New Ming Empire mixed in America

The middle-aged man named Lao Li took out a large wooden box from the wooden shelf behind him.

There was a piece of cotton cloth padded inside the wooden box, and on the cotton cloth was placed a large, strange, multi-barreled, Cthulhu-style steampunk firearm.

When he first saw this big guy, Li Mingqi took a deep breath.

He once wondered how this thing could appear in the Xinming Empire and appear in front of his eyes.

"How are you, Long Live Lord? You must be scared by this thing."

Li Mingqi was really frightened. This thing was an enlarged version of the Starr revolver, except that the Starr revolver had a rotating magazine, and this was a rifle with a rotating barrel.

The multi-barrel gun body makes it much heavier than ordinary rifles, but the good news is that this rifle can achieve theoretical rifle continuous fire.

It is much more powerful than ordinary revolvers, and because of the seamless steel tube provided by Li Mingqi, this gun has strong practical application effects.

"Long live the gun, let's go to the gun testing range to try the effect. This gun is very convenient to use."

Although there were questions in his head, Li Mingqi did not interrupt Zhang Yu's enthusiasm. He could only follow them to the gun inspection position with a stiff smile.

Soon, a sturdy Jin Yiwei was called over by Zhang Yu.

I saw this Jin Yiwei skillfully loading this strange rifle with bullets. Then he stood up, picked up the gun, and then pulled the trigger.

‘Bang bang bang…’

Every time you fire a shot, you need to manually turn the barrel, which seems a little troublesome, but to be honest, the rate of fire is much higher than the current Enfield m1853.

Soon, Jin Yiwei fired all eight bullets.

Li Mingqi looked at the huge wooden board that was hit 400 meters away, with no emotion in his heart.

And after a few words of encouragement to the Jin Yiwei who risked his life to test the rifle against his will, he took over the rifle.

After pretending to look through it for a few times, he returned the gun to Zhang Yu's group of people who were eagerly waiting for praise.

"The idea is good, but haven't you noticed that this gun is too heavy? It's not suitable for lifting up and shooting at all."

In the end, Li Mingqi couldn't hold it back and started to complain.

"Of course, the idea of ​​rotating the barrel is very good. But why don't you lengthen the barrel a little longer, bundle it into a cylindrical shape, and fix it on the wheelbarrow?"

"It would be so easy to use a crank-style handle to control the rotation of the barrel. It would be great if each barrel is equipped with a launcher, so that you can shoot without a trigger and just rely on the handle..."

After Li Mingqi talked a lot, he realized that everyone had an awkward expression on their faces, saying, "Although what you said is very powerful, we don't understand."

After patting his head, Li Mingqi remembered that these people had never seen metal fixed bullets.

Without this kind of bullet, let alone the complicated mechanism of a hand-cranked Gatling, these people would probably not even understand the firing principle.

"Bring me a piece of paper!" Li Mingqi was going to draw a simple structure of a bullet for these people.

Soon a piece of white paper was placed on the table, and Li Mingqi took out a pen and started drawing.

The first thing to draw is the simple structure of the primer part of the bullet (pictured)

This structure of putting the flash cap inside the metal cartridge case has been around for a long time.

In 1836, the Frenchman Rifosse invented a shotgun fired with a metal bottom case and a horizontal needle and an accompanying firearm.

Later, the Dreiser needle gun developed by the Germans in 1841 even placed the firing powder in the middle of the paper-packed fixed ammunition.

Then an innovative design was used that allowed the firing pin on the bolt to pierce the paper-packed bullet and ignite the propellant after striking the propellant.

In fact, the combination of these two people's inventions resulted in a future center-fired metal fixed-loading ammunition.

However, during this period, non-mainstream rifles using a projectile named "rimfire metal bullet" have appeared.

Theoretically, it can be said that the Enfield rifle now used by Li Ming is an outdated rifle.

But in fact, it's just the opposite. Except for the weird Prussian one, the soldiers of most countries still use muzzle-loading guns.

It was not until 1866, after Prussia defeated Austria with a rifle with a rotating bolt action, that the muzzle-loading gun completely declined.

Before this, many muzzle-loading guns were equipped in the armies of various countries.

Referring to the drawings, Li Mingqi explained the principles of metal bullets to Zhang Yu and others.

Let the eyes of these old blacksmiths who have spent their whole lives making guns for the Qing Dynasty brighten.

But soon, these people started a big discussion about how to fire this kind of metal bullet, and how to make it difficult to remove the bullet after shooting.

Li Mingqi was forgotten by these people.

However, Li Mingqi didn't care and was even satisfied with their current state.

If these people didn't have a heart for exploration, they wouldn't have built a weird rotating barrel rifle.

However, the discussion only lasted a short time, and these people stopped.

Because they found that nothing could be discussed through brainstorming alone. The bullets in everyone's mind were different, so how could they continue?

So they began to discuss the style of metal bullets and planned to make one to try out.

Li Mingqi stayed in the Royal Academy for the whole afternoon.

Watching these people make bullets little by little under his guidance.

But what they made was not a metal bullet but a much enlarged wooden model.

Zhang Yu stuffed an enlarged wooden flash cap back and forth into the back of the bullet model with a thoughtful look on his face.

Now that the bullets were available, these people began to discuss how to modify the firing structure.

However, after Li Mingqi gave them a later-generation ‘Mauser 98K ejectable soft bullet gun’, this discussion came to an end.

The next day, these old blacksmiths knocked out several prototypes of center-fired metal bullets by hand.

Within the next half month, Zhang Yu figured out how to use a stamping machine to produce bullet casings.

However, due to insufficient understanding of stamping machine tools, it is difficult to mass-produce custom-made metal bullets.

Later, Zhang Yu and others adopted a solution to thicken the bullet casing so that it could be used repeatedly.

So the first metal bullet of the Xinming Empire was finalized in this way, and it looked similar to the bullets of later generations.

The primer adopts the method of plugging the flash cap directly onto the anvil in the groove at the bottom of the cartridge case, and can be used repeatedly.

As for how to load the propellant and warhead of the bullet... Have you ever played with a soft bullet gun?

This kind of bullet was developed by Zhang Yu based on the principle of soft bullet gun bullets.

Just bite a hole at the bottom of the current paper-cased fixed bullet and insert it directly into the metal casing. It is so simple and practical that it almost made His Majesty the Emperor shed tears.

I thought they would recreate this soft bullet gun...ahem, and develop real bullets.

Unexpectedly, Zhang Yu and the others thought about saving money for Long Live Lord, so they came up with an excessive model.

But they made three types of rifles for shooting this kind of bullets.

The first is the Enfield m1853 rifle with a breech-loading bolt.

This is for the sake of economy. It is much cheaper and faster to modify a rifle than to re-produce it.

The second type is a brand new imitation (crossed out)…designed Mauser 98K-looking rifle.

There is not much to say about this rifle. The biggest highlight is that it can load five bullets at a time by relying on the bullet bridge.

There is also a rifle with a rotatable barrel mounted on a wheelbarrow.

And based on the improvement plans that Li Mingqi casually proposed, it is a primary repeating gun that uses a handle to rotate the barrel and fire.

To put it bluntly, this rifle is similar to the 'Gatling rapid-fire weapon' invented by the compassionate Dr. Gatling in 1862 and put into mass production.

Multiple gun barrels are "bundled" into a circle, and then the cylinder is rotated by a crank, allowing each barrel to complete loading, shooting, ejection and other actions in sequence during the rotation.

Although this gun is still full of flaws, leaks, jamming, the barrel is slightly deflected due to recoil, and other shortcomings.

But Zhang Yu and others were still brought to Li Mingqi.

Looking at this more cyber-style multi-barreled rifle, Li Mingqi felt a toothache.

Why did these people get into trouble with multi-barreled rifles?

Although Gatling was very common in later generations, during World War I and World War II, this multi-barreled machine gun was replaced by more useful machine guns.

It was not until large-capacity batteries became popular that they regained their youth.

Li Mingqi didn't want to have to replace AA batteries for machine guns when his troops went out to fight in the future.

This is so inconsistent!