Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 34 Flintlock

Blanco regretfully returned to San Vicente with his team.

However, it is not that the two sides have achieved nothing.In private, on behalf of himself and a group of native white Brazilian manor owners behind him, Blanc expressed his wish to consign the products of the East Coast Company in the Sao Paulo area. Of course, it is limited to ordinary commodities and sabers without export restrictions.

In return, they will provide the agricultural products produced by their own estates to the East Coast Company at preferential prices.In addition, they can also provide the east coast company with much-needed coal, and even negotiate the specific proportion of goods such as coal in each transaction.As to where they got their coal, whether it was from the Portuguese or the British, it is not known.

the end of June.Captain Couette, who arrived belatedly, docked at the pier with three large ships.Strange to say, since April, there has not been a single ship calling at the port.After analysis, the Executive Committee felt that it might be due to the impact of the previous pirate attack.The attack happened in January, and the effects are only now felt with a lag.In the past three months, various materials can only consume a large amount of inventory.

From this, we can also see how fragile the foundation of the time-traveling people is.I wanted to sell cannons to the Brazilians before. If the Dutch West India Company knew about this kind of thing (almost a certain thing), it’s okay if the Dutch didn’t respond. If the Dutch think this kind of thing is intolerable, they only need to send If a warship wanders around the sea off Tatan Port and intercepts various ships, then Tatan Port will fall into a great crisis, and the business development of East Coast Company will be greatly delayed or even stopped.

Captain Couette's three large ships were loaded with 502 European immigrants, more than 100 livestock and more than 250 tons of various materials.

502 immigrants lined up to perform sanitation and disinfection work in the simple wooden house next to the wharf cargo yard. Mo Xiaoxi from the Health Bureau led a group of sisters to quarantine these European immigrants with the assistance of the police from the Ministry of the Interior.

In fact, these European immigrants had been naturally eliminated for a round before they set foot on the land of Tatan Port, and those who were weak and sick and could not survive had already been thrown into the sea by the crew.The remaining people seem to be in good condition. 502 people include 265 French Huguenot Protestants, 129 Dutchmen, and 108 English Puritans.

这是穿越众和库艾特船长的最后一次瓷器交易，穿越众仅存的318套瓷器被作价21万6300杜卡特卖了出去。扣除掉移民费用和货款，穿越众收得库艾特船长支付的费用20万3925杜卡特，约合40万7850元。

After the transaction was completed, Captain Couette said that he would continue to cooperate with the people in the business.After all, although there is no crazy porcelain trade, the profits of other commodities are quite huge.Couette left two people behind and rented some warehouses on the pier as warehouses, which is for long-term development.

After the quarantine, the new immigrants will be stuffed into the inland river and transported to the Dingyuanbao reclamation area. The 5th production team of the pioneering brigade and the 6th and 7th production teams of the newly built harvest brigade are short of people to farm.The three production teams can accommodate 3 people, and the remaining 300 people will be assigned to Dingyuan Fort.Two new wheel kilns and one cement kiln were newly built there, and the urban area may be expanded in the future. Right now, there is an urgent shortage of manpower, and Xiao Bailang has gone back to the Executive Committee to quarrel several times.A group of about 202 Czech and Finnish immigrants had already dialed him. This time, another 200 people will be dialed, which can almost satisfy his appetite.

6月30日，定远堡垦殖区开拓大队第1、5生产队、丰收大队第6、7生产队，合计播种了3500亩土豆。

late July.Peng Zhicheng and Majia walked into the firearms manufacturing workshop of the arsenal located on the south bank of the Dayu River.

The firearms manufacturing workshop has successively added personnel, and now it has a scale of more than ten craftsmen of all sizes and more than forty apprentices.In addition to some gun repairs and other tasks, their previous work was to copy several guns purchased from Europe at the request of the Executive Committee.

These guns come from various countries, and they are basically matchlock guns, with similar structural designs.People in the gun workshop use wrought iron to make the barrel, and then polish it with a hydraulic boring machine, and other parts are also molded.As a result, the performance of the copied gun is similar to that of the original gun, except that some parts use high-quality materials, and the life of the gun may be longer.Competing with the Europeans has little chance of winning, and the current demand for firearms is not large, so the Executive Committee and the Army did not pay too much attention to this, but only asked them to manufacture some firearms in small batches on a regular basis. to maintain technology.

This time Peng Zhicheng and Majia came together, mainly because they heard that the two flintlock guns purchased from abroad a while ago were ready for mass production after a period of research and trial production, so they hurried over to see how the situation was going.

At this stage, the main equipment of the time-traversing crowd is the Sur-style matchlock gun imitating the Swedish style. This weapon can be regarded as the top matchlock gun in this era. In 1630, King Gustav II of Sweden improved the matchlock gun invented by the Germans, which reduced the weight of the gun, increased the firing rate, and greatly improved the performance. As a result, European countries rushed to imitate it.

But the matchlock gun is a matchlock gun after all, and it has a fatal weakness, that is, the matchlock on the matchlock clip will be ejected every time it is fired, and the matchlock needs to be re-ignited, resulting in a slower firing rate.In contrast, the flintlock relies on flint hitting the hot iron filings splashed by the fire curtain to ignite the gunpowder in the medicine pot, thereby igniting the propellant in the gun chamber to fire the projectile.The superiority of the flintlock gun can be seen from the principle.

Today's early flintlock guns are called dog-lock muskets, because the hammer that locks the flint looks like a dog.There are two types of flintlock guns in the hands of the crossing crowd, one is from the United Kingdom, and the other is from Ottoman Turkey (only a few, and I don’t know who it came from).The principles of the two muskets can be said to be almost exactly the same, but the Turks' musket manufacturing technology and aesthetics are obviously much better than those of the British, and the exquisite craftsmanship is also impressive.

Peng Zhi has tested two firearms in Chengdu, and they are similar in power, range and weight.Peng Zhicheng and Vest looked again, and still felt that the Turks' muskets were more beautiful and refined, and the design was more reasonable, so they decided to finalize the small batch trial production of this musket.

The action of this musket uses a sear with a spring.The sear is linked with the trigger. When the hammer is pulled up to the braking position, it will make a sound. At this time, the sear holds the hammer and is ready to fire.When the trigger is pulled, the sear linked with the trigger releases the brake on the hammer.The potential energy of the hammer release spring hammers down on the fire curtain sheet to generate sparks (actually hot iron filings), which triggers the black powder in the medicine pot to burn, and at the same time ignites the black powder in the ignition hole next to the medicine pot, and conducts The propellant in the explosion chamber is detonated in the barrel to generate expansion gas to push out the projectile.

This kind of flintlock gun has been used in European countries for 200 years, and later various types of flintlock guns are basically improved on this basis. It can be described as the originator of the flintlock gun.There are not many technical talents in the crossing, and at present, we can only rely on some knowledge to guide the development of science and technology. The specific work still needs to be completed by craftsmen from various countries collected in this time and space.

For example, the flintlock gun is very typical. No matter how ignorant the time traveler is, they know that the flintlock gun is much better than the matchlock gun.However, they were blind to how to make matchlock guns, let alone flintlock guns.

At the end of 1631, under the guidance of European craftsmen, the people who traveled through the world really understood the principle of the matchlock gun, and made the first handmade matchlock gun.Also at the end of 31, the Travelers purchased 50 dog-lock flintlock guns from the United Kingdom. Later, due to war and other factors, the time was delayed, so it was not until a while ago that two types of flintlock guns were successfully imitated.

Climbing the technology tree is really not that easy, especially for laymen.

After discussing with the vest, Peng Zhicheng made a trial production of 32 of this weapon, named 50-A flintlock gun, and handed it over to the army for trial use for a period of time.The Army will submit a trial report after the trial, including trial experience, improvement suggestions, etc., so that the gunsmith workshop can improve the design.

At present, the conditions for mass production of this musket have been met.The other parts of the flintlock gun are easy to make, and there are ready-made molds, which do not take time.The most time-consuming thing is actually the barrel, to be precise, the boring of the barrel, but all this is nothing after the hydraulic machinery.

Five hydraulic boring machines are lined up along the river in the workshop. Using high-carbon steel drill bits, one gun barrel can be drilled in one day, and the monthly output is 150. Compared with manual work, the efficiency has increased by dozens of times.The entire workshop adopts an assembly line production method. The craftsmen focus on their own process, and the yield rate has also been greatly improved. It can be said that there is no problem at all in producing 150 qualified flintlock guns a month.Moreover, the current staff of the firearms manufacturing workshop is actually overstaffed. If you want to increase production in the future, you only need to expand the scale of the machine. The staff are all ready-made, which is very convenient.

On August 1631, 8, the first batch of 5 flintlock guns was sent to the First Battalion of the New Army in Dingyuan Fort for trial use.

(End of this chapter)