Giant deer.

Recently, a caravan that went out to buy iron brought back the fourth batch of ironware. Adding in the previous three batches, a total of more than 15,000 pieces of various types of ironware have been shipped back.

The source of ironware is Duxiang County, Changshan County, Jizhou. Duxiang County has an iron factory set up by the government, and there are a large number of ironware there.

As early as the end of March, after the envoy borrowed 50 million yuan from the Zhen family, he had money in hand. In preparation for a possible war, Li Mengxi sent people to find a place where he could buy ironware in large quantities. There were people in Julu who were proficient in business.

Mentioned the Duxiang Railway Station.

Julu stocked up ironware on the assumption that a war might break out at any time, so when purchasing ironware, there was almost no negotiation on price. When the caravan arrived at the Duxiang Iron Yard, it directly offered a price that was 30% higher than the official price, regardless of the type.

If you are looking for quality, you can buy as much ironware as you can from the ironworks.

Nearly a month has passed since Liu Bei led his troops and left. It is not yet known whether a war will break out. Anyway, regardless of whether a war comes or not, the army has already stored a huge amount of iron weapons.

In recent days, Li Mengxi has been troubled by a problem. The blacksmiths have made more than a dozen of the mace guns. As a result, every time when Guan Yu tried the gun, the mace gun hit the big stone with all its strength.

Parts of the mace were smashed with great force, and all cracked. There was no success even once.

A mace is a weapon that combines a gun and a mace. It is structured in the shape of a spear tip followed by a section of mace. This weapon has the functions of both a gun and a mace, and is sharp for stabbing and smashing.

There is no difficulty in making a gun blade. Blacksmiths can forge very sophisticated gun heads. The single wolf fang part has a very different structure from the gun tip, and the attack method is also different. During mounted combat, the mace must be used at high speeds.

The galloping horse hits the target with all its strength. The horse is extremely fast and the weapon has great impact force. Therefore, the strength of the weapon is extremely high.

Among the many samples of mace guns built before, sometimes wrought iron was used. Wrought iron has good toughness and is not easy to crack when subjected to huge force. However, the iron teeth of the mace gun will be completely deformed after being hit once; and if it is iron,

If it is too hard, the iron teeth will not deform, but they will break easily.

Li Mengxi knew that one of the factors that affect the toughness and hardness of steel is the carbon content and the other is heat treatment. For many days, he and the craftsmen have been working on both the carbon content and heat treatment in order to forge a steel that can withstand huge forces without being damaged.

The deformable wolf fangs and iron teeth come out.

This was the sixteenth time it failed. Although the newly built wolf-fang gun was much better than the one at the beginning, when Guan Yu came back with it for a test, the wolf-fang gun hit the stone and the iron teeth still cracked.

.

He failed even sixteen times, which made Li Mengxi a little discouraged.

"Come here!" Li Mengxi shouted.

As soon as the messenger heard the sound, the soldiers came over.

Li Mengxi said, "Go and call General Chizhi'er over."

The messenger took the order and left.

After experiencing repeated failures, Li Mengxi, who was arrogant and thought he could build a wolf fang gun, finally had to bow to reality. He wanted to ask, if the wolf fang gun is so difficult to make, what is Chi Zhi'er's wolf fang gun?

Where did you get it?

After a while, Chi Zhi'er came.

Chi Zhi'er didn't know what he was being called for. He asked cautiously, "Military advisor, did you call me?"

"Well," Li Mengxi nodded, he looked up at Chi Zhi'er, frowned and asked, "General Chi Zhi'er, do you know how to forge a mace spear? Why did I hit the gun made by the blacksmith with one shot?

Either it is too soft and will fall flat when hit, or it may be too hard and fall apart when hit. How was the mace gun you used made?"

Facing Li Mengxi's inquiry, Chi Zhi'er hesitated for a moment. He scratched his head and thought for a moment, "That gun has a steel tip and copper teeth..."

Halfway through Chi Zhi'er's words, Li Mengxi immediately understood, "Oh!" He suddenly realized, "It turns out..." Then, he glanced at Chi Zhi'er doubtfully and asked, "But, copper is too soft

, wouldn’t it be flattened if hit?”

[To be honest, I have been using the Huanyuan app recently to read and catch up on updates. It allows me to switch between sources and read aloud with many sounds. .huanyuanapp is available for Android and Apple.]

Chi Zhi'er chuckled, "Just flatten it and smash it back again."

At this point, Li Mengxi understood. He understood that his requirements for the strength of weapons were too high.

But no, copper is soft and can withstand the impact of huge force. It will not break no matter how hard it is hit. Using iron as the gun head and copper as the wolf tooth blade not only ensures the sharpness and hardness of the gun blade, but also ensures the durability of the wolf tooth part.

Tenacity is indeed the best solution.

However, the texture of copper is too soft, and the wolf teeth made of copper will become flat after being smashed a few times, and become like a hammer, which makes the picky Li Mengxi very unhappy.

At present, there are two choices, either to settle for the next best thing and use Chizhi'er's method, using some steel as the gun head and copper as the wolf teeth, or continue to think of ways to make a durable iron wolf teeth.

After thinking for a moment, Li Mengxi still refused to give in easily. In his opinion, a wolf-fang gun that could be flattened by a single hit, a wolf-fang gun that was nothing more than a hammer, should be terrifying and would leave several bloody holes if it was hit.

The murder weapon is the right one.

Looking at Chi Zhi'er, Li Mengxi asked, "General Chi Zhi'er, how many weapons can you use?"

"Thirty twenty pounds." Chi Zhi'er replied.

Li Mengxi nodded.

——

When it comes to making weapons, if the weapons are slightly more complicated, the difficulty of making them will increase dozens of times.

The mace gun is just a gun head and a mace. The stick is easy to make, whether it is casting or forging, it is not difficult to make. However, it is always difficult to get some iron nails on the stick.

The shape of the mace is too complex. If it is cast, it is simple. Just make a mold, pour molten iron into it, and the mace, rod and teeth can be made in one go. The castable iron tool is too fragile to be used; but if it is forged, forging

The weapon has excellent strength, but the shape of the mace is too complex, and it is too time-consuming and laborious to forge.

Summarizing the experience of the first sixteen forgings, the Wolf Fang Gun was forged more than ten times. During the more than ten failures, the experiences gained are as follows: First, the iron in Duxiang County is not good, the iron is crispy, and the iron is brittle.

Refining, secondly, it is best for the wolf fang gun to divide the gun blade and wolf teeth into two parts, otherwise the connecting part is easy to break, and the structure of the gun and wolf teeth is too complicated, so it is better to build them separately to reduce the difficulty. Thirdly, the wolf fang gun

The head of the dental gun plus the wolf tooth part is not light. Therefore, the weight of the gun blade should be reduced as much as possible, and a flat wide blade should be used as much as possible. It is best to use a tapered tapered blade so as not to affect the lethality.

Under the circumstances, try to lose weight as much as possible. There are more than 20 similar failed experiences.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Li Mengxi carefully looked at all the failed experiences recorded, and he realized that adding up all these improvements was still not enough to solve the problem.

Later, Li Mengxi used his ingenuity to make major changes to the shape of the mace. Li Mengxi's ingenuity was like this. Taking advantage of the strength of the dome, eggshell, and tortoise shell structure, he believed that if the mace was made into a spherical shape,

The strength will increase a lot; secondly, since the hollow nested mace is not strong enough, then simply make it solid. Anyway, according to common sense, if a solid hammer hits a stone, it is rare to see that the hammer will be shattered.

In half.

These are two major improvements that Li Mengxi thinks are useful.

A mace is a stick with spikes on it, which is a mace; when the stick becomes a ball with spikes on it, it is not called a mace. This round one has

The spiky thing should be called another name - Zhenxing. It is a round ball with spikes. The ball is like the body of the star, and the spikes are like radiating stars. The name Zhenxing is very vivid.

After the improved shape of the wolf's teeth was determined, there was still one most difficult problem - the tooth problem.

It's not difficult to make a solid round iron ball with lots of hard work, but adding a bunch of spikes to it is a lot more troublesome.

Considering the difficulty of manufacturing, considering the strength, and the required strength, the iron teeth can only be forged individually one by one and then installed.

After the process flow was determined, Li Mengxi and the craftsmen discussed how to install the iron teeth on the iron ball.

In this era without welding technology, the blacksmiths decided to use a magical technique after some discussion.

In carpentry work, there are some useful fixing methods that can firmly fix small wooden sticks in wooden holes. The craftsmen are going to use the same method. They are going to make some small holes in the forged iron balls, and then

Fasten the iron nails on.

When Li Mengxi heard this solution, he felt that it was very troublesome and it would definitely not be easy to process, but no matter what, as long as it was strong enough.

There is only one last problem left, the problem of the iron teeth themselves. From the actual combat point of view, the wolf fang gun is used in mounted combat, and the user often uses the speed of the horse to smash it towards the target. This requires the iron teeth of the wolf fang gun.

It can withstand huge impact force without being broken.

Judging from multiple tests, if you want wolf teeth to be durable, you cannot really make them as thin and sharp as wolf teeth. Iron teeth that are too sharp will break with a bang when hit on a hard object. Therefore,

The iron teeth should be made as thick, short and solid as possible.

In the end, Li Mengxi and the craftsmen discussed carefully and finalized the final specifications of the iron teeth. The iron teeth of the mace must be cylindrical. This is because Li Mengxi felt that, like the dome-shaped structure, it seemed to be round.

The strength is the strongest. Based on this, the tips of the iron teeth should also be round.

Therefore, the final specification of the iron teeth is a small iron pillar about half an inch long, tachyon-thick, with a round head, a round head, a short and compact shape. To this extent, the appearance of the iron teeth has no resemblance to the appearance of a wolf tooth, and the appearance is more like a nail.

Thinking of nails, Li Mengxi immediately remembered that in the Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Shan Xiongxin, the hero of Wagang, used a golden-nailed Zaoyang spear.

The structure of a mace. What is very interesting is that although the mace is the main body, Shan Xiongxin’s weapon is called the [Golden Nail] weapon instead of the [Golden Teeth] weapon. This may indicate that Shan Xiongxin may be making it.

When making weapons, we also encountered the problem of insufficient strength of the iron teeth. The method we came up with was to abandon the sharp shape of the wolf's teeth and choose a thick and short nail shape. Hence, the name "Golden Nail" came into being.

It seems that under the same technical conditions, the optimal appearance of the same weapon is the same. In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Shan Xiongxin's weapon used spikes to discard the teeth. Now when it comes to making a wolf fang gun, the optimal solution is also to discard the teeth and use spikes.

Once all the processes were completed, Li Mengxi mobilized 60 blacksmiths and immediately started forging.

Three days later, dozens of blacksmiths worked all night to forge more than a dozen sets of mace guns.

There are three parts of the Wolf Fang Gun. The tip of the gun is a forged pyramid, which is slender, light and yet tough. The seismic star part is also a solid iron ball that has been forged many times. There are marks on it specially left during hot forging.

Each hole, the third part, the iron nails. Because the iron nails have a small structure and must withstand the strongest impact, the requirements for the iron nails are extremely high.

I picked up the iron nails forged by the blacksmiths and inspected them. The nails were short, thick and round. When I picked up the two iron nails in my hand and collided with each other, the sound was a crisp tinkling sound. I heard that the quality was good.

It took half a day for the blacksmiths to put together the mace guns. There were fourteen mace guns of different lengths and weights.

After the test, Guan Yu casually took a gun and went over to test it. A hundred steps away, a huge boulder was set up. Guan Yu galloped from a hundred steps away. When he passed the boulder, the wolf-tooth gun danced in his hand and hit the boulder with a clang.

Up, a burst of sparks flew.
To be continued...