Of course, Sun Chengzong did not believe that relying solely on increasing the power of gunpowder can make a musket have such powerful power. Sun Chengzong had a long talk with Xu Guangqi and Sun Yuanhua before. The range doubled, the accuracy increased, and the penetration power doubled. Then the power increased not only doubled, but needed to increase the power by more than four times! It is absolutely impossible to make the musket have such powerful power by relying solely on improved gunpowder. This musket must have mystery.

Except for the servants of a few military generals, the general Ming army's armor quality was very poor. The Later Jin army's greatest threat to the Ming army was naturally the archers. If the Ming army was equipped with such powerful muskets, would it be necessary to be afraid of the Later Jin archers? Thinking of this, Sun Chengzong asked: "Li Shou Ge, can I give the muskets a look?"

Li Laoer presented the musket with both hands: "Please check it out by the supervisor."

Sun Chengzong took the musket and checked the structure of the gun's firing bolt. He tried to pull the trigger and found that the medicine pool cover was also opened, and then the fuse was pressed into the medicine pool; loosen the trigger and the medicine pool cover was automatically closed.

"This is a machine gun! The workmanship is sophisticated! This can prevent the medicine from being blown away by the wind." Sun Chengzong exclaimed. Then he checked the tail of the gun and found that the gun was compact, finely crafted, and has good air tightness, so it is not easy to leak air. Then he turned the musket, squinted his left eye, opened his right eye, and carefully looked at the musket, but found that the musket was uneven.

Sun Chengzong stretched out his finger and touched the gun, and found that it was also uneven.

"The inner walls of others who built bird guns are smooth, but why is the inner walls of Li Shoujiu so uneven?" Sun Chengzong asked in confusion.

Li Laoer replied: "This is a rifle, which is a rifle specially carved in the gun chamber, which can make the projectile rotate in the gun chamber. Because of the gyro principle, after the rotating projectile is released from the barrel, the flight route is the most stable, so it is extremely accurate and can shoot and kill Jiannu archers and the main generals a hundred steps away."

Sun Chengzong was overjoyed and said, "If such a magical weapon could be equipped with a large number of our army, why not be afraid of Jiannu archers!"

Li Laoer smiled bitterly: "But these magic weapons cannot be equipped in large quantities because the manufacturing process is extremely complicated, and this gun has one of the biggest weaknesses, which is that they are loading too slowly, which is slower than bird guns. They can deal with archers, but they are afraid of cavalry attacks."

In real history, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the infantry in the army was divided into line infantry and light infantry. Light infantry was sharpshooter equipped with rifled rifles. However, because the Minnie bullet was not invented, the reloading speed of rifled rifles was very slow, so it was impossible to form a line array to fight. Therefore, light infantry is also called scattered soldiers. Scattered soldiers are the nemesis of line infantry and can even shoot and kill the opponent's gunners. However, what these scattered soldiers fear the most is cavalry.

Hearing that this weapon could not be produced in large quantities and was defeated by cavalry, Sun Chengzong was very disappointed.

"You have to be strong in yourself!" Li Laoer said loudly, "Why did our Ming army suffer many losses against Jiannu? Even because Jiannu has many war horses, the Ming army won, but he cannot catch up with Jiannu. If he loses, he will be defeated! He cannot escape at all! So we have to deal with Jiannu, on the one hand, build an elite cavalry, and on the other hand, strengthen the firearms of the chariot camp, turn the chariot camp into a mobile city. After winning, we will pursue Jiannu with cavalry."

What Sun Chengzong was most worried about was that the quality of the Ming Dynasty's firearms was not up to standard, and the firearms had a short range and were easily exploded. But that was not something he could control, it was the affairs of the Ministry of Works.

Afterwards, Li Laoer showed Sun Chengzong his skills in improving gunpowder.

After inspecting the raw materials used in the gunpowder workshop, Li Laoer found that there were problems with the raw materials of gunpowder: saltpeter contains high impurities and needs to be purified; sulfur contains oil, which will seriously affect the power of the gunpowder; charcoal contains too much bark residue. These raw materials need to be reprocessed.

First, clean saltpeter with water, filter, and then dry, and obtain saltpeter with high purity; the same method is used to treat sulfur, pour it into water, and suck away the oil floating on it with paper; the charcoal is re-fired, clean the bark outside the firewood, and then burn it into charcoal. In this way, three raw materials with high purity are obtained.

"All gunpowder formulas need to be re-modified. They were originally two portions of saltpeter, one portion of charcoal and one portion of sulfur. Now they have to be re-distributed, and they have to be re-distributed to seven portions of saltpeter, one portion of charcoal and two portions of sulfur." ​​Li Laoer asked the craftsmen to readjust the formula.

Under the command of Li Laoer, the craftsmen first purified the raw materials, and then weighed them with scales. Based on Li Laoer's formula, they prepared new gunpowder.

After mixing the ingredients into powder gunpowder, Li Laoer asked Sun Chengzong to find eggs. Li Laoer knocked the eggs open, poured the egg white into the basin, and left the egg yolk for other purposes. After preparing enough egg white, pour the gunpowder into the basin and stir evenly.

After mixing the egg white and gunpowder powder, roll it into strips while it is wet, cut into cylinders the size of rice grains, and after it is dried, it becomes granular gunpowder.

After the granular gunpowder was manufactured, Sun Chengzong asked to bring in a cannon to destroy the enemy.

The Imperial Cannon is a medium-sized vehicle-mounted artillery. The cannon weighs 95 kilograms and can shoot more than one kilogram of projectiles out of 300 steps. If it is to launch a scattered cannon, the range is only about fifty steps.

According to Sun Chengzong's request, the craftsmen brought the best quality anti-gate cannon and put it on the ground.

Li Laoer asked someone to appropriately reduce the amount of gunpowder per pound, put eight taels of gunpowder, then stuff a wooden board into the barrel, then put the shell into the muzzle, insert a fuse from the fire door, and then ignite the cannon.

A ball of fire spewed out of the muzzle, and the white smoke filled the air. The shell flew out about five hundred steps away before it landed on the ground, causing the stones on the ground to crack. The shells bounced into the air with gravels, and then the shells landed on the ground again, bounced continuously.

"It turns out that the power has increased greatly! An ordinary cannon has become a magic weapon!" Sun Chengzong stroked his beard and smiled. Then Sun Chengzong ordered the craftsmen in the gunpowder workshop to improve gunpowder according to Li Laoer's method.

Li Laoer offered another policy: "We can make fixed-loading packages, such as how much gunpowder is required to fire a tiger squat cannon, how much gunpowder is required to fire a general cannon, how much gunpowder is required to fire a general cannon, and how much gunpowder is required to destroy the cannon. When packing the gunpowder, there is no need to weigh it when loading. Just stuff the medicine bag into the cannon chamber, then pierce the medicine bag with an iron cone, and insert the fuse. This way the loading speed can be greatly improved. Similarly, bird guns and three-eyed guns can also make fixed-load paper shells."

Paper shells are wrapped in cardboard and made into paper shells. When used, bite the tail of the shell and stuff the entire shell into the gun chamber to compact it through the strips, which can also save loading time.
Chapter completed!