After arranging the production of weapons, Zhu Linmiao had not closed his eyes for nearly two nights, and the color of his eyes was black.

Chan Yi brought him an ice towel and hot tea, and persuaded distressedly: "Master, with Mr. Song and Xu Siwu staring, you should go and rest for a while, your body will not be able to eat if you continue like this." ”

Qiao Qian immediately answered: "Yes, you can sleep at ease, I will call you immediately if there is something." ”

Zhu Linmiao wiped her face with a towel, feeling that she was a lot more energetic.

But he shook his head.

Now the burden of the entire Ming Dynasty's survival is on his shoulders, and he can't take care of rest at all. In addition to the Dragon Guard, he also had to worry about the equipment of other Ming troops.

After this expansion, the Dragon Guard Army only has more than 6,000 troops, although it is an elite force, it is still very dangerous to deal with the 70,000 or 80,000 Qing troops in Bolo alone.

First of all, it is easy to be surrounded by the enemy army with a large number of people. In addition, if Bolo divides his forces to attack, the Dragon Guard will also face a situation of lack of skills.

Therefore, it is necessary to rely on the unity of the entire Ming army to win this crucial battle.

At present, the equipment rate of the main force of the Ming army is only more than 20%, and the artillery is even more scarce, with an average of 1,000 people not having a cannon, and swords, spears, bows and crossbows are still the main equipment. Even the weapons of the Broken Camp were fantastic-level in their eyes.

Zhu Linmiao let out a long sigh, these troops themselves have a relatively poor will to fight, coupled with the poor weapons, it is difficult to fight the Han Eight Banners like Jin Shenghuan, and it is only afraid that it will be extremely difficult to win against the main force of Shangjian.

However, he had already planned for this, and the most urgently needed weapons of the Ming army were medium and heavy bird guns. The Ming army was generally equipped with the three coins of the bird gun, which had weak firepower, and the armor-piercing ability was very problematic, and the number was too small.

If a large number of six to ten yuan of bird guns can be replenished, so that the Ming army's bird gun equipment rate can be increased to forty percent, supplemented by a large number of spear weapons, in the face of the Qing army has the strength to fight.

At present, there are more than 3,000 idle six-coin guns in the iron yard, which can be transferred to the Ganzhou Ordnance Bureau and let them be assembled into bird guns. The most difficult and time-consuming thing to make is the pipe, as long as the gun is well controlled, a skilled craftsman can assemble a bird gun in half a day.

In addition, there are more than 10 gun tube boring machines in the firearms workshop, and Zhu Linmiao plans to use these boring machines to make a batch of bird guns imitating Spanish heavy muskets.

Although the Spanish heavy muskets were slow to fire and difficult to operate, they were extremely effective against the heavy cavalry. You know, this musket was used in Europe to deal with three-millimeter-thick plate armor. Zhu Linmiao estimated that this gun could shoot through the double layer of cotton armor at a distance of 90 steps.

If it can effectively crack the killer weapon of the Jianyu double-armored heavy cavalry, it will have an extremely significant effect on the morale of the enemy army and at the same time boost the morale of the Ming army.

In fact, in the last years of Wanli, the Guangdong Ordnance Bureau had already imitated a heavy musket, named the turtledove. But as always, it was not taken seriously, and after more than 100 pieces were produced, it was lost in the sea.

Zhu Linmiao sighed again and shook his head, Da Ming just wasted a lot of similar opportunities, and in the end, it was difficult to return, so that Houjin picked up the cheap.

After he had captured Ke Yongsheng's Spanish musket last time, he had drawn the drawings. He handed over the drawings to Song Yingxing and asked him to bring a few craftsmen to copy them.

In addition to firecrackers, grenades are also a weapon that has an immediate effect. Zhu Linmiao had also considered equipping the Dragon Guards with grenades before. However, in this era, grenades had to be lit with a fuse, and the dragon guards used flintlock guns, which needed to be lined up in a dense formation, and carrying a fire rope with them would cause a lot of trouble, so they had to give up in the end.

But for the main force of the Ming army that used bird guns, the fire rope was a necessity. In fact, Daming had already made grenades, but due to the poor craftsmanship, the power was very average, and most of the time it was used to scare war horses.

Among the blacksmiths in the Suji Iron Yard, some people made earth-shaking thunder - that is, grenades in the Ming Dynasty.

It took less than half an hour for the two blacksmiths to work together to create a shell of a heaven-shattering thunderbolt. In fact, it is a hollowed-out iron ball, filled with gunpowder, and a fuse is added.

But Zhu Linmiao didn't want this thing, he instructed the craftsman to cast the shell of the Heaven-Shaking Thunder thicker, and also cast several vertical and horizontal grooves on it.

It's very much like a grenade in later generations. Due to the lack of meticulousness in the ancient casting process, the thickness of the shell of the earth-shaking thunder varies greatly, so when it explodes, it often breaks in the thin place and does not produce too many fragments.

However, after the grooves are carved in the shell, the position of the carving must be the thinnest, and the grenade will explode into dozens of pieces along these vertical and horizontal grooves, which greatly increases the lethality.

After another day of trying, a sky-shaking thunder weighing four catties and with four horizontal, seven vertical and twenty-eight grooves on the surface was finally made.

At present, the blacksmiths have no side tasks for the time being, so Zhu Linmiao asked them to mass-produce this new type of earth-shaking thunder.

The next day, the craftsmen of the Ganzhou Ordnance Bureau arrived. Most of them were gunsmiths, but there were also a few gunsmiths.

At this time, nearly 400 gunsmiths had gathered in the gun-making workshop of Su Kee Iron Yard, and the production efficiency was greatly improved.

Half a month later, the clay fans of the six-pounder and nine-pounder guns had been fired.

Xu Erlu has always wanted to practice it himself since he saw the miracle of Zhu Lin's iron fan casting cannon last time, how could he let go of the good opportunity now.

Of course, Zhu Linmiao is happy and relaxed, and he also trusts Xu Erlu's ability very much.

He watched Xu Erlu skillfully instruct the craftsmen to cast the iron fan, wait for the iron fan to cool, brush the compartment, and tighten it. It wasn't until the casting was complete that he took over again.

Under Zhu Linmiao's orders, the freshly cast iron cannon was erected in a calciner made of refractory bricks, heated by charcoal fire underneath, and someone kept rotating the bracket to heat the cannon body evenly.

After most of the day of calcination, cooling and annealing, the cast iron cannon has basically completed the rearrangement of carbon elements and turned into a tough and durable gray iron.

The newly-cast six-pounder cannon was then post-processed and finally handed over to Anthony to tow to the river beach behind the ironwork to test the cannon.

Zhu Linmiao was still very confident in this gun, and he was too tired to watch the test process. Sure enough, in the afternoon, Anthony finished the test and came back to report to him - there were no problems with the artillery, it withstood more than ten double-charge shots, and there was no explosion.

And although the barrel of this cast-iron cannon was a bit thicker than that of bronze, the weight of the whole cannon did not increase much because iron was less dense than copper.

However, the cost of the cast iron cannon is more than eighty percent cheaper than the expensive bronze cannon!

With the experience of a successful casting, Xu Erlu began to gradually take over the entire casting process. It only took four or five days for the weather to be cast, and all the eight six-pounder cannons and four nine-pounder cannons needed by the Dragon Guard were successfully cast.

However, Anthony's side was overwhelmed by the heavy task of testing guns, and there were still 7 guns waiting for him to test them.