Ming Dynasty: I am truly not the Emperor of Longevity

West Garden.

North of Taiye Pond is the Inner Training Ground.

Lu Chen, along with his subordinates and several officials and craftsmen from the Ministry of Works, were here testing the spoils of war that Guo Shoulu had just sent to the capital.

Click!

The hammer, holding the flint, fell as the trigger was pulled, but this time, the gun misfired.

The sparks from the flint were much smaller than before and failed to ignite the ignition powder in the ignition pool.

"How many times has this happened?"

Lu Chen asked Miao Feng, who was test-firing a flintlock musket.

"Your Highness, this is the fourth consecutive time we've failed to score."

Miao Feng quickly put down the flintlock pistol in his hand.

"If we count from the first shot, this is the seventh time."

Initially, the first nine shots were able to ignite the potion pool consecutively. Starting with the tenth shot, the fire became intermittent and misfired. So far, a total of twenty-six shots have been fired, with nineteen successful shots.

After the test firing, Lu Chen was certain that although the transmigrator on Blackwood Cliff had indeed created a flintlock musket, its quality was far from satisfactory.

This flintlock musket was captured from the cultists during a major attack by the army besieging Blackwood Cliff.

According to Guo Shoulu's report, so far, the only weapon discovered to be used by the religious rebels that the Ming army did not possess is this one type.

In Lu Chen's memory, the flintlock muskets used by Western armies from the 17th to the 19th centuries had barrels and main components made of iron.

The gun in front of me, although its wooden stock and overall shape, even the barrel and hammer structure, are very similar to a European flintlock musket, its barrel is made of bronze.

Lu Chen also used his telekinesis to sense the inside of the gun barrel. There were no rifling grooves, but the inner wall was polished very smoothly.

Many ancient cannons were cast in bronze, which was of much higher quality than those cast in pig iron, making them more durable and less prone to bursting.

The only downside is that it's expensive, more than ten times more expensive.

If it can cast cannon barrels, it can certainly cast gun barrels as well.

Ancient smoothbore matchlock guns and flintlock guns were usually made of rolled and welded wrought iron barrels.

To ensure quality, it needs to be rolled with double-layered wrought iron, and the welds of the two layers cannot be on the same side to reduce the risk of rupture.

Moreover, the inside of the barrel must be polished to a very smooth finish, without any bumps or dents.

Manufacturing a proper smoothbore gun barrel was an extremely time-consuming and laborious task for blacksmiths in ancient times.

If only one layer is rolled, or if the inside of the barrel is not smooth enough, it can still fire, but the strength is too low and it is easy to explode.

The matchlock guns crudely manufactured by the Ministry of Works at the end of the Ming Dynasty were basically gun barrels with only one layer of coiling, and the inside of the gun barrel was very rough junk.

The rate of barrel explosion on the battlefield was extremely high, and many Ming soldiers preferred to use cold weapons rather than the matchlock guns issued by the imperial court.

Using bronze for gun barrels is much easier to manufacture than using iron.

Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and copper and lead. Its hardness and toughness vary depending on the ratio of the alloy components.

Bronze with high tin and lead content has high hardness and can be used to make weapons such as swords, spears, and halberds.

Bronze with a high copper content has a much lower hardness but excellent toughness.

The compressive strength of bronze is incomparable to that of iron. A barrel of the same thickness can withstand more propellant without easily exploding.

Since ancient people did not have modern lathes, they could only use ordinary carbon steel tools to polish the rough inner wall of a gun barrel.

The time required to polish an iron gun barrel is on a completely different scale than that required to polish a much softer bronze gun barrel.

Although using bronze for gun barrels costs more than ten times more than using iron, the quality is better and the processing is easier.

It is indeed a good way to accelerate production by using money.

However, unlike matchlock guns, flintlock guns have another important technology tree to climb besides the barrel.

That is to let the hammer holding the flint charge up, and then quickly strike the spring steel sheet that produces sparks after the trigger is pulled!

Don't underestimate this thing; without it, a flintlock musket simply cannot be fired.

With the metallurgical technology of the Ming Dynasty, it would have been very difficult to manufacture qualified spring steel sheets.

A few skilled craftsmen can indeed hand-craft them, but the yield rate is very low and the output is extremely limited.

It is virtually impossible to mass-produce such a product.

When Lu Chen got his hands on the flintlock pistol, what he was most curious about was how that time traveler had managed to mass-produce spring steel sheets.

But to Lu Chen's complete surprise, the spring on this flintlock musket was not a steel plate at all, but a bronze plate.

That's why we had the continuous shooting test just now.

Lu Chen's goal was to find out exactly how well this bronze spring worked.

However, the performance was not ideal after testing.

It does work, but its lifespan is too short.

I only managed to fire nineteen shots before four of them went silent.

Including the number of times the cult members used the gun before it was seized, this bronze spring plate was probably fired only thirty or forty times, at most fifty times, before its lifespan ended and it needed to be replaced.

It should be noted that flintlock muskets deployed in European countries require springs to fire effectively in a thousand shots.

The quality of this bronze spring sheet is far from good!

"Remove the spring from this mechanism."

Lu Chen thought for a moment and then gave instructions to a craftsman sent by the Ministry of Works.

"After taking it off, put it back on exactly as it was."

I need to see how long it takes to disassemble and replace this reed.

"Your Highness, it has been completely restored, down to the last detail."

Miao Feng took the flintlock gun from the craftsman and reported to Lu Chen.

By this time, almost fifteen minutes had passed.

too slow!

Lu Chen shook his head secretly.

When used on the battlefield, this kind of flintlock musket could only fire thirty or forty shots at most before becoming a fire poker.

Only during siege warfare could soldiers have the opportunity to replace the reeds.

Originally, it was thought that the transmigrator from Blackwood Cliff had created a mass-producible, qualified spring sheet, but it turned out to be just a barely usable substitute with a very short lifespan.

This thing may already be in mass production on Blackwood Cliff, but it's not a good choice for me.

A flintlock musket that requires frequent replacement of spring plates is definitely not feasible for large-scale deployment in the military.

However, I finally got my hands on the flintlock gun that the transmigrator from Blackwood Cliff had made in this world for the first time, and I gained some understanding of his technological capabilities.

The fact that this person could create a flintlock musket with a shape and structure highly similar to European flintlock muskets suggests that he had some knowledge of firearms history before time travel, or at least some interest in it.

As early as the Warring States period, there were already bronze weapons with excellent elasticity, such as the bronze swords unearthed from the Terracotta Army.

The fact that he thought of using bronze reeds instead of stubbornly sticking to steel reeds, which were difficult for Ming Dynasty blacksmiths to mass-produce, shows that this person was quite flexible in his dealings and was by no means a rigid or rule-abiding person.

For Lu Chen, acquiring this bronze flintlock musket had an even greater benefit!

That means we can finally manufacture flintlock muskets openly!

This was a replica made by the Ministry of Works' Ordnance Bureau after it was seized by the imperial court from the Maitreya sect rebels at Black Cliff.

From beginning to end, no time traveler ever appeared on the side of the imperial court!

. . .

That evening, at Kunning Palace.

"Your Majesty, great joy!"

A eunuch quickly walked to Empress Fang's bedside and knelt down.

"Your Majesty... Your Majesty has awakened!"