Lawrence, who was staying at the station, had no time to spare. He had one more thing to put on his agenda, which was to cooperate with Major Trifali in the modification of muskets.
After General Nathan learned about it, although he did not believe that Lawrence could achieve anything, he still sent people to prepare the necessary tools and materials for the two of them, and provided dozens of
Use the muskets that were scrapped due to malfunctions for experiments.
Of course, it was Major Trifali who had to do the actual work. Although Lawrence had sufficient theoretical knowledge, if he was asked to strike with a hammer, he might not even be able to make a nail.
"Everything is ready, Major Bonaparte."
Major Cui Farley looked at the scrapped muskets, pig iron and various parts all over the floor, and rubbed his hands excitedly and said. If the principle mentioned by Lawrence can really be realized, in the future people will definitely not miss him when talking about muskets.
name.
Lawrence nodded and decided to start by carving the rifling.
Although rifled guns appeared as early as the fifteenth century, carving rifling is a time-consuming, labor-intensive and highly precise process, which makes the output of rifled guns very low. Coupled with the many disadvantages of this kind of gun, the
It has not become popular.
In Lawrence's memory, the gun barrels of later generations used the stamping process directly when engraving the rifling. However, in the current extremely limited environment, Lawrence had to use the original hook knife broaching method.
This method is favored by many colonists. Due to the simple conditions in the colonies, the advantage of this method is that the tools are simple.
You only need to make a simple wooden broaching machine, fix the scraper on the machine, and pull back and forth the handle connected to the barrel.
However, although this was a very primitive and simple craft, Lawrence still explained it to Cui Farali for a while, and even built a small model with his own hands to make Cui Farali understand what he meant.
"This is much more convenient than using a scraper to carve rifling directly."
After Major Trifari understood, he clapped his hands and started to act directly. Although he was a skilled firearms craftsman, he was also quite skilled in carpentry. Lawrence stood aside to help him and pointed out problems from time to time.
After two or three hours of fussing, Major Trifali finally built a strong and durable scraper according to Lawrence's idea.
As for the scrapers used, Major Cui Farley also burned a furnace of high-carbon steel without stopping, and used these high-hardness steels to make a dozen scrapers at a time as backup.
After all the preparations were completed, the sky was already dark. Lawrence wanted to continue tomorrow, but Major Trifali excitedly pulled Lawrence and wanted to make the test product tonight.
Seeing this, Lawrence had no choice but to smile bitterly and send someone to get some torches for lighting, and accompanied Major Cui Farley to continue processing.
When using the scraper broaching method, it only takes twenty broaching times to carve a rifling. However, in order to ensure quality, Major Cui Farley broached each rifling hundreds of times.
It wasn't until midnight that Major Cui Farley panted and removed the barrel from the broach and completed the assembly of the butt, flint, striker and other parts.
"Thanks for your hard work."
Lawrence smiled and patted Major Cui Farley on the shoulder and said:
"Maybe this gun can change history."
Major Cui Falali could not restrain his excitement. He touched the gun again and again, then found ammunition and prepared to start the experiment.
The two set up a human-sized straw ball wrapped in cloth in the courtyard as a target, then stood a hundred yards away and started shooting.
There is no difference in loading between this rifled gun and the rifled gun of the 15th century. It is still necessary to use a small mallet to smash the bullet into the barrel to embed the bullet into the rifling.
It is precisely this drawback that makes the loading time of a rifled gun reach about one minute, while for a smoothbore gun, one minute is enough for two or three shots.
Major Cui Fali personally held the musket, laboriously loaded the ammunition, and then aimed at the target in front of him and excitedly pulled the trigger.
"boom!"
"boom!"
...
After shooting ten times, the two men stepped forward to check the target and saw seven bullet holes densely distributed on it. Taking into account the influence of Major Cui Farley's shooting ability, the hit rate of this gun at a distance of 100 yards should be 80
%about.
This result has already made Major Cui Farley very excited. You must know that the current musket can only have a 20% hit rate at a distance of one hundred yards.
However, Major Cui Farley was not excited for too long. In his just shooting, he could clearly feel the shortcomings of this gun. The shooting efficiency was too low, and it had no advantage at all when facing muskets in large-scale battles on the battlefield.
When Major Trifari told Lawrence his concerns, Lawrence just smiled and said he would solve the problem tomorrow.
The problem with the shooting efficiency of a rifled gun is essentially that you need to use a mallet to embed the bullet into the rifling. As long as this problem is solved, the firing frequency of the rifled gun can be consistent with that of the smoothbore gun.
Early the next morning, while Lawrence was still asleep, he was woken up by the excited Major Trifali and pulled Lawrence to the testing site.
In order to solve the problem of shooting efficiency, Lawrence decided to use the historical Mini bullet, which was invented by a British captain named Mini.
Of course, it might be called the Bonaparte Bomb in this world.
Different from the spherical lead bullets commonly used in muskets today, the shape of minion bullets is very close to the bullets of later generations. The front end is made of copper tip, the rear end is made of cork, and the shape is a hollowed-out hemisphere.
"This...is this possible?" Major Cui Farley asked doubtfully:
"If the bullet doesn't stick to the rifling, it won't spin stably."
"The best thing about this bullet design is its tail." Lawrence explained:
"When the gunpowder is activated, the gas generated will flow into the cavity at the tail of the bullet, causing the cork tail to expand so that it can fit tightly against the barrel of the gun. This is the same as the blowpipe used to blow darts."
"hiss..."
Major Cui Farley took a breath of cold air and quickly understood what Lawrence meant. At the same time, he also vaguely felt that if such high-precision, fast-loading firearms appeared on the battlefield on a large scale, line tactics would soon be swept away.
In the trash heap of history.
When he thought that he might become the leader of this war revolution, Major Cui Farley couldn't help but feel hot all over.
According to Lawrence's design, Major Cui Farley made a prototype after much trouble. Lawrence couldn't help but admire his superb skills. The caliber of this bullet needs to be slightly smaller than the barrel. If it is too small or too large, problems will occur.
"Major Trifari, come on."
After Lawrence briefly checked the bullet, he handed it to Cui Farley with a smile, leaving him with the first shot of this epoch-making weapon.
"Thank you, Major Bonaparte."
Cui Fali also knew that such behavior represented the supreme honor, so he excitedly and gratefully took the bullet and loaded it into the gun chamber.
Just a bang was heard, and the gas generated by the deflagrating gunpowder pushed the bullet to fly out of the gun chamber at high speed. The trajectory across the air was almost in a straight line with the gun body, and it accurately hit the target.
"Success!!"
Major Cui Farley opened his mouth wide and waved his hands to disperse the smoke in front of his eyes. His hands were shaking uncontrollably due to excessive excitement.
Lawrence was relieved when he saw this. After all, he was just providing Major Trifali with ideas, and he was not sure whether he could succeed in the first attempt.
"We can be famous throughout Europe with this gun!" Major Trifali kissed the gun directly and shouted to Lawrence.
Lawrence smiled and nodded, silently saying in his heart: