The Rise of Ming Dynasty 1646

Chapter 6 The Qimen Dunjia Technique
"Master Su," craftsman Lu Ning came over with the pattern, "The barrel of this gun is sure to be three feet five inches long? I'm going to get wrought iron to make it."

Zhu Lin hurriedly stopped him, "There is no need to make new barrels, just use the ready-made bird barrels."

The flintlock gun is an improved action from the matchlock gun, and the barrels of the two are exactly the same.The processing of the gun barrel is the most time-consuming, and a lot of time can be saved if the ready-made ones are used directly.

Immediately, Zhu Linmi went to Xu Tong to buy two barrels for Lumi guns, and she owed another twelve taels on the account.

These craftsmen thought that the possibility of getting their wages was very small. Unexpectedly, Mr. Su not only paid their wages in advance, but even paid for the fine money for damaging the roof of the work shed. Repay Mr. Su.

They are all veterans of making guns, privately casting firearms is their livelihood, their skills are much higher than those of the military craftsmen who are paid by the military in the military bureau, and the speed is really amazing if they must muster up their strength.

Just after dinner, the gun bed was basically finished, and most of the parts with simple shapes on the gun machine were also finished.

The hammer and bolt base with the most complex shapes can only be cast.Casting requires first making a clay model, that is, a mold, which is extremely time-consuming.

At present, the clay model has just been fired, and it has to wait for it to be poured and then finished with hammers, files, drills, etc. before it can be considered complete.

Everyone was busy, Qiao Qian took the silver and went back to the Weapons Bureau, and reported to Zhu Linmei that someone came to visit the prince during the day.

Seeing that it was getting late, Zhu Linmi told several craftsmen to rest, and hurried back to the palace by herself.

After entering the palace, the etiquette officer hurriedly reported to him that a man named Yu Xin had visited in the afternoon.

Zhu Linmi quickly found information about this person in his memory: Yu Xin, whose father had been Zhu Linmi's father's bodyguard.Zhu Linmi has known their father and son since childhood.Yu Xin, who was proficient in martial arts when he was young, even helped him fight, and the two were punished by Zhu Yurui together.

It's just that Yu Xin joined the army two years ago, limited by the communication conditions of this era, he and Zhu Linmi have not been in touch for a long time, so he has become an officer now.

Zhu Linmi didn't know what was going on with this small post, but at least she could learn about the battle situation on the front line with him.He told the etiquette officer that if Yu Xin came again, he would go to the Military Weapons Bureau to inform him.

Early the next morning, Zhu Linmi greeted Chen Wangfei, and went back to the bedroom to ask Chanyi to find him a casual outfit, and then drove to the Military Weapons Bureau.

The concierge of the Weapons Bureau was greeted by Xu Tong, and when he learned that it was "Mr. Su", he let him in.

In the workshop, seven craftsmen have already gone to work, filing and trimming the parts of the bolt that have just been poured.

Zhu Linmi shook her head as she looked at their crude processing tools, but she didn't have time to take care of them right now, and she had to improve them when she had a chance.

After repeated processing and trial assembly, all the parts were not ready until the afternoon.

Since it was the first trial production, the bolt was extremely sluggish after it was installed, and it was almost unusable.

The craftsmen got together to think about it, disassembled the trigger, sharpened and filed the parts that didn't feel right, put them back on and tried again, if it didn't work, they disassembled another part and tried it again, and then reinstalled it...

Zhu Linming watched from the side very depressed.In fact, the craftsmen cannot be blamed. There is no mature industrial drawing method in this era, and only a rough outline can be drawn on the drawings. Many key parameters have to be estimated by the people who read the drawings.

For example, for an arc, there is no arc length, tangent angle, outer distance, etc., and the drawing is done with a brush, so the line... accuracy is impossible to talk about.

Craftsmen in the Ming Dynasty relied on experience to make utensils.A skilled worker teaches his apprentices through word of mouth, and the apprentices teach their apprentices.Without the hands-on teaching of skilled workers, you can only rely on repeated revisions and debugging like luck, and finally "try out" satisfactory objects to make yourself a skilled worker.

Zhu Linmi simply found a hard block of charcoal from the furnace and whittled it into a charcoal pencil.He took out the blueprint of the self-igniting gun, compared with the actual parts of the gun mechanism, and used a pen and paper to draw the standard three-view of all the parts.During this period, he had to ask a master carpenter to help him make a set of settables and compasses.

After the new drawing is finished, he speculates on the inventor's idea based on the operation mode of each component—mainly the hammer part—and then uses functions to calculate the appropriate parameters such as torque, angle, and arc.

Although it is just a very simple mechanical structure, it is still a bit of a challenge for Zhu Linmi, a modern person who is used to computing with computers. At least he has not returned all his college courses to the teacher.As an engineer who has worked in the military vehicle research institute for three or four years, it took him an hour and a half to get these few six or seven parts.

According to his own calculation results, he directed the craftsmen to re-polish and modify the bolt parts.

I have been busy until the sky is getting dark, and the whole gun can finally run smoothly.

Zhu Linmi personally installed the polished flint flakes on the hammer, tightened the threaded buckle, put down the scythe, pulled up the hammer vigorously, and pulled the trigger with a false aim in the distance.

With a click, the hammer struck the fire sickle with the flint in between, and under the dim light, a few sparks could be vaguely seen bursting out.

When several craftsmen saw the faint spark, their faces were full of excitement and surprise.

It took less than two days for a new gun that they had never touched before, from the design to the normal use!This is simply unbelievably high efficiency. They originally thought that it would be extremely fast if they could finish it in ten days.

All of this seems to be derived from Mr. Su's pile of strange symbols like a heavenly book. Somehow, after he finished drawing those "heavenly books", the specifications of all the parts were in his mind.Reprocessed the parts as he said, and the action worked immediately.

Could it be that Mr. Su has learned the art of dunjia?Several people couldn't help admiring Zhu Linmi in their hearts.

Only Zhu Linmi shook her head slightly in the shed.The lid of the medicine pot seemed to be opened a bit late when firing, so he pulled the hammer and tried a few more times. Sure enough, most of the sparks were blocked by the lid of the medicine pot, making it difficult for them to fall into the pot.

Originally, there were fewer sparks, so it is certain that the firing rate of this gun will not be high now.

When he pointed out this problem to several craftsmen, they looked at each other in blank dismay, after all, it was their first contact with this thing.

Zhu Linmi first asked the craftsmen to call it a day, then she removed the trigger from the gun bed and brought it back to the palace for research.

In the prince's bedroom, Chan Yi saw that the prince was fascinated by holding those "iron lumps", so he hurriedly fetched many candlesticks to illuminate the room brightly.

Zhu Linmi finally discovered the problem after repeated observations, operations, and comparisons with the flintlock guns she had seen on the forum before.

In fact, the structure of the "high-tech" flintlock guns of this era is not complicated in the eyes of later generations. The hammer sandwiches the flint and hits the opposite fire sickle under the action of the spring. The fire sickle lifts the medicine pot cover, and sparks fall into the medicine pot. Ignite the gunpowder.

The bolt base of this self-igniting gun is too small, resulting in an insufficient angle when the hammer and scythe collide.

(End of this chapter)