Ming Dynasty: I am truly not the Emperor of Longevity

Xingwang Mansion, West Third Palace.

boom!

After the shot was fired, another black round hole appeared on the target thirty paces away.

At this point, there were already more than a dozen bullet holes on the target.

The matchlock gun that Lu Chen was holding was the one he had bought from the Portuguese in Shuangyu Port last time.

The muzzle was emitting blue smoke, but that was all; the touch valve was not open, and there was no flint on the bolt.

After repeated experiments, Lu Chen finally figured out exactly how that shot rang out on Liuhang Island.

Trying to ignite gunpowder by rubbing it directly won't work; it will only grind the granular gunpowder into fine powder, but it won't ignite.

Similarly, letting the lead bullet spin in the barrel is also not an option. While the friction between the lead bullet and the barrel wall can indeed generate heat, this heat is quickly carried away by the barrel and does not reach the ignition point of the black powder.

Since it wasn't gunpowder or a bullet, Lu Chen could only focus his attention on something seemingly unrelated inside the barrel.

In the era of muzzle-loading guns, gunpowder and projectiles were loaded separately.

The gunman had to first load the gunpowder into the chamber and then insert the lead bullet.

This raises a problem.

Gunpowder is relatively easy to handle. Whether it is early powdered black powder or black powder that has undergone granulation pretreatment, it can be compacted with a tamping rod.

But bullets are different.

Ancient manufacturing techniques made it impossible to achieve a perfect fit between the bullet and the gun barrel.

If the diameter of the bullet is larger than the inner diameter of the gun barrel, it cannot be loaded.

For proper loading, the round lead bullets for a smoothbore musket can only be made slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the barrel.

This method of loading makes loading easier, but it also introduces another problem.

The bullet cannot be fixed inside the barrel!

It's fine if it's fired horizontally or upwards, but if the muzzle is below the horizontal line, the bullet will roll out on its own.

To solve this problem, a shim is placed underneath the lead bullet during loading.

This shim will wrap around the bullet from below, filling and securing the gap between the bullet and the barrel wall, preventing the bullet from easily falling out.

In the West, this pad is usually a small piece of linen, cotton, paper, or even leather.

These things can certainly be used, but they have a drawback: they don't burn completely when fired, leaving residue in the barrel. They must be cleaned frequently, otherwise, if they accumulate too much, the barrel may explode.

But when they arrived in the East, the Portuguese discovered something even more suitable for making pads: silk!

When the musket is fired, the silk pad will burn completely and be ejected from the muzzle along with the gunpowder gases, leaving no unburned residue.

When Lu Chen first saw the Portuguese matchlock gun in Shuangyu Port, it was already using silk as a pad.

This small piece of silk was the third thing in the gun barrel, besides gunpowder and lead bullets.

After thinking about the silk gasket, Lu Chen conducted numerous experiments, such as friction and rotation, and finally found the reason for the successful ignition last time.

When using telekinesis to quickly pull the silk pad away from the barrel, sometimes the black powder will suddenly ignite.

This is definitely not caused by heat from friction; it must be static electricity!

Since it's static electricity, that makes things easier. Although friction between silk and metal can also generate static electricity, metal itself is conductive, so a lot of the static electricity will dissipate, and it won't ignite every time.

Lu Chen smashed a glass object into pieces, then placed the smaller pieces between the gunpowder and the silk pad.

That last shot, and the previous dozen or so, were all this loud.

The rapid removal of silk from the insulator glass generates an electrical charge that can almost always ignite gunpowder.

Having found his own unique ignition method, he was finally able to have a craftsman forge a pistol with a completely sealed chamber, no ignition device, and not even a trigger.

Lu Chen put down the matchlock gun in his hand and walked to a long table.

On the table was another Portuguese matchlock gun that had been disassembled into a pile of parts.

Lu Chen had already ordered several skilled craftsmen to study the work, and with a sample, replicating it would be no problem at all.

However, Lu Chen did not intend to secretly manufacture them in the Shiyan workshop, just like he did with glass mirrors and bone china.

Even if manufacturing civilian products is exposed, it's not a big deal; it just means being impeached for competing with the people for profit.

If it involves privately manufacturing firearms, the nature of the matter is completely different.

Now that I am a vassal king, not the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, I cannot do such things openly.

Even if we were to build them, we could only do so after establishing a logistics base overseas.

Chen Yunniang and Qin Fang have already led a group of people to Ningbo.

She will purchase a large house in Ningbo under the name "Lin Chaoxi" to serve as a forward command post.

Then, they acquired several nearby shipyards, sent people to shipyards in Fujian and Guangdong to hire experienced shipbuilding masters at high salaries, and invested heavily in upgrading shipbuilding facilities to quickly increase production capacity.

While building the shipyard, they also purchased some second-hand ocean-going vessels and hired a group of experienced sailors in the Zhoushan area.

After Gao Mingqian's men from Linqing arrived, he instructed them to take the hired sailors out to sea to get them used to the open ocean environment.

Lu Chen had already instructed Qin Fang not to touch the agreement reached with Xu Dong and the Xie family, and that the Linqing Crystal Glass Workshop's production capacity would continue to supply only them, and would never sell on its own.

I have more than one or two highly profitable products, so there's no need to damage existing partnerships.