If you remove the straight and even branches of the wicker, peel and remove the joints, seal and dry naturally, then bake it into charcoal and grind it into powder. Gunpowder prepared with this charcoal powder will be smokeless due to the peeling of the charcoal.

, remove knots without resin, thereby improving the burning speed and isotropic uniformity, and enhancing instantaneous explosive power.

There are four steps in the process of preparing gunpowder. The first step is to put the selected and refined nitrate, sulfur and charcoal into stone mortars or wooden troughs according to the requirements for preparing gunpowder.

Pound it several times to make it into a fine powder. The second step is to mix the three powders of nitrate, sulfur and charcoal in proportion and put them into a wooden mortar, then add an appropriate amount of pure water or shochu, and mix the mixture into

Wet mud form, and pound it thousands of times with a wooden pestle. During the pounding process, it is strictly forbidden to mix sand and gravel into the mortar to avoid fire and disaster after collision. When the mixture is dry, add water and pound it again to make the mixture fully uniform.

and fine, then take it out to dry in the sun. The third step is to check the quality of the finished product. Select a part of the dried gunpowder sample and burn it on the paper. If it burns out quickly and the paper is intact, it is a qualified product. Or put the sample on

If it burns in the palm of the hand and the gunpowder is burned but the palm of the hand does not feel hot, it means that the finished product burns quickly and is a qualified product. On the contrary, if the gunpowder is burned and there are black and white left on the paper, or the palm of the hand feels burning, it is unqualified.

The finished product needs to be reworked and pounded again until it is qualified. The fourth step is to screen the qualified medicine particles. Zhao Shizhen said in the "Artifact Spectrum" written in 1598 AD (the 26th year of Wanli Emperor Shenzong of the Ming Dynasty): Gunpowder particles, "

The thick ones are not used, the thin ones are not used, and only the ones as big as corn are taken into the gun." This shows that at that time, there was a deep understanding of the relationship between the size of gunpowder particles and the burning speed of gunpowder. The tested powder blocks were broken into granules.

Use sieves of different thicknesses to sift out various large, medium and small gunpowder grains used in large guns (cannons), folang machines and bird guns. The non-granular ones can be used as fire starter ignition powder, and all the remaining fine powders are removed.

The purpose of selecting the corresponding grade of granular gunpowder according to the caliber of the gun and the size of the chamber is not only to increase the power of the launch, but also to ensure the safety during launch.

The development of ancient Chinese firearms has gradually declined since the early 18th century. The gunpowder used in the Qing Dynasty before the First Opium War was still prepared manually based on the gunpowder preparation theory and technology of the Ming Dynasty. At the same time, the Western Industrial Revolution

, greatly promoted the development of gunpowder and firearms technology.

After the Qing army was defeated in the First Opium War, some generals and gunpowder developers in the Qing Dynasty discovered the shortcomings of the old gunpowder. In order to improve the performance of the gunpowder, a large number of experiments were conducted to improve the preparation process, and the number of times for refining nitrate was reduced from

Increase the amount to three times at a time, and then mix the proportions of 8 jins of saltpeter, 1 jin and 2 taels of sulfur powder, and 1 catty and 6 taels of charcoal powder in a stone mortar, and pound it several times with a hard wooden pestle made of Sophora elm wood.

, the propellant powder was made with a composition ratio of 76% nitrate, 10.7% sulfur, and 13.3% carbon. After comparative testing, the performance of the propellant was basically equivalent to that of the British military propellant.

After the invention of gunpowder in ancient China, it has been continuously improved and improved in military use. Its development law is: the preparation has changed from no strict proportion to a certain proportion; the ingredients have been complex to simple and pure; the shape has changed from powder to granules. The characteristics of gunpowder
Chapter completed!