Chapter 529: Wire rifles

Chapter 529 – Wire Rifle

“And what weapon have you prepared to take advantage of, Lord Gleeman?”

Squire Victor asked with great curiosity.

“Haha, let me show you, this is the latest product from our military industry department.”

Paul took down a long-barreled musket from his horse and threw it to Victor with a proud look on his face.

Victor took the gun and looked it forward and backward, he was very puzzled and asked, “It doesn’t seem to be much different from the ones I usually come into contact with, can you tell me what the difference is?”

Paul shook his finger and chuckled, “Not much different? No, no, what sets this gun apart from the others is not on the outside, but on the inside.”

“Inside?”

“Inside the barrel, look closely.”

“Yes?” At Paul’s mention, Victor held the musket upside down and brought his eyes close to the muzzle, and with the sunlight that shone in, he finally got that clear inside.

The inside of the barrel was lined with spiraling circles, and upon closer inspection, those lines were actually grooves engraved into the inside of the barrel.

He asked, “Lord Gleeman, are these spiral grooves what you call different?”

Paul nodded, “Yes. To be precise, those grooves are called rifling-or rather, the convex part is the yang line and the concave part is the yin line. That’s why this gun should be called a line rifled gun, whereas those muskets before it, both the early flintlock and the later flintlock, they all had smooth inner walls of their barrels, so they should be called smoothbore guns.”

“Smoothbore guns? Wire-bore guns? That is an apt name for you.”

Victor marveled. “Just what can you do by just adding a few coils of rifling? What advantage does it have over what used to be called a smoothbore gun?”

“There are a lot of advantages.”

Paul said joyfully, “When the gunpowder burns, it will squeeze the bullet to deform and embed itself in the rifling, and then the spiral rifling will force the bullet to spin up in the barrel and maintain this attitude to shoot out of the barrel, spinning all the way to the target. According to the craftsmen’s tests, the bullet’s trajectory – that is, its trajectory through the air – is more stable, flies farther, and is more likely to hit its target when it is moving in this spinning attitude than when it is fired from a smoothbore gun. Oh, Victor, I’m sure you’re aware of how bad a smoothbore’s hit rate is out to 100 yards?”

“Uh, is it bad? I don’t think so.”

Hearing Paul spouting off about smoothbore rifles in such a way, Victor rubbed his head in some bewilderment.

Paul was speechless for a while, he then remembered that Victor and the others didn’t know about the smoothbore gun before this, their comparison was to the bows and arrows used in earlier times, and the hit rate of ordinary bows and arrows was even worse than that of the smoothbore gun – after all, the smoothbore gun structure that Paul drew at the beginning was already a more mature design, he couldn’t just draw a inferior He couldn’t draw a primitive musket that was inferior to the bow and arrow, and throw it to the craftsmen for them to slowly improve on it, could he?

“Ahem! In short, you are now in the hands of this line rifle in 200 yards can maintain a high hit rate, the weather is good, 300 yards of distance can be used, if you change the smoothbore rifle in 200 yards can hit the enemy is simply the father of heaven manifestation.”

In fact, with a smoothbore rifle can be completely sniper combat on the battlefield, the American Revolutionary War, the Yankees with a rudimentary tool to pull out the rifling of the Kentucky rifle can be accurately hit 200 yards away from the head of the British commander, in 1777, during the Battle of Saratoga, the U.S. rifleman Murphy is with a smoothbore rifle at a distance of 300 yards to kill the British commanding officer Simon Fraser! that forced the disorganized British army to surrender.

“That good?” Victor incredulously touched the musket in his hand up and down, as if it had some incredible magic power on it.

Even Ladi Sertia, who hadn’t said a word since they set out, couldn’t hold back her curiosity as she stared at the threadbare gun.

“Lord Greiman, then if our Arda’s army is equipped with this kind of threaded rifle, won’t it be able to fight all over the world?”

Viktor was very excited, and the scene of Alda’s army wielding the threaded rifles painfully attacking the enemy came to mind – the opposite side planted themselves on the ground in a row before they could see what their side’s soldiers looked like.

“It’s not that simple.” Paul poured cold water on him, “Pulling the rifling is quite a job – at least for now. The craftsmen had a hell of a time pulling the rifling out of this one, it’s the first workable wire-bore gun, and they hadn’t even warmed it up before I snatched it up and went to the hunting grounds to get over it.”

“And a wire rifle is more trouble to handle than a smoothbore, which is accurate but slow to load. The pellets in a smoothbore are slightly smaller than the barrel, so it’s easy to stuff them from the front. Not so with a wire rifle, the projectile has to be slightly larger than the anodized diameter of the rifling, and then you have to squeeze the projectile in hard, which is very laborious to load, and that makes the loading efficiency predictable.”

Hearing Paul introduce it this way, Victor looked at the musket in his hand with some regret, and said with emotion, “It’s really a case of what goes around comes around.”

“But I believe that sooner or later there will be a day when it will be equipped on a large scale.”

Paul said confidently, “A job like pulling the rifling, manual labor will eventually be replaced by machines. As for loading bullets, what do you think about loading from the back of the barrel?”

“Load from the back?” Paul’s whimsical thought surprised Victor greatly, then suddenly realized, “Yes, loading from the muzzle, you still have to poke the rod to the innermost part, wouldn’t it be fine to load directly from the back of the barrel? Oh my Lord Gleeman, as always your great wisdom makes me feel very small.”

Victor’s horseplay failed to make Paul blush; he was used to it.

“Haha, again it’s not that simple, if you load from the back, the back of the barrel would have to be able to open, the gas from the burning gunpowder would leak out through the gap, there would be much less gas used to propel the projectile forward, and the bullet wouldn’t hit far.”

In addition to the gas leakage, it looks like it would have to have a fire cap to come in, so all in all it’s a long way to go.

“Lord Graiman, once again, the thoroughness of your thinking puts me to shame.”

Viktor’s second horse’s ass was promptly offered, then stammered a bit.

“Lord Gleeman, when arriving at the Ferguson Knight’s hunting grounds, you see if you can …… can …… also let me test test this so-called wire-bore gun for you.”

Paul waved his hand and said very generously, “Of course. My captain of the guards, ah, since I opened my mouth, will there be any reason for me not to lend it to you?”

Victor was very happy and thanked him repeatedly.

Paul took the threadbare rifle from Victor’s hand and rehung it to his horse.

His mind couldn’t help but begin to think freely, and the image came to him – a shot in the hunting field with this gun, drawing cheers from the crowd.

(End of chapter)