I want to be emperor

Chapter 390 Machinery and Industry

Qin's purchase of new spinning machines and new looms, Hantian Machinery Factory did not dare to make a decision, but quickly reported to the Ministry of Industry.

After all, Hantian Machinery Factory is still a relatively special factory. The mission of this factory from the beginning was to carry out supporting research and development and produce various mechanical equipment for Hantian Arsenal and many other factories affiliated to the Ministry of Industry. Although it also has various civilian products They are sold to the outside world, but they are all ordinary civilian products, not including various mechanical equipment.

And all kinds of mechanical equipment are also very important to the Great Chu Empire. To a certain extent, the reason why the Great Chu Empire can produce so many advanced guns is that even the output of traditional weapons such as armor is not ordinary handicraft workshops. can be compared.

And these all depend on these mechanical equipment!

A large number of mechanical equipment is the foundation of the national defense strength of the Great Chu Empire. It is precisely because of the large number of mechanical equipment that is ahead of the contemporary level that the Great Chu Empire can still do work with a limited number of high-end craftsmen. To large-scale production of various types of guns and cold weapons armor and other weapons and equipment.

Because if mechanical production is adopted, many processes do not require manual operation by skilled craftsmen, but can be produced by skilled workers operating machinery.

This point is very obvious in the process that is repetitive and has certain requirements for technology.

For example, the armor produced in the Great Chu Empire today is actually no different from the iron armor of the Ming Army and Dongyao, and they are all very typical cloth face armor.

To put it bluntly, this kind of cloth face armor is a sandwich... the outer layer is ordinary cloth face or cotton armor, the middle is an iron sheet, and the inside is cotton armor.

Well, you can also directly understand this cotton armor as a thicker and tighter cotton cloth.

Simply put, it is two layers of cloth holding a layer of iron.

Here, whether it is cloth or cotton armor, there is no technical difficulty.

But the layer of iron in the middle is not so easy to deal with.

Maybe you will say, this is just adding an iron sheet, but it is easy to say, but it is not easy to do, especially if you want to mass-produce it.

This also involves a problem that ordinary people can easily overlook, and that is how to fix these iron pieces.

Whether it is not falling off in daily sports, the iron sheet still does not fall off after being shot or stabbed by the enemy during combat.

This alone involves a process that made it difficult for ancient craftsmen: drilling!

It is not an easy task to drill a piece of iron whose hardness after repeated forging is close to the level of low-carbon steel. In later generations, if you don't have professional tools, it will not be so easy to drill a hole out of a piece of iron.

Before drilling, you have to grind and deburr the iron sheet, and then the most important iron sheet is formed!
After all, you have to process the iron sheet into a fixed size iron sheet to proceed to the next step of processing.

It is not difficult to fix the size, but the difficult thing is that the iron sheet after processing needs to have good performance, not too brittle or too soft, preferably the kind that can be made into low-carbon steel.

At the same time, the Great Chu Empire is still unable to directly train steel on a large scale and stably...the furnace temperature cannot reach the temperature and there is no way to directly train steel.

The Great Chu Empire still relies on the traditional way of frying steel to produce steel. The cost is high, the quality is unstable, and the output is still low... The limited amount of steel is used for internal production, especially the steel used to build various machines. Those who make parts, let alone armor, even guns and so on, are reluctant to use these expensive steel materials, and the output is only a little bit.

So the iron pieces on the armor of the Great Chu Empire are just ordinary iron.

Of course, even if it's iron, it can't be used directly. Anyway, the iron block has to be beaten into iron pieces.

What, you said that it would be poured directly into an iron sheet and formed in one go... With the current technology of the Great Chu Empire, if you dare to do this, this iron sheet will not even be able to block the arrows of a half-stone bow, and it will burst for you in minutes Look.

This iron sheet has to be forged and formed before the next steps of cutting, edging, hole turning and other processes can be carried out.

And this forging work is the most important work in the iron sheet forming process. It is extremely time-consuming if it is made by hand, and it is difficult to guarantee uniform quality.

But on the side of the Great Chu Empire, the water-powered forging machine is directly used for forging. The big hammer driven by the machine is almost enough to strike twice casually.

The subsequent cutting, edging, deburring and hole drilling also use large-scale mechanical equipment. At first glance, it seems that this thing is not difficult:
A piece of red-hot iron is turned into a piece of iron under the hammer of the machine, and then it is deburred and polished under the same mechanical grinding machine, and then it is sent to the drilling machine. The hole is drilled in two operations...

In this way, the iron sheet used for a piece of armor has completed the three most important processes. The follow-up is to paint and prevent rust, and then use rivets to fix the two layers of cloth on the front and back.

Because of the rivets, this kind of armor, if you don't add an extra layer of purely decorative cloth on the outer layer, you can see dense foam nails directly.

These blister nails are actually fixing the iron sheets on the inner layer.

Of course, after the later Dongyao released the horses to Nanshan, coupled with the continuous development of firearms, after the armor became more and more useless, the Dongyao gradually removed the iron pieces in the cloth armor, and only kept a symbolic heart goggles, or even don't even need the heart goggles...

However, this foam nail was preserved and turned into a purely decorative foam nail...

The three processes of 'forging the iron sheet, grinding and deburring the iron sheet, and drilling the iron sheet' in the production of the iron sheet used in armor are the most time-consuming in the production of armor, the process that requires the highest craftsman, and the cost is also the highest. of the three processes.

It is because these iron pieces are difficult to produce, so the fish scale armor, armor or cloth face armor in ancient armor, which is composed of many small iron pieces, is often very expensive.

A set of ordinary full cloth face armor used by infantry often costs 30 taels of silver, which is roughly equivalent to the price of an ordinary Mongolian horse.

And the price of a matchlock gun is only three or four taels of silver, which is the price of the imitation production of the Chu-made thief gun by the Ming court.

A good waist knife, um, that is, iron body and steel blade. The steel knife that people used to say in ancient times is about one tael of silver, and sometimes it is not used...

A cannon is only a few tens of taels of silver, and the Ming court casts a small cannon that weighs tens of catties and hundreds of catties, such as a tiger squatting cannon. .

Long-barreled field cannons are more expensive, mainly because the rate of good products is relatively low, and there are many scraps. This is the case. In the past two years, the workshops of the Ming court have cast two and a half catties of iron field cannons, and the price is about 200 taels to three taels. about.Five-jin iron cannons are more expensive, but they only cost between five hundred and one thousand taels.

The reason why the price fluctuates depends purely on how dark the hearts of the chief officials are.

In other words, for a set of ordinary infantry armor, you can buy four or five muskets or a horse.

A two-and-a-half catty field gun is equivalent to four or five sets of infantry armor.

And this is also the reason why the number of heavily armored soldiers in the Ming court and even the Dongyao side is very small, accounting for a very low proportion of the overall army.

In the Ming army, only soldiers or officers were equipped with this full set of infantry armor, and Dongyao also had similar elites, such as white armor soldiers.

As for the others, there are a lot of ordinary soldiers in the Ming army, and there are also a bunch of similar Eight Banners soldiers in Dongyao. These soldiers are equipped with very rubbish armor, or simply cotton armor without iron pieces.

Then there are still a bunch of recruited guards in the Ming army who don't even have cotton armor, young and strong.

There is also a group of miscellaneous soldiers on the Dongyao side who are supporting them.

The arms configurations of the two warring parties are actually similar, and the reason why they make these common choices is the same: armor is really expensive!
A set of tens of taels, then 10 sets is a few hundred thousand taels, and a hundred thousand sets is a few million.

Simply expensive is fine, but there is no way to mass-produce this thing in a short period of time, because if it is traditionally handcrafted, the production speed is very fast, and the requirements for craftsmen are high.

There are only so many skilled craftsmen, so even if they have money, it is difficult for them to obtain a large amount of new armor in a short period of time during the war.

However, this thing is not a one-time purchase that can be used all the time. This thing is also a consumable. After a big battle, a considerable part of the armor needs to be repaired or simply damaged beyond repair.

innocent

The Chu army was fighting, and among the various materials transported in the rear, there was no lack of armor.

These armors are used to supplement the front line battle damage.

But those who can compete with the Chu army are not connected. In fact, most of the time, no matter what country, the rulers seldom equip ordinary soldiers with these high-quality armors, and often just give some iron pieces.

The simple breastplates and busts worn by ordinary soldiers in Western Europe, and the large-area iron armor in East Asia may have different names in troubled times, but they are actually the same kind of junk 'large-area iron armor', which belongs to even bows and arrows. The kind that can't be stopped, it is a psychological comfort on the battlefield.

Therefore, in the era of handicraft industry, armor is a direct reflection of a country's productivity.

The reason why the Great Chu Empire is able to equip ordinary soldiers with good cloth face armor is not only not short of money, but more importantly because the Great Chu Empire uses machinery for mass production, breaking through the limit on the number of skilled craftsmen.

A large number of mechanical equipment is the direct reason for the huge production capacity of all kinds of ordnance in the Great Chu Empire.

Naturally, such important mechanical equipment was highly valued in the Great Chu Empire.

The Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire has successively established five large-scale machinery factories, Xiangyang Machinery Factory, Hantian Machinery Factory, Changsha Machinery Factory, Jiujiang Machinery Factory, and Dangtu Machinery Factory. In addition, several small and medium-sized machinery factories have been established in some important cities. Scale, technically not advanced machinery factory.

These machinery factories have carried out supporting research and development and produced various machinery and equipment for dozens of important defense enterprises in the Great Chu Empire and more than 100 other types of factories.

But now, the Qin family from outside came to the door, saying that they wanted to purchase their machinery and equipment.

If ordinary people came to look for them, Hantian Machinery Factory would drive them out without the need of the Ministry of Industry.

However, the people from the Qin family are really rich, and offered a price that Hantian Factory could not refuse, and even the Ministry of Industry seemed hesitant.

The Qin family saw that the person in charge of the Ministry of Industry hesitated and seemed willing to let go, and immediately increased the price.

We can also invite other textile families to jointly purchase your new machinery and equipment, not only looms and spinning machines, but also many other supporting machinery and equipment.

From cotton to finished cloth, the kind of a complete production line.

The total purchase amount is definitely more than 30 taels!

After the 30 taels were dropped, the matter was reported to Yuan Gaofeng, Minister of Industry and Minister of Counseling, but Yuan Gaofeng didn't dare to make up his mind, and finally reported to the Holy Tribunal.

When Luo Zhixue heard about this, he smiled, and then said, "Why not? People use money to buy machinery, not for nothing."

"Besides, the gentry are willing to devote themselves to industry, provide jobs for the people, increase tax revenue for the treasury, and increase income for cotton farmers. This is a good deed for both the country and the people. It is much better than letting them focus on the two acres of ruined land!"

After Luo Zhixue's speech, the matter was finally finalized.

The Qin family finally obtained the new equipment they dreamed of, a complete production line from cotton to finished cloth, not one set, but a total of seven production lines with different processes and production capacities.

Once these production lines are fully put into operation, the production capacity will directly surpass Hantian Textile Company, becoming the Great Chu Empire, and also the machine-made cloth manufacturer with the largest production capacity in the world!
(End of this chapter)