In the war scenes of many costume film and television dramas, we can often see weapons such as long guns. It is a cold weapon with a long handle and a pointed head, and it is also one of the most popular weapons in ancient times. Whether it was soldiers marching to fight, or dart masters escorting darts, even in the late Qing Dynasty, when muskets were fully popularized, many members of the Boxer Regiment used long guns as weapons.
When it comes to the origin of the spear, its earliest can be traced back to the late Sui and early Tang dynasties, which is an improved product of the spear. Because the process of making a weapon such as a spear is quite cumbersome and complicated, the gun has become a quick emergency replacement for it.
When it comes to the most skilled gun players in ancient times, it is naturally inseparable from Zhao Yun. With a bright silver gun, he went in and out of Nagasaka Slope seven times, as if entering no man's land. At the same time, Zhao Yun was also the most capable of using guns in the Three Kingdoms, and even Ma Chao and Zhang Xiu could only bow to the wind.
In film and television dramas, we have not seen the scene of Zhao Yun making a gun. And his gun is full of silver glitter, whether it is the head or the handle of the gun, it is made of fine iron, which looks quite weighty. As a long-range weapon, the long gun consumes a lot of fine iron to build. Such a heavy weapon, can Zhao Yun move it? Taking ten thousand steps back, even if Zhao Yun could move, how could he swing freely on the horse?
In fact, the Three Kingdoms did not have such a weapon as a spear. The reason why Zhao Yun took the bright silver gun was nothing more than the result of the artistic processing of Luo Guanzhong's later artistic processing based on the horse mallet guns of the Two Song Dynasties and the Ming Dynasty. And Zhao Yun's kind of long gun whose handle is also made of fine iron actually did not exist in history.
In real history, the handle of the spear was, without exception, made entirely of wood. The reason is that the spear is a weapon that mainly relies on spurs to injure people, and most of its main body is the handle, if the handle is made of pure iron, the weight is not conducive to the spike, but it is like a stick used for splitting. The use of wooden gun handles can reduce the weight of the long gun by dozens of pounds, and it is quite comfortable to play.
In addition, as mentioned earlier, the spear was originally an emergency replacement for the spear. It makes sense that the spear is all made of pure iron, but the spear as an emergency replacement is also all made of pure iron, which is very abnormal. It is precisely because of the wood resources at your fingertips that the long gun can achieve mass production.
The gun handle is made of wood in addition to being light and convenient, convenient and easy to stab, but also has many advantages. For example, when fighting in winter, there will be no cold hands, and when fighting in summer, the friction of the gun handle will not be reduced because of hand sweat, in general, it will allow soldiers to hold the gun more steadily.
Although the wooden handle is easier to break than the iron one, it is good in that the cost is low, and it will not hurt if it is broken, as long as the gun head is still there, the handle can be replaced by anything. Moreover, the wood used to make the handle is generally thick wood or synthetic wood with some elasticity, and before making the handle, these woods will be soaked in the liquid of the special formula for some time to enhance its toughness. After such an operation, even if it is suppressed by a heavy object, it will not be easily broken, but will produce a certain arc, which is convenient for users to borrow power.
In general, the wooden gun long gun because of the convenience of production, low cost, has created its popularity in ancient folk. And on the battlefield, the wooden gun handle is far more flexible than the iron one. In the TV series, it is an iron silver gun, which is misleading to the audience.
Zhao Yun's bright silver gun may be a fiction, but Qi Jiguang's "Qi Family Gun" of the Ming Dynasty is a real existence in history. The reason why Qi Jiguang was able to quickly quell the wokou in the southeast of the disaster was precisely because of this Qi family gun. And he also mentioned in the book that the key to the production of the gun shaft is nothing more than a wooden gun, which can also be seen as evidence of the wooden barrel of the ancient long gun.