Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 464 The First Bottleneck of Heavy Industry

It was the end of February 1790 when Zhang Bingwen came out of the Beihai Town Central Hospital after being injured for a hundred days.

Although this hospitalization made Zhang Bingwen's family miss the opportunity to be assigned to be a farmer in Boli Town, but because he had worked in a blacksmith shop for two years when he was in his hometown, he was assigned to the ironmaking workshop of Beihai Town Iron and Steel Plant after he was discharged from the hospital. , as a sampler.

Sampling workers, like temperature measuring workers, are the two basic types of work in iron and steelmaking workshops, and they are actually odd jobs.This is the most unskilled and physically tiring of all types of work, and it also has the lowest wages.In addition to running errands to send samples to quality inspection, other chores are also done.

In fact, in front of the furnace, everyone has to start with the most basic temperature measurement and sampling; those who do well will be promoted until the position of furnace chief, and no one can do key positions as soon as they come up.

However, for Zhang Bingwen, this is tantamount to joy from heaven.The salary of the sampling worker is 10 Beihai yuan per month, which is two taels of silver, and can buy two hundred catties of white flour at the Beihai trading company.

Two hundred catties of white noodles would surely be rich for a family of three to eat, and the iron and steel plant also manages two meals a day, which is a lot of oil and water; it also distributes work clothes.But Zhang Bingwen's family has four members and is about to welcome the fifth member.

Fortunately, both Zhang Bingwen's sons and daughters went to the primary school in Beihai Town to learn how to read and write. The school provides lunch every day; his wife Zhang Huangshi also got a job as a shoe sole supplier from the residents' mutual aid group.Each pair of soles costs 2 jiao. Zhang Huang makes a pair in three days and can earn 2 Beihai yuan a month.

In fact, this is a temporary rescue job. When Zhang Huang's child is ready to work in the fields, she may be assigned to work in a shoe factory.At present, the shoe-making factory in Beihai Town has used hand-operated electric thick-thread sewing machines, and the production speed of shoe soles is many times faster than that of hand-sewing.

Even so, considering the income of 12 silver dollars, Zhang Huang felt that he had already lived a life like heaven.

Her husband didn't spend a penny on hospitalization, and the doctor at the hospital even checked Zhang Huangshi and told her that the fetal position was upright and everything was fine.

The house was issued by the Civil Affairs Bureau, and they live in it for free.Although the area is not large compared to other old immigrant families in Beihai Town, with only two east and west rooms and a small foyer, it is dozens of times stronger than the adobe house in his hometown for Zhang Huang.

The blue padded jacket on her body was also issued to her by the immigration department. Not only her, but the whole family had a set, including shoes.

In fact, the immigration department of Beihai Town was quite helpless.The people who came were all refugees, and they were dressed in rags. In summer, it was okay, but in winter, the temperature here is tens of degrees below zero. If you don’t distribute clothes, you will freeze to death.

Furthermore, unlike other resettlement sites, Beihai Town has long since had no cellars, so anyone with a skill who can stay here will be treated better than other refugees.

The only thing that made her feel a little regretful was that the Beihai trading company only sold white noodles and rice, and there was no sorghum rice that she used to eat.Although white noodles are delicious and cheap, the average landlord family in the pass would not dare to eat like this!
The couple were so excited that they didn't close their eyes for half the night, lying on the bed chattering forward to a better life in the future.

"Father, do your arms and legs still hurt?"

"It doesn't hurt anymore, thinking about earning two taels of silver a month, nothing hurts anymore."

"His father, these days are really like a dream."

"No, if I knew I could have this day, I wouldn't go to the treasure bureau."

"Then do you regret it?"

"I won't regret it if I can make the three of you have enough to eat."

"You, you have a stubborn temper, like a cow. You have to hit the south wall, and your head is always broken. If you didn't hate the county guards, you wouldn't lose your job in the iron factory."

"I just can't understand their domineering! My father was right. He said that, it's the man who came here, and it's not a disaster to lose the horse."

"Is it a horse, not a commodity? Isn't it a commodity?"

"It's not necessarily a disaster if you lose your horse, maybe there will be good things later."

"Father's words are quite reasonable. It's a pity that when I passed the door, his old man and mother left, and he didn't drink the tea I respected."

"My father used to say that he traveled all over the world to serve a bowl!" Zhang Bingwen suddenly had a sore nose, and tears began to roll in his eyes.

The woman quickly posted a few coaxing words, and then changed the subject, talking about Minger taking her wages, tearing a piece of cloth to make clothes for her daughter Yaya and her son Huzi, and preparing clothes for the child who is about to be born.
Zhang Bingwen's father actually said that if Sai Weng got a horse, there might be disasters in the future.

Sure enough, the next morning, Zhang Bingwen took the note issued by the immigration department to the public security police station to apply for a work card, and a photo incident ensued.

Zhang Bingwen was so frightened that he had to take a photo for his job card, but after seeing his three-inch photo, Zhang Bingwen was so frightened that he pleaded with the security police who took the photo with his nose and tears, asking him to give him back his soul.

The public security police have seen this kind of ridiculous thing too much, and it was the same when they first came to Beihai Town.But he used another set of rhetoric to Zhang Bingwen.

"Remember! When you go to work, you are not allowed to leave your badge!"

"Yes. Master, then, what about when I go home to sleep?"

"Put it by your side. Be careful, if you lose it, you will be fined ten yuan."

When Zhang Bingwen heard it, he thought to himself, we only earn ten silver dollars a month, and this card is worth two taels of silver, so there is really no reason for it.Then he asked unwillingly: "Master, what should I do if I get dirty?"

"This one is sealed, and neither water nor dirt can seep in, understand?"

"Yes. I see."

It is said that people who work on the east bank of the Xila River have to go to the public security police station to get a badge and get their fingerprints, otherwise they will not even be able to enter the factory gate.If they came to spy on the secrets, even if they sneaked into the factory in Beihai Town, it would be very difficult to escape.

The public security police had captured two guys before, and the two seemed inexplicably terrified that they could be caught quickly, and they couldn't figure out how they were discovered.

In fact, this trick is very simple. There is a communication chip in the shell of each badge.As long as people move abnormally, multiple base stations deployed on the east coast can track them through triangulation.

When the communication chip is connected to the base station signal, the monitoring personnel can judge the location of the other party through the signal strength of the person and the three surrounding base stations.And this calculation method is called "trigonometric calculation method".

Although this method has errors, the distance of a few meters is still acceptable.Through this move, Beihai Town effectively prevented all parties from spying.Those spies never imagined that as soon as they entered the east bank of the Xila River, they would already be under the surveillance of Beihai Town's "Sky Eye".

By the way, one of the two spies who spied on the factory's secrets was a spy sent by the shogunate, and the other was from the Qing Dynasty.

At present, the only one who can enter and leave the training base without taking pictures is Wu Zhong.This was a special case. Wang Yuanfang was rushing to ask for help, but he still told the other party not to lose his ID card.

After Zhang Bingwen reported to the iron factory, because his newly healed arm was not very strong, the furnace chief temporarily asked him to be responsible for sending samples back and forth.

This morning, as soon as he came back from the quality inspection side, he saw seven or eight people in uniforms coming to the factory, surrounded by a tall young man, standing at the door of the workshop for a while, and then went around to went behind.

What surprised Zhang Bingwen was that as long as the people in the workshop were idle, they all bowed to the man's back from a distance.So he asked one person, "Who is that? Why do you all bow to him?"

"You don't know who he is?!" Seeing Zhang Bingwen shaking his head in confusion, the worker explained, "That's Lord Zhao! You are wearing the clothes given by him and living in a house given by him. Don’t you know his old man?”

Upon hearing this, Zhang Bingwen hurried to the door, bowed towards the direction of the backyard, and then said a little embarrassedly: "I, I have been in the hospital before, I just heard that I have never seen it."

Zhao Xin didn't know that he had become an "old man". He came here today to look for Zhao Liang.

Beginning in March this year, Beihai Township will start imitating the later Springfield 3 rifles.

This front-loading smoothbore cap gun provided to the servant army is named "1790 rifle". It uses paper tubes to fix the ammunition, and the cap is fired. The rate of fire can reach 2 to 4 rounds per minute.The muzzle velocity of the gun is 300 meters per second to 430 meters per second, the effective range is 180 to 370 meters, and the maximum range is 730 to 910 meters.

The new front-loading rifles are not for sale, and are only equipped for the island nations and Ainu servants in the Northern Navy sequence.In other words, since you want others to help you fight wars, especially against Tsarist Russia, you can't always use revolvers, and you have to equip rifles anyway.

Before starting production, Zhao Liang, the boss in charge of the "Military-Industrial Complex", decided to hold a two-person meeting, mainly to discuss with Zhao Xin what kind of steel and specifications to use, so as to determine the manufacturing cost and external sales price.

However, Zhao Liang didn't talk about guns at first, but talked about the upcoming batch of newcomers, that is, professionals in steel and steel rolling.

At present, the development of heavy industry in Beihai Town has reached a bottleneck point, and Zhao Liang's level of ground steel and metal machining is far from meeting the requirements of heavy industry development.

For example, large gears used for locomotive traction, supercharger transmission gears, rear axles, highly loaded connecting rods and spring clips, molds for bending machines, oil deep well drill pipe joints and seamless steel pipes, etc., all need to be used AISI4140 alloy steel.

The development of this extremely high-strength alloy steel is also very difficult, mainly because the quality of the billet, the dimensional accuracy of the rolled material, and the heat treatment process are all extremely demanding, which is not something that Zhao Liang can handle at all.

Another example is high-manganese steel, which can only be produced in small batches now, and the Beibei Navy will need more cannons that can hit farther in the future.

There is also the silicon steel used to make the rotor core of the motor, and the No. 1863 steel that is now needed to imitate the M45 rifle.

So this year, Zhao Xin took advantage of the Spring Festival to send people back, and asked his cousin's company to start recruiting professionals in steel and rolling across the country.With Wu Ping'an's lesson, Zhao Xin only needs at least 50 people over the age of [-] this time.

The main task of these people after they came is to formulate the composition of steel grades, process routes, and organize the production of process parameters in the production process, which can only be done by professionals.Furthermore, it is necessary to bring out a large number of apprentices.

At present, the location of the new iron and steel plant selected by Zhao Xin is located in Boli Town, which is the west bank of the Huntong River.From mid-March, the construction team under the civil affairs department will enter the site and start leveling the planned area.

After talking about recruiting, Zhao Liang went to the main topic: "For the barrel of the 1790 rifle, I plan to use No. 22 seamless steel pipe with an outer diameter of 16, an inner diameter of 3, and a wall thickness of 45 mm. To be honest, it is expensive. Point, but the material performance is definitely no problem."

Zhao Xin nodded, found a piece of paper to write down the data on, and asked casually: "That is to say, the caliber is 16mm? I said, all brown basses are 19mm, and the French also use 17mm. Are ours too small? gone?"

"It's not small. M1863 is only 14.732 mm. Besides, the performance of our black powder is much better than that used by Europeans today."

"Okay, you continue."

"The dimensions of other parts of the gun body are consistent with those of the M1863, and the barrel length is 1400 mm."

Zhao Xin asked while remembering: "How much?"

“比原枪轻不少。”赵亮对仿制武器的规格数据信口拈来：“无缝钢管每米的重量是1.40562公斤，1400毫米就是1.968公斤，加上闭锁螺栓0.08公斤、枪机组合0.3公斤、木制枪托1.5公斤的话，总重3.847公斤，原枪是4.1公斤。”

"Well, it's okay. I mainly think about whether the small body of the islanders can carry it, otherwise it will be smashed in the hand when it is built."

"By the way, I went back and asked about the seamless steel pipe we need this time. The length is five meters, and the market price per ton is around 6.2 yuan, excluding freight."

So Zhao Xin calculated based on these data. According to a 5-meter barrel, each barrel can be made into three barrels, and 35.14 barrels are 218 tons, which is about [-] million.

If you don't consider shipping costs, but only count processing and other materials, the average cost of each rifle is less than 200 yuan, which is less than the price of one gram of gold.

As long as the planned "Cossack Kingdom" can gain a foothold on the West Siberian Plain west of the Yenisei River, then both the Lena River and the gold mines north of Irkutsk will be included in their own pockets.And once the Tsarist Russian Empire was cut off from the eastward route, wouldn't Alaska be taken as its own smoothly?

Thinking of this, Zhao Xin suddenly felt a lot happier. He stood up and said, "I'm leaving if I'm okay?"

"Of course not." Zhao Liang threw the materials in his hand aside and continued: "The inventory of SKS barrels is not enough. The batches of ammunition we made in the early days were not good enough for the primer technology, and they were too corrosive to the barrel. You have to buy at least [-] more, and the barrels of the original batch of guns have to be replaced."

Zhao Xin nodded and said, "Okay, I understand."

It is said that the so-called barrel life refers to the number of bullets that the barrel can fire while ensuring the accuracy.Taking SKS as an example, if shooting accuracy is not considered and high-density continuous shooting does not exist, 2 or 5 rounds can be shot at will.

Because the rifling wire in the barrel will cause the caliber to be slightly reduced, and the diameter of the bullet is slightly larger than the diameter of the barrel plus the rifling wire.When shooting, under the pressure of the gunpowder explosion, the bullet is squeezed in the barrel by the gunpowder gas, hits the rifling wire, and then is forced to rotate, and the bullet will wear the rifling wire to a certain extent.When the rifling wire is worn to a certain extent, the diameter of the barrel becomes larger, and the accuracy naturally decreases.

In addition, the friction between the gunpowder gas and the warhead and the rifling wire will heat up the entire barrel, and the metal will expand when heated, and the diameter of the barrel will naturally increase, resulting in a decrease in accuracy.

Theoretically, the barrel should still work as long as a standard diameter bullet cannot be jammed into the muzzle.As for the barrels that pursue precision—such as HK416, the requirements are much higher.Generally, when the average moa number exceeds 50% to 150% of the optimal moa value, the barrel should be replaced with a new one.

In fact, the lifespan of the barrel depends on many factors, such as the shooting frequency. Should the barrel be cooled before firing when the barrel is hot?Has the new gun been broken in?Is the maintenance in place in time?Were acid primed corrosive bullets used?Do explosives contain corrosive substances?It is important to know that acid corrosion gunpowder is as destructive to the barrel as no chrome plating.

Another key point is the grinding tool for rifling. Another space-time arsenal generally changes a set of grinding tools for every thousand barrels produced.For example, the barrel of certain A is the first to be produced, and the barrel of certain B is the [-]th, so the lifespan of certain B's barrel must not be as good as that of certain A.

Industry, especially military industry, must not be sloppy at all.If basic industries are not developed, and material technology is not up to standard, there will be many troubles.

　Speaking of this, someone wants to use "Shui Lianzhu" as an example, saying that the gun is so strong.However, the service life of the "Water Lianzhu" produced during World War II is calculated based on three months, which many people don't know.So don't confuse collectibles with Army conventional weapons, they are not the same thing at all.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)