Chapter 372: Father and Son United in Spirit
"Get a few rifles ready. We're heading to the firing range."
Joseph gestured to Martin. He was just about to pick up the newly completed bulletproof insert for a field test when he heard Eman remark, "Your Royal Highness, His Majesty the King has arrived."
Joseph quickly turned around to see Louis XVI entering the workshop with a triumphant smile. "Well, my dear Joseph, for you to be here, I suspect you've invented something quite interesting."
Then, he grumbled with a hint of grievance, "Why didn't you call me to join you? We're the best partners, after all.
"Oh, never mind. Just let me see what wonderful thing my genius son has come up with this time..."
However, when he took the bulletproof insert Joseph handed him, he frowned slightly. "Is this... a metal plate?"
"It's not just a simple metal plate," Joseph said, pulling his father towards the firing range. "It can stop bullets."
Louis XVI incredulously weighed the bulletproof insert in his hand. "This thing weighs at most three pounds—oh, wait, we're using the standard metric system now, so that's 1.5 kilograms. And it can actually stop a bullet?"
As a tech enthusiast, he had some knowledge of armor. Even a Cuirass weighing over ten kilograms could often be penetrated if a bullet struck it at a perpendicular angle.
"You'll see for yourself," Joseph replied, giving his father a mysterious smile. He then instructed the guards to secure the bulletproof insert onto a wooden target, before taking a Percussion Cap Musket from Martin. It was a new model recently produced by the Royal Armory, fresh from calibration.
Joseph positioned himself sixty paces from the target, cocked the hammer, loaded a Percussion Cap, and squinted as he aimed at the distant bulletproof insert.
A loud CRACK echoed. A miss.
Joseph awkwardly reloaded and raised the rifle to fire again.
CRACK. Still a miss.
It wasn't that his shooting skills were poor; in the era of smoothbore muskets, hitting a target at sixty paces largely depended on luck.
Finally, after the Percussion Cap Musket fired for the third time, the distant bulletproof insert visibly shuddered.
Two soldiers from the firing range immediately ran to retrieve the target.
Louis XVI stepped forward curiously to examine it, only to find that the metal plate was significantly dented but clearly not penetrated!
He instantly looked at Joseph in astonishment. "How is this possible? It's just a thin piece!"
Joseph, however, was not surprised. He had deliberately chosen a sixty-pace distance, leaving a significant margin. In his estimation, the insert should be able to withstand fire from a British Brown Bess Model 1777 Flintlock Musket at thirty paces.
He smiled as he detached the bulletproof insert from the target and explained to his father, "My dear father, this isn't just a metal plate."
He pointed to the insert, which had slightly delaminated from the enormous impact. "You see, behind the metal plate is a ceramic plate."
"A ceramic plate? What good can such a brittle material do?"
"It disperses the bullet's impact," Joseph explained. "You can see from the edge that the ceramic plate has shattered.
"Since the cracks extend horizontally, they dissipate the vertical force in a horizontal direction.
"And behind that is a layer of silk. Silk has incredibly high tensile strength, allowing it to contain the first two layers, preventing them from being torn apart by instantaneous deformation.
"As for the final metal plate at the back, it's there to enhance reliability. Look, it only has a faint mark on it."
Louis XVI's eyes widened. He turned the bulletproof insert over and over in his hands, nodding continuously. "The simplest structures often possess unexpectedly excellent performance. Joseph, how did you come up with this idea? It's simply too... too miraculous!"
'I saw it in a documentary, of course,' Joseph thought to himself, but he still followed his usual routine, making the sign of the cross over his chest. "I believe this must be a revelation from the Lord."
Upon hearing this, Louis XVI immediately made the sign of the cross with profound piety. "Thank the Almighty Lord!"
In the past two years, as his son continuously received these "revelations from the Lord," he had become a hundred times more devout than before.
Joseph then made an even more astonishing suggestion. "This bulletproof insert should have more resilience. Let's try shortening the distance to fifty paces."
A new insert was secured. Joseph handed the rifle to his father.
As thick smoke billowed from the muzzle, Louis XVI accurately struck the bulletproof insert with a single shot, then boastfully raised an eyebrow at his son, who had needed three shots to hit the target earlier.
The soldiers quickly brought the target over. Joseph hurried forward to inspect the insert. The bullet crater was deeper than before, but it still hadn't been penetrated.
He flipped the insert over, revealing only a barely discernible indentation on the back of the final metal plate. Clearly, the wearer would be in no life-threatening danger.
This time, before Joseph could speak, Louis XVI chimed in, "Perhaps we can go even closer."
The testing continued, and it wasn't until the firing distance was reduced to twenty-eight paces that the bulletproof insert was finally penetrated.
Afterward, Louis XVI and his son continued to test several other types of bulletproof inserts made with different configurations. When night fell, they simply slept on cots in the armory, discussing various firearms and mechanical topics until past two in the morning.
Over the next few days, father and son remained immersed in the armory, conducting a series of tests and improvements on bulletproof inserts using various combinations and materials, eventually finalizing several types for mass production.
Joseph looked at the production process documents in his hand and instructed Martin, "Produce 6,000 general-purpose inserts, 2,000 heavy-duty inserts, and 500 premium inserts first."
After his tests over the past few days, he discovered that against the soft lead bullets of the 18th century, a double-layered iron plate wasn't necessary.
Thus, following his father's suggestion, he used a structure of metal, cotton, ceramic, and silk, controlling the bulletproof insert's weight to 1.05 kilograms. This allowed it to consistently withstand Flintlock Musket fire from forty paces.
This "general-purpose" bulletproof insert was the cheapest, costing only 5 livres and 16 sous. If necessary, even the silk could be omitted, dropping the price to under 4 livres, though the effective bulletproof distance would also fall to fifty-five paces.
The "heavy-duty" insert was the first structure tested, featuring double layers of metal front and back, weighing 1.4 kilograms. It could only be penetrated by a Flintlock Musket at twenty-eight paces and was specifically designed for cavalry. Its cost was 6 livres and 10 sous.
The "premium" type featured a single metal plate with double layers of silk. Its weight was comparable to the general-purpose type, offering a stable bulletproof distance of thirty-three paces. However, its high price of 8 livres and 5 sous meant it was generally only issued to officers.
Joseph had originally intended to produce over 100,000 inserts to equip the entire Guards Corps. However, the bottleneck in adhesives constrained his ambition.
While Casein Glue performed admirably, it could only be produced in small quantities at present and was quite expensive. As for other natural adhesives, they were largely inadequate for the task.
Recalling the various phenol-based adhesives of later eras, Joseph's desire to quickly promote Gas Streetlights and thus ignite the organic chemical industry grew even stronger.
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