Chapter 301 - 132: Flintlock Gun Modification, Armor, Bow and Arrow
Without a detonator, the difference between TNT and a brick is not significant.
Because TNT itself has an overly stable chemical nature, it must be triggered by a shock wave and high temperature from a detonator to initiate a chain reaction and release explosive energy.
These conditions are particularly stringent, and being on an industrially backward isolated island, Chen Zhou absolutely cannot produce them by hand.
Of course, if he were brave enough, he could try using gunpowder to detonate the TNT.
However, the risk of that detonation method is not something he can afford.
...
On March 14, after moving all three prizes back to the cave, Chen Zhou inventoried the amount of TNT.
All the TNT explosives were stacked tightly and neatly, with a total of four layers from top to bottom, each layer having eight columns, each column containing five blocks, totaling 160 blocks of 200g charges.
But what was contained in this yellow plastic box was not just TNT; it also included matching detonators and fuses.
These delicate little items were stored at the bottom of the box, divided into two areas.
The diameter of the detonators matched the holes in the explosives, with a total of 200 pieces, probably considering some unexpected situations during design, to prevent a shortage of detonators.
What reassured Chen Zhou was that these explosives were using non-electric detonators.
Although the delay of these detonators depends on the burning speed of the fuse, which is easily affected by environmental factors, and has lower safety, they are simpler to store, easy to use, and rarely get damaged even if stored for ten or eight years, making them well-suited for use on the island.
Unfortunately, the cave had already been expanded with gunpowder in advance.
Now, with most of the interior decoration completed, even if he felt the cave space was tight, he couldn't risk collapsing his own home by using TNT to blast it open.
As for the uses of these TNTs, he didn't have a definite idea yet, so he could only store them carefully and use them when the need arose.
...
Lack of sleep, the spirit built up by excessive nervous energy quickly deflated after receiving the reward and became languid.
After swinging a long spear on the platform for a while, with drowsiness gradually creeping in, Chen Zhou began to find everything tasteless.
He only regained his energy after taking a nap back in the cave.
When he woke up, it was already dark outside, and a drizzle had started.
The wooden and stone wall on the beach hadn't been tidied up, the chili seeds hadn't sprouted, and he hadn't checked the crops in the fields and near the small wooden house for some time.
There were quite a few pending matters accumulated during his illness, but Chen Zhou allowed himself a night off, thoroughly enjoying a hot bath and a good sleep.
...
On March 15, with his cold almost completely cured, Chen Zhou returned to work.
Upon getting up in the morning, the first task he undertook was germinating the chili seeds, hoping to eat chilies soon.
Then he donned his raincoat and headed straight to the beach to tidy and build up the wooden and stone wall.
On his way home, he also checked the sugarcane and large aloe by the mountain stream.
With diligent cultivation over the past few months, the sugarcane fields had grown quite significantly.
The large aloe also adapted well to the environment here, but it grows slowly, currently only having a few, and for large-scale use, he would need to collect more from the River Valley Plain.
He originally planned to check on the grapes in the wooden house.
But by the time he left the sugarcane fields, it was already near dusk, and the rain was intensifying, so Chen Zhou had to return to the cave to rest.
...
The rainy season would end in mid-April, and during this period, Chen Zhou mostly refrained from going out.
Apart from routine crop care, occasionally salting the sheep, or catching a few pigeons in Pigeon Cave, collecting saltpeter, and going to the beach every 15 days to collect rewards and tidy the wooden and stone wall, he devoted all his energy mainly to expanding the cave and modifying the house.
After paving the ceiling and floor of the kitchen and storeroom, Chen Zhou focused on digging out the cellar and building a rat house.
Having tried most of the common seafood and plants on the island for poison, he has become less attentive to the testing mice.
After all, the available poisonous materials for testing are limited, and this group of mice reproduce approximately every 45 days, and they grow in number with each reproduction.
Initially, he felt there weren't enough testing mice.
As time passed, he found that the real shortage was not of the mice but the island's resources.
Because of this, he even had to capture the weaker, more obnoxious mice that liked to grind their teeth for the few cats at home to use as training partners to develop their hunting skills.
...
Extending the cave over a long period can easily feel tedious, so when exhausted both physically and mentally, Chen Zhou would give himself a break to rest for a day or two.
However, his rest isn't about lying in bed to sleep deeply or playing games—there aren't any games to play on the island anyway.
He usually relaxes by drawing, making wooden models, or designing blueprints.
...
Besides the design of windmills, waterwheels, and buildings, Chen Zhou was most concerned about improving the matchlock gun.
For this, he conceived more than a dozen improvement plans, drew nearly a hundred drawings, and personally carved wood to create several gun models.
In the end, he found that it was impossible to improve a matchlock gun into a semi-automatic rifle overnight.
The limitation in terms of bullets was particularly difficult to overcome.
Seventeenth-century poor industrial foundations could not produce cast iron barrels capable of withstanding extremely high chamber pressure.
The residue from gunpowder combustion would also seriously affect the precision of firearms.
Unless he could obtain a batch of modern firearm parts, even a modern genius weapon designer like Kalashnikov, who designed the AK series rifles, couldn't handcraft a semi-automatic rifle under these many limitations.