national surname chiming

Chapter 155 Deterrence is just to scare but not to
If the leader says a word, the people below will be too busy to pull their hair out.

After Shen Shuren explained the research and development tasks for the new year, he went back to Wuchang to take care of the government affairs and listened to the recent reports on various aspects. Ready to go back to Nanjing.

Because I am too busy, I will definitely not be able to catch up with my family reunion this year.Fortunately, Shen Shuren didn't want to reunite with his family at first, he just wanted to take advantage of the Chinese New Year to walk around the officialdom and arrange some things in Nanjing.

Therefore, during the days of 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, it is enough to ensure that they can be in Nanjing around the Lantern Festival. By that time, the officials of various ministries in Nanjing will probably start work, so that it will be convenient for Shen Shuren to come to contact him to handle affairs.

That's how he manages everything, and puts his business first.

In the past few days when Shen Shuren was busy preparing to leave, Song Yingxing, Song Mingde, and Zhou Tiedan were also very strong, and they had already made a brief argument on the last few days when they started work a year ago.

Although it is still far away from making the revolver and carbine gun that Shen Shuren wants, at least a few days will allow them to do a few demonstrative experiments and list the main problems that exist.

Zhou Tiedan led his apprentices to work overtime overnight. First, he followed the existing shape of the blunderbuss without changing anything else, but cut off the barrel, reinforced the locking mechanism on the outside, and then tried to activate it with a small amount of charge. At the bottom of the problem, let's see how serious it is.

The results of the experiment were not as optimistic as expected, and a musketeer who fired in the experiment burned his hands.

This is still in the case of wearing pre-soaked thick leather gloves, it seems that the degree of leakage and fire is still underestimated.After simple adjustments, Song Yingxing decided that the next experiment would require the test shooter to put on gloves smeared with wet mud before firing!
After discovering the problem, they also roughly sorted out the main ideas for alleviating air leakage and reducing pressure relief.

After some pondering, it was confirmed that the "paper cartridge fixed-load ammunition" invented last year was not enough to meet the new breech loading needs-because there is an opening at the end of the barrel, the oil paper is easy to get stuck in when loading.
In particular, the ammunition pack is already tightly attached to the inner diameter of the barrel. It is necessary to ensure the airtightness of the front, and the better the airtightness, the paper is easy to be squeezed out when it is loaded from the back, which will affect the seal to some extent. This aggravated the fire-breathing burns to the hand.

After discovering the problem, Song Yingxing came up with a solution, that is, he could no longer use oiled paper bags to pack future ammunition, and the bullets had to be upgraded along with the gun.

On the last day when Shen Shuren left Wuchang Mansion, Song Yingxing reported this problem.

Shen Shuren also attaches great importance to it, saying that money, food resources, and equipment purchases can be spent casually, and this project of improving ammunition compatible with new guns must be promoted at the same time.

He also asked kindly: "Sir, do you have any candidates for new ammunition packaging materials?"

Song Yingxing thought for a while: "The paper is easy to get stuck, causing gaps and burning ashes. To solve this, I thought at the time whether I could replace it with beeswax, or use other waxes to seal the ammunition.

When wax oil is instantly ignited by gunpowder, it burns more fully than oil paper, and there is no ash residue, and the wax has good fluidity. Closing the gap can also help alleviate the degree of air leakage and fire.

It’s just that you have to choose what kind of wax to use slowly. Firstly, you must ensure that it cannot be melted and softened too easily. Otherwise, when you fight in the hot summer, the pre-loaded ammunition has not been reloaded, and the lead bullets and gunpowder are scattered. .Even the residual heat in the barrel of the gun after the previous shot has been fired may melt the wax seal in advance.

What's more, 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 the people's livelihood is dying and people are dying of hunger, we should try our best to be frugal. "

Shen Shuren nodded, and casually reminded: "Beeswax is not enough, then try paraffin wax and the like, as long as you have a research direction. Don't be afraid of trial and error and cost money when experimenting, as long as you record the experimental results in detail, even if it is a failed experiment. Very valuable."

After finishing the order, Shen Shuren bid farewell to Song Yingxing and his party, and that night, he took his family members and staff, boarded the Yangtze River boat, and went down the river.

Song Yingxing's last question 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 he was very puzzled when he read about the anti-British ambiguity that occurred in the three countries of Afghanistan in the 1850s.

Because the book said that the triggering incident was that the British colonial army disrespected the locals and forced those local soldiers who did not eat pork to bite open the lard-sealed bullets with their teeth, and the result was a mutiny.

When Shen Shuren was a child, he couldn't understand why the bullets should be sealed with grease. At that time, he thought it was just for rust prevention.Now it dawns on me:

The airtightness of early breech-loading guns was too poor. If a slightly harder grease could be used to seal the bullets, and the oil would fill the gaps, the air leakage at the moment of firing would be greatly alleviated, and the loss of chamber pressure would also be significantly reduced.

Shen Shuren would not use lard to seal bullets in a famine year, and the effect of lard is not good.In the future, the bullets of the breech-loading guns equipped by his elite troops will be upgraded from paper shells to wax shells.

When producing ammunition, the wax is melted first, and then poured into a mold that is basically filled with gunpowder and lead bullets, so that the wax wraps and seals the gunpowder and lead bullets in all directions up, down, left, and right, and is shaped into a cylinder, and then cooled and removed. mold.

Such projectiles are harder and not as easily deformed as paper cartridge cases, and the situation that the bullet cannot be inserted due to deformation of the bullet during rear loading can also be alleviated a lot.

Although the production will definitely be slower in this way, the finished product is estimated to be similar to the spray cartridges of modern shotguns of later generations.

Shen Shuren couldn't help but think of the 12-gauge shotgun in the game of eating chicken. The only difference between the two is that Shen Shuren's wax shell bullets still need to manually pierce the bottom of the beeswax before reloading, so that the propellant can follow the Bottom firing hole contacts.

After all, a flintlock is not a firing pin gun, and it cannot be directly fired by piercing the primer. It must be ensured that the propellant meets the sparks hit by the flint.

……

Song Yingxing's follow-up research and development progress was made after Shen Shuren left, and of course Shen Shuren would not be able to know for a while.

On the night of the 27th night of the twelfth lunar month, Shen Shuren took Chen Yuanyuan, Li Xiangjun, some staff members, his confidant Shen Fu and others, plus a few warships to escort the soldiers, and hurried down the river from Daye County.

In order to hurry up, the tree sinker let the fleet sail day and night without docking, and the sailors could rest in shifts.

Daye is 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 of the ship, and arrived in Jiujiang at dawn the next day.

Chen Yuanyuan rubbed her face sleepily, looked out of the porthole, and was quite surprised to find that the boat was temporarily berthed at the pier at the mouth of Poyang Lake: "It's so fast, it seems that I can catch up with Nanjing on New Year's Eve." .”

Shen Shuren was woken up by Chen Yuanyuan, and said casually weakly:

"It's not so fast in the future. In the middle of winter, there is a northwest wind. From Wuchang to Jiujiang, it is smooth. After passing the lake mouth, the Yangtze River turns from the northwest to the northeast, so we can only use the side wind.

Before that, I was able to travel 800 miles a day and night, but it is estimated that it will be [-] miles a day at most, and there is still more than [-] miles in a straight line from Jiujiang to Nanjing.I still have to stay in Jiujiang for a while to handle some business, so I won't rush. "

Chen Yuanyuan turned around and persuaded softly: "What kind of official business, if you have to hurry up like this, will it be difficult to deal with it in the next year? The slave family and Junjun have no relatives. Wherever the son is, he is home. The son must be filial to the master and wife. "

Shen Shuren explained with a gentle smile: "You don't understand the official business, anyway, it's an important matter. I told Zheng Xiandi to block the supplies of Lin Yang before, and now I have to check and accept it. Today, you two can rest and play on the boat by yourself."

Between words, Li Xiangjun also woke up, and hurriedly joined Chen Yuanyuan to help Shen Shuren wash and dress.

The two girls were still only wearing tube tops, and they didn't have time to dress themselves up first, they were shivering from the cold.Shen Shuren was also sympathetic to the fragrance and jade, and hugged them to help heat them up.

Just after packing up and having breakfast, there was movement on the pier.It seems that the fleet of Shen Shuren and his party is quite noisy, and visitors have already been waiting there.

……

"Brother, you have worked hard, how have you gained in the past two months?"

A few minutes later, Shen Shuren came to the front cabin in a light gown, and met Zheng Chenggong who had just boarded the ship in person to report.

Zheng Chenggong had already been notified a few days in advance, and he knew the itinerary of his elder brother. Anyway, he patrolled the river near Jiujiang every day, so he could come as soon as he had news.

"Brother, you are 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 and smuggle in short supply, all of which were disguised as various flags.

Just the gold and silver directly captured by Lin Cheng's subordinates amounted to over 10,000+ taels!It is estimated that they were all saved by the thieves who looted around in the past few years!Now I want to spend it to buy military supplies to subsidize soldiers! "

When Shen Shuren first heard the number, he was a little surprised that a thief actually had so much money.

But after thinking about it, Lin Chengcheng also claimed to have 10,000 soldiers and horses. To support so many troops, two [-]+ taels of gold and silver are really nothing. It only cost a dozen taels to spread on each soldier.

Of course, if it is a normal year, if you buy a subsidy for scarce supplies in one winter, you may only use a small half of this figure if you are frugal.

But wasn't the previous batches all intercepted by Zheng Chenggong? Lin Chengcheng lost the gold and silver and couldn't buy the supplies, so he had to try again in a different way, which made the bloodletting more thorough.

Moreover, Lin Yangcheng was smuggling after all, and the people who supplied him with the goods also had the risk of collaborating with bandits, so the goods would of course be more expensive.

Can the price of selling dirty channels be the same as that of normal channels?

After thinking about it, Shen Shuren couldn't help stroking his beard and pondering: "This Lin Chengcheng is willing to spend his money, it seems that the mountain is blocked by heavy snow in the middle of winter, life is really difficult.

However, he was able to try so many times, which shows that he is also sure of the original supply channels and friendship.Could it be that there are many gangsters in Jiangxi? "

Zheng Chenggong's eyes lit up, and he showed an expression of admiration: "You guessed so accurately, I really tortured and confessed several wealthy businessmen who were involved in bandits, but it was just a few days ago, I didn't dare to startle the snake and make a confession All the physical evidence is on my ship. How to use it is up to you, brother.”

Shen Shuren was also very excited after hearing this: "Good job! You have to hold the handle in your hand to lure it, so that it has the greatest deterrent effect. Hurry up and bring all the evidence on board."

(End of this chapter)