If the leader says something, the people below will be so busy that they will pull their hair out.
After Chen Shuren finished explaining the research and development tasks for the next year, he returned to Wuchang to take care of some government affairs and listened to recent reports from various aspects. He was so busy that he waited until the 27th of the twelfth lunar month before he had time to take a boat trip. Downstream, ready to return to Nanjing.
Because I am too busy, I will definitely not be able to reunite with my family in time for the Chinese New Year this year. Fortunately, Shen Shuren did not originally want to reunite with his family. He just wanted to take advantage of the Chinese New Year to visit the official circles in Nanjing and arrange some things.
Therefore, during the New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, even if he arrived in Nanjing, he would have nothing to do but enjoy family happiness.
Instead, just make sure you can be in Nanjing around the Lantern Festival. Officials from various ministries in Nanjing will probably be at work by then, making it easier for Shen Shuren to come to visit to build relationships and handle matters.
That's how he manages everything, putting official duties first.
In the past few days when Chen Shuren was busy preparing to set off, Song Yingxing, Song Mingde, and Zhou Tietan were also considered capable, and they had already made a brief argument in the last few days of construction before the year.
Although they are still far away from creating the revolver and carbine sprayers that the Shenshuren want, in a few days, they can at least conduct a few demonstrative experiments and list out the main problems.
Zhou Tiedan led his apprentices to work overtime overnight. First, he made the existing gun shape according to the shape of the gun. He did not change anything else, but cut off the barrel and strengthened the locking mechanism on the outside. Then he tried to activate it with a small amount of charge and felt for leaks to spit fire. Let’s look at the bottom of the problem and see how serious it is.
The results of the experiment were not optimistic as expected, and a musketeer's hand was burned during the experimental test.
This was despite wearing thick leather gloves that had been soaked in advance. It seemed that the degree of air leakage and fire eruption was still underestimated. After a simple adjustment, Song Yingxing decided to let the test gunners wear wetted leather gloves in advance for the next experiment. Mud Gloves fire again!
After discovering the problem, they also roughly sorted out the main ideas to alleviate air leakage and reduce pressure relief.
After some thinking, it was confirmed that the "paper shell fixed-loading ammunition" invented last year was not enough to meet the new breech loading needs - because there is an opening gap at the rear of the barrel, oil paper can easily get stuck during loading.
In particular, the ammunition bag is already very close to the inner diameter of the gun barrel. It is necessary to ensure the air tightness at the front. The better the air tightness, the easier it is for the paper to be squeezed out when loading from the back, which will affect the seal to some extent. This only aggravated the fire-breathing burn on my hands.
After discovering the problem, Song Yingxing's solution was that he could no longer use oil paper bags to wrap future breech-loading ammunition, and the bullets had to be upgraded along with the gun.
On the last day Shen Shuren left Wuchang Mansion, Song Yingxing reported this problem.
Shen Shuren also attached great importance to it, saying that he could spend money, food resources, and equipment procurement as he pleased, and that the project of improving ammunition to be compatible with new guns must also be promoted at the same time.
He also asked pleasantly: "Sir, do you have any candidates for new ammunition packaging materials in your mind?"
Song Yingxing thought for a while: "Paper is easy to get stuck, causing gaps and burning ashes. To solve this problem, I was thinking about whether I could replace it with beeswax, or use other wax oil to seal the ammunition.
When wax and other oils are instantly ignited by gunpowder, they burn more fully than oil paper, and there is no ash residue. Moreover, wax has good fluidity. Even if it is stuck in the gap of the loading port on the rear wall of the gun barrel, the wax oil will easily burn. Closing gaps can also help reduce the extent of air leakage and fire.
However, the specific wax to be used has to be chosen slowly. First of all, it must be ensured that it cannot melt and soften too easily. Otherwise, when fighting in the hot summer, the preloaded ammunition will be melted before it is loaded, and the lead bullets and gunpowder will be scattered. . Even the residual temperature in the gun chamber after the previous shot is fired may bake the wax seal in advance.
Also, oil paper is cheap after all. After changing to wax, the wax used should not be too expensive, otherwise every round of ammunition will consume some grease. Now that people's livelihood is in decline and people are starving everywhere, we should try to be frugal. "
Chen Shuren nodded and reminded casually: "If beeswax doesn't work, then try paraffin or something like that. It's good if you have a research direction. When doing experiments, you don't have to be afraid of trial and error and costing money. As long as you record the experimental results in detail, even if they fail Experimentation is also very valuable.”
After giving the instructions, Shen Shuren said goodbye to Song Yingxing and his entourage. That night, he took his family and staff on a boat on the Yangtze River and sailed down the river.
The last question Song Yingxing mentioned reminded Shen Shuren of a historical event he saw in his previous life——
When he was a child in his previous life, he read foreign history and read about the great ambiguity in the anti-British war that took place in Asan Kingdom in the 1850s, and was very puzzled.
Because the book said that the triggering incident was that the British colonial army did not respect the locals and forced the local soldiers who did not eat pork to bite open the lard-sealed bullets with their teeth. As a result, they mutinied.
When Shen Shuren was a child, he couldn't understand why bullets were sealed with grease. At that time, he thought it was just to prevent rust. Now he suddenly realized:
The air tightness of early breech-loading guns was too poor. If a slightly harder grease could be used to seal the bullet and the oil would seal the gap, the air leakage at the moment of firing could be greatly alleviated, and the chamber pressure loss could also be significantly reduced.
Shen Shuren would not use lard to seal bullets in the year of famine. The effect of lard would not be good. In the future, the bullets of the breech-loading guns equipped by his elite troops would be upgraded from paper-cased bullets to wax-cased bullets.
When producing ammunition, the wax is first melted, then poured into a mold that is basically filled with gunpowder and lead bullets, so that the wax can wrap and seal the gunpowder and lead bullets in all directions, shape it into a cylinder, and then cool and remove it. mold.
Such projectiles are harder and not as easily deformed as paper shells. This can also alleviate a lot of problems when the bullet is deformed and cannot be stuffed in during rear loading.
Although production will definitely be slower this way, the finished product will probably look similar to the modern shotgun spray cartridges of later generations.
Chen Shuren couldn't help but think of the No. 12 shotguns in the chicken game. The only difference between the two is that before firing the wax shell of Chen Shuren, you still have to manually pierce the beeswax at the bottom and then load it. The propellant can contact the ignition hole at the bottom of the chamber.
After all, a flintlock gun is not a striker gun. It cannot be fired directly by piercing the primer. You must ensure that the propellant and the sparks from the flint hit each other.
…
Song Yingxing's subsequent research and development progress was only achieved after Shen Shuren left. Of course, Shen Shuren would not know about it for a while.
On the twenty-seventh night of the twelfth lunar month, Chen Shuren took Chen Yuanyuan, Li Xiangjun, some staff, and his confidant Shen Fu, plus several warships escorting the soldiers, and hurried down the river from Daye County.
In order to rush for time, Chen Shuren let the fleet sail day and night without docking, and the sailors could take turns to rest.
Daye is located at the junction of Huguang and Jiangxi, only 150 miles away from Jiujiang.
So Shen Shuren slept peacefully all night with Chen Yuanyuan and Li Xiangjun in his arms in the most luxurious cabin on the ship. He had already arrived in Jiujiang at dawn the next day.
Chen Yuanyuan rubbed her face sleepily, leaned out the window and saw that the ship was temporarily docked at the pier at the mouth of Poyang Lake. She was also quite surprised: "It's so fast. It seems that I can make it back to Nanjing on New Year's Eve." ."
Chen Shuren was woken up by Chen Yuanyuan and said feebly:
"It won't be so fast later. In the middle of winter, the wind is from the northwest. From Wuchang to Jiujiang, it's a smooth wind. After passing the Hukou, the Yangtze River turns from the northwest to the northeast, so you can only use the cross wind.
In the past, I could travel 300 miles in a day and night, but in the future, I estimate that it will only be 200 miles at most every day. And the straight line from Jiujiang to Nanjing is still more than 800 miles. I will stay in Jiujiang for a while to handle some official business, so I won’t rush. "
Chen Yuanyuan turned around and persuaded softly: "Why do you have to rush for official duties like this? Isn't it difficult to deal with it after the new year? The slave family and Junjun are not related. Wherever the son is, there is home. The master must fulfill his filial piety to the master and his wife. "
Shen Shuren and Xu explained with a smile: "You don't understand when it comes to official business, but it's an important matter anyway. I told Brother Zheng Xian to seal off the supplies for cultivation, and now I have to check and accept them. You two can rest and play on the boat by yourself today. ."
As he spoke, Li Xiangjun also woke up and quickly joined Chen Yuanyuan in helping Shen Shuren wash and dress.
The two girls were only wearing tube tops, and they didn't have time to dress themselves up first, so they were shivering from the cold. Shen Shuren also felt pity for her, and hugged them to help warm them up.
Just after cleaning up and having breakfast, there was movement on the pier. It seemed that Shen Shuren and his party's fleet were making quite a lot of noise, as there were already visitors waiting there.
…
"Thank you for your hard work, dear brother. How was your harvest in the past two months?"
A few minutes later, Shen Shuren came to the forward cabin in a light robe and graceful manner, and met Zheng Chenggong, who had just boarded the ship in person to report.
Zheng Chenggong had been notified several days in advance and knew his elder brother's schedule. He was patrolling the river near Jiujiang every day anyway, so he could come as soon as there was news.
"Brother, you are really amazing. Your calculations are so accurate. In the past two months, you have intercepted at least seven or eight batches of small boats that Lin Chengcheng tried to smuggle in to smuggle in scarce supplies. They were disguised under various flags.
The amount of gold and silver directly seized from Lin's subordinates amounted to more than 200,000 taels! It is estimated that the thieves had saved it from looting in the past few years! Now they want to spend it to buy military supplies to subsidize the soldiers! "
When Shen Shuren heard this number at first, he was a little surprised that a homeless thief actually had so much money.
But then I thought about it, Lin Chengcheng claimed to have 20,000 soldiers and horses. To support so many troops, more than 200,000 taels of gold and silver were nothing. It only cost more than a dozen taels per soldier.
Of course, if it is a normal year and month, and subsidies for buying scarce supplies in one winter, if you are more frugal, you may only use less than half of this amount.
But wasn't it true that Zheng Chenggong intercepted the previous batches? Lin Chenggong lost the supplies and couldn't buy the gold and silver, so he had to try another method, which was a more thorough bloodletting.
Moreover, after all, Lin Chengcheng was smuggling, and the people who supplied him were also at risk of collusion. Of course, the items would be more expensive.
Can the price of dirty sales channel be the same as that of normal channel?
After thinking about it, Chen Shuren couldn't help stroking his beard and muttered: "This Lin Chong is willing to spend a lot of money. It seems that the mountains are blocked by heavy snow in the middle of winter, and life is really difficult.
However, the fact that he has been able to try so many times shows that he is sure of the original supply channels and friendship. Could it be that there are many people in Jiangxi who are colluding with bandits?"
Zheng Chenggong's eyes lit up and he showed an expression of admiration: "You guessed it so accurately. I actually tortured and confessed several wealthy businessmen who were collaborating with bandits. However, it was only a few days ago, so I didn't dare to alert them and confess. All the physical evidence is on my ship. How to use it is up to you, brother."
After hearing this, Chen Shuren was also quite excited: "Well done! Only by holding the handle in your hands and seducing it without revealing it can you have the greatest deterrence. Bring all the evidence to my boat as soon as possible."