I Am the Crown Prince in France

Chapter 373 Father and Son Unite

"Prepare a few guns, let's go to the shooting range."

Joseph signaled to Martinier, and was about to carry the bulletproof insert he had just completed to conduct a field test, when he heard Emmanuel say beside him: "Your Highness, His Majesty the King is here."

Joseph turned around and saw Louis XVI walking into the shed with a smug smile: "Well, my dear Joseph, you are here, I guess you must have invented something interesting."

Then he muttered a little resentfully: "Why don't you ask me to come along? We are the best partners.

"Oh, forget it, let me see what good things my genius son has come up with first..."

However, when he took the bulletproof insert handed over by Joseph, he frowned slightly: "This is, a piece of iron plate?"

"This is not a simple iron plate." Joseph took his father to the shooting range, "It can withstand bullets. "

Louis XVI weighed the bulletproof insert in his hand in disbelief: "This thing is only 3 pounds at most, oh, now it has been changed to standard measurement, it should be 1.5 kilograms, it can actually block bullets?"

As a "science and engineering geek", he has some knowledge of armor and the like. Even a breastplate weighing more than 10 kilograms will often be penetrated if the bullet's angle of incidence is vertical.

And the crown prince actually wanted to use such a thin piece of thing to block bullets!

"You will know when you take a look. "

Joseph gave his father a mysterious smile, and then ordered the guards to fix the bulletproof insert on the wooden target, and then took a percussion gun from Martinier - it was recently produced by the Royal Ordnance Factory and had just completed the calibration.

Joseph came to 60 steps away from the target, pulled the bolt, installed a percussion cap, and squinted at the bulletproof insert in the distance.

A loud "bang". Off target.

Joseph reloaded awkwardly and raised his gun to shoot again.

"Bang". Still off target.

It's not that his shooting skills are poor. In the era of smoothbore guns, whether you can hit the target at 60 steps depends largely on luck.

Finally, after the percussion gun sounded for the third time, the bulletproof insert in the distance trembled obviously.

Two soldiers at the shooting range immediately ran to carry the target over.

Louis XVI curiously went forward to check, and saw that the iron plate was dented a lot, but it was obviously not pierced!

He immediately looked at Joseph in shock: "How is this possible? It's only such a thin piece! "

Joseph was not surprised at all. He had just set the shooting distance to 60 steps, leaving a large margin. According to his idea, the insert should be able to block the shooting of the British Brown Bess 1777 flintlock rifle at 30 steps.

He took the bulletproof insert off the target with a smile and explained to his father: "Dear father, in fact, this thing is not just an iron sheet."

He pointed to the insert that was somewhat layered by the huge impact force: "Look, there is a porcelain sheet behind the iron sheet."

"Porcelain sheet? What can such a brittle thing do?"

"Disperse the impact of the bullet." Joseph said, "You can see from the edge that the porcelain sheet has been broken.

"Because the cracks extend horizontally, the vertical impact can be dispersed in the horizontal direction.

"And behind this is a layer of silk. Silk is extremely tough and can wrap the first two layers so that they will not be torn apart by instantaneous deformation.

"As for the last layer of iron sheet, it is used to improve reliability. You see, there are only slight marks on it."

Louis XVI's eyes widened, and he looked at the bulletproof insert in his hand over and over again, nodding his head: "The simplest structure often has unexpectedly excellent performance. Joseph, how did you come up with this idea? It's so... so amazing!"

Joseph thought that he saw it from the documentary, but he still followed the old routine and drew a cross on his chest: "I think this must be a revelation from God."

Louis XVI immediately drew a cross very devoutly after hearing this: "Thank God Almighty!"

In the past two years, as his son continued to receive "revelations from God", he became a hundred times more pious than before.

Joseph said something that shocked him even more: "This bulletproof insert should still have some power. Let's shorten the distance to 50 steps and try again."

The new insert was fixed. Joseph stuffed the gun to his father.

As thick smoke gushed out of the muzzle, Louis XVI accurately hit the bulletproof insert with one shot, and then he raised his eyebrows at his son who had hit the target three times before, showing off.

The soldier quickly brought the target. Joseph hurried forward to check the insert. The crater was deeper than before, but it was still not penetrated.

He turned the insert over and saw that there was only an almost invisible dent on the back of the last layer of iron sheet. Obviously, the wearer would not be in any danger of life.

This time, before he could speak, Louis XVI spoke first: "Maybe, it can be closer."

As the test continued, the bulletproof insert was finally penetrated when the shooting distance was shortened to 28 steps.

Then Louis XVI and his son continued to test bulletproof inserts made of several other models. When it got dark, they slept together in the arsenal and talked about various guns and mechanical topics until after two in the morning.

In the next few days, the father and son stayed in the arsenal, conducting a series of tests and improvements on bullet-proof inserts of all combinations and different materials, and finally determined several types for mass production.

Joseph looked at the production process documents in his hand and told Martinnier: "First produce 6,000 pieces of general-purpose. 2,000 pieces of heavy-duty. 500 pieces of high-quality."

After testing for a few days, he found that double-layer iron plates were not needed to deal with soft lead bullets in the 18th century.

So under the advice of his father, he used a structure of iron sheets, cotton, ceramics, and silk to control the weight of the bulletproof insert to 1.05 kg, which could stably resist flintlock shooting at 40 steps.

This "general-purpose" bulletproof insert has the lowest price, costing only 5 livres and 16 sous. If necessary, even silk can be saved, and the price drops sharply to less than 4 livres, but the bulletproof distance also drops to 55 steps.

The "heavy-duty" insert is the first structure tested before, with double-layer iron sheets in front and back, weighing 1.4 kg, and can be penetrated by flintlock at a distance of 28 steps, specially for cavalry. Cost 6 livres and 10 sous.

The "high-quality type" is a single-layer iron sheet with a double layer of silk. Its weight is equivalent to that of the general type, and its stable bulletproof distance is 33 steps. However, the price is as high as 8 livres and 5 sous, and it can generally only be equipped for officers.

In fact, Joseph originally planned to directly produce more than 100,000 pieces and distribute them to all members of the Guards Corps. However, the bottleneck of adhesives limited his ambitions.

Although casein glue has excellent performance, it can only be produced in small doses at present, and the price is not cheap. As for other natural adhesives, they are basically useless.

Joseph recalled the various phenol adhesives in later generations, and his desire to promote gas street lamps as soon as possible and light up the organic chemical industry became stronger.