"Yara, pass me that wrench please? There's something up with this lathe." I asked, catching the wrench that was thrown in response. "Thanks!"
We had returned to the Leaf about three days later, we had to slow down to allow Mei to keep up, we delivered her to the pyromancer's guild in Kanzaku Gai. It was during those three days that I plied my Ma's trade in negotiating a steady supply for my ammunition production. As of right now, I was setting up the tooling for further development.
"It's so weird watching you boss around your Dad, Ishhin." Yara quipped, earning a chuckle from said Dad.
"When you've been smithing long enough, little lady, you know when you're dealing with someone we in the business call a visionary." Pa spoke whilst hoisting a crate full of lead ingots into their spot near the smelter. "When they get something in their head that they need to put to steel, well, you shut the fuck up and hold the lantern."
"I'm not that mean…am I?" I asked, turning away from making sure the bolts holding the lathe together weren't loose. Pa simply gave a chuckle before Yara answered.
"You can be rather demanding when you get into your workflow. We know you don't mean anything by it, but you're a real slave-driver." She speaks bluntly, idly swinging her leg whilst she's perched on the housing of the drill press, which was mercifully powered off at the moment.
OSHA'd have my hide if they existed in the Leaf.
"Don't you worry about it too much Isshi, you're still nicer than most pit bosses I've seen." Pa reassured me with a smile, "So, what has you double checking your equipment like this? I only ever see you like this when you're about to put the finishing touches on things."
This gets Yara's attention, as well as Itachi, who drops from the rafters.
"Well, Isshin, are you about to finish something?" He asks, and I give a smirk.
"I got something." I spoke with a smirk. I shifted over to the eastern edge of the workshop. I grabbed a crate that was packed with straw and moved over to the center of the room, where a large work table sat. I began drawing out the pieces in the crate.
"That's a lot of small pieces…" Yara muttered, and I scoffed.
"It's like six screws and three spring assemblies. It just looks like more because it's completely disassembled at the moment." I defended my creation, and Itachi was next to speak.
"What is different in this weapon compared to your usual armament?" He asks, and I pick up the lynchpin of the weapon and toss it over to him. Four and a quarter inches of blued steel spin through the air as I get to work assembling the rest of the gun. He catches it clean.
"You call this a barrel, yes?" He asks, and I nod whilst assembling the rest of the frame. Grip, Hammer spring, grip panels, trigger, trigger spring.
"Look inside, see the grooves? Those are called rifling, polygonal rifling if you're being specific. Cannons use notches cut into the bore to impart spin and collect soot, which helps with accuracy. These are formed into the steel after it's hardened but before it's heat treated. I used this sucker here." I begin my lecture, eventually bringing out a small piece of metal with small recesses cut into it. "This is made out of tungsten carbide. It's stronger and denser than steel, but rarer. We're very lucky that we are currently sitting on a mountain that has a lot of this stuff in it."
"That looks precision crafted, but you don't have a machine press here?" Yara noted.
"Good files, patience, a good set of calipers, and chakra. I used the lathe to push the button, which is what that piece is called, through the bore of the barrel, it formed the rifling in the barrel and I then heat treated it." I replied, getting the frame assembled nearly completely now, I set the frame in a jig, clamped it down to hell and back, and retrieved the barrel from Itachi. "Pa! I'm gonna need some muscle here, please."
Pa grinned and came over as I placed the barrel into the appropriately named barrel wrench. Well, a rudimentary one, it was a three foot long steel bar with a hole punched to fit the contours of the barrel as closely as possible. The barrel itself would be threaded into the frame, but the threads were slightly oversized, to provide strength. Crush threading, old fashioned, but very strong.
"If my math is right, this will be a bitch to do, but it should sit flush and be timed correctly." I muttered,
"You're not worried about scratching the piece?" Pa asked, and I shook my head.
"Wrench is made out of a softer steel, it'll warp before the barrel scratches bad enough to where it won't get buffed out. C'mon Pa." I assured before we got to work.
Pa and I threaded the barrel win with a lot of pressure, swearing, and general application of Chakra.
It was a pain in the ass, and proved to be a premonition to the future frustrations that my endeavors in gunsmithing would contain.
Still, in the end we were able to get the barrel on, and we were able to get things set up. I pulled the now barreled frame out of the vice's jig and placed the cylinder inside, clicked the ramrod in place, and with a rattle of harmonious 'click's I spun the cylinder.
"Point Four-Five-Eight caliber, six chambers, and a four point two five inch barrel, I introduce to you all, the Revolver. My primary sidearm going forward." I twirled the weapon on my finger and tucked it into a holster under my shoulder.
"And that's a B-rank in our teams' pockets, eh?" Yara snarked, and I felt a grin grow on my face that Itachi noticed instantly.
"...You've got another one ready don't you." He deadpanned, and the chuckle that worked it's way out of my throat was diabolical.
"He's got another one." My mother announced her presence whilst she leaned on the entrance to the workshop with a grin of her own on her face. "Stayed up half the night putting it together back in the compound."
"Ma!" I groaned, ignoring the giggles coming from Yara.
"You need to get more sleep, young man. Your ideas and designs get more outlandish when you haven't gotten your eight hours." Ma huffed as she walked in, ruffling Yara's hair as she passed by, earning a pout. Still, I moved on to my other project that I had hidden away before my teammates had arrived. Only it wasn't there.
"You ought to pick your stashes better, Cousin." Nanako quipped from the rafters, holding a wrapped package that I had thought I had hidden well enough. Freakin ANBU.
"Why you gotta ruin my fun, Sensei?" I groaned, before having to catch the package as it was tossed my way.
"Someone's got to keep you from getting a big head, Isshin. So, what's that hunk of steel?" Nanako is as flippant as ever, but means well enough. With my dramatic reveal ruined, I simply unwrapped the package and brought out the weapon within.
"I'm honestly perplexed as to what these are going to be capable of, Isshin. Have you already named this one as well?" Itachi asked, and I shrugged whilst working the lever of the weapon and opening its action.
Single shot, Rolling Block, and a Twenty-Eight inch barrel set with rifling with one turn for eight inches. Walnut stock and Iron sights.
"Capable of punching a fist sized hole in a target at a thousand yards. This is my first test bed for my smokeless cartridges. Diving into the deep end here, honestly, a Six point five caliber projectile is flat shooting, or should be, in theory." I declared,
"So this is why you wanted us over here, eh?" Nanako chirps, and I nod.
"I wanted you all to see the test fire, and to get your thoughts, also…I wanted Ma to see what I've been working on."
Itachi gave a chuckle, Yara a smirk, and Ma just gave a soft smile that Pa mirrored as he wrapped his arm around the woman's shoulder.
I snatched up a box of black powder paper cartridges for the revolver and a handful of brass ones for the rifle before stepping outside. As my team and family followed me I pulled out a projectile from my pocket.
"That doesn't look like your normal slugs." Yara noted, and I gave a smile before I expanded upon it.
"My twelve gauge slugs are about an ounce in weight and are about point seven two caliber in diameter. They're made to hit hard and punch big holes in things at ranges up to about twenty five yards, with the length of barrel that my shotgun has. This is a point four five four caliber conical projectile that is accurate and effective out to a hundred yards." I put the loose lead projectile away and loaded the revolver, seat the paper cartridge, press it in place with the loading rod, and cap the nipple- HEY! Shut up Konohamaru, that's what they're called, Dammit.
"That seems to be a bit of a task to load up, Isshin." Itachi commented, and I nodded.
"It's an administrative task, for sure. But until I get a better method of making cases, I don't have the manufacturing base to speed this process up." I finished up the loading process on the revolver and holstered it…before simply levering the rifle's action open and popping one of said cartridges into the chamber.
"And what was that cartridge you just put into that weapon, huh Isshin?" Yara quipped
"Fifty rounds took me a week, Yara. Ideally my loadout would be two hundred. Per mission." I cut that line of questioning real quick. Hand-forming cartridges to the specs I needed for durability and accuracy, not to mention reloadability, a necessity with the previously stated lack of a manufacturing base. It was a pain in the ass. "I have to get the brass cups, which you do not want to believe how hard it is to source things that small in large enough quantities and not draw weird looks from the suppliers, I have to draw it out a bit, anneal it, draw it out again, wash it, punch the flash hole, all the while measuring case length, wall thickness, case volume, primer pocket depth, diameter, and so forth."
"All that for a single shot?" Nanako asked,
"I do them in large enough batches, to make it worth the time, but in essence, yeah. Now cover your ears and get your eyes on the target over yonder." I muttered, settling into a kneeling position and drawing a dime on the test target: A two foot by three foot wide piece of cardboard with the silhouette of a man painted on it stapled to wooden slats in front of a substantial pile of dirt at the edge of the property.
"A hundred yards, a lot less than the thousand you were boasting." Nanako speaks, and I ignore her, before pulling the trigger.
-CRK-OOM!-
"Hit. Center mass, hundred yards." I opened the action and inspected the brass, no splits or deformations, nice.
"And what kind of impact are we gonna expect at that range? We saw what your shotgun can do." Nanako asked, I slung the rifle and drew the revolver.
"Nine pellets of lead shot flying at maybe a thousand feet per second give or take. This…is a one hundred and forty grain projectile flying at twenty seven hundred feet per second."
"And the amount of smoke was negligible." Yara noted,
"You were wondering what I needed the nitroglycerine for, that's what it was for. Now this is gonna be black powder again, but it's a 220 grain projectile flying at about eight hundred feet per second." I cocked the hammer back and lined up the shot. Well, in this case, shots.
-POP-CLK-POP-CLK-POP-CLK-POP-CLK-POP-CLK-POP-
Six shots, I used my left hand to cock the hammer whilst staying on target, three on target, three into the burm. Fucking shameful.
"...I've atrophied." I whispered under my breath, and I saw Nanako's gaze snap from the target to me.
"Practice, Isshin. Practice." She spoke, patting my shoulder. Ma and Pa seemed impressed enough, and another voice chimes in that I hadn't expected.
"...In all my years, I've seen many things, yet I've been surprised once more by my grandson. You're going to change the way war works, Isshin." Ryunosuke Sekitangara, whom I hadn't been able to get ahold of since Nana had decided to let her presence be known.
"Pop Pop!"