Regiment and Polu Regiment.
