I want to be emperor

Chapter 624 The Chain Reaction of Steel Production Skyrocketing
In the 15th year of Chengshun, with the further development of the smelting technology in the industrial circle of the Great Chu Empire, after the Daye mixing method (Pudelin method) was developed, the Great Chu Empire was able to industrially produce a large amount of smelting oil, which is extremely important for the development of the entire industry. Low-carbon steel.

This also directly drives the development of the defense industry!
The navy was the first to follow up, and in the autumn it was the first to propose the use of steel instead of wood as part of the load-bearing structure of warships.

Trying to use the excellent properties of steel to obtain a series of load-bearing properties that are better than wood, and then promote the overall performance of warfare, such as using the excellent properties of wrought iron to build larger warships, such as more than [-] tons or even larger tonnage of warships.

At the same time, the excellent performance of steel is used to reduce the weight as much as possible on the premise of ensuring the structural strength of the ship.

This may sound strange. After all, wood is lighter than steel. Why is it lighter to build a ship with steel? When the performance of wood itself is limited, in order to ensure strength, thicker and thicker wood is required, and more dense ship ribs are laid.

Although the wood itself is lighter, in order to ensure the strength of the ship, more wood is needed.

Although wrought iron is heavier, it has better strength, and less wrought iron can be used to ensure the overall strength of the ship.

Of course, this also puts forward higher requirements for the iron and steel smelting industry, requiring the produced wrought iron parts to have higher performance, and to ensure machinability under the premise of ensuring strength and toughness...

That is to say, the carbon content should be controlled at a certain level, not too low, then the performance cannot be guaranteed, and not too high, if it is too high, it cannot be processed with the current processing capacity of the Great Chu Empire...

So this is very contradictory. Even if the steel factory can produce better high-carbon steel, it can't be used... because it is impossible to carry out large-scale mechanized processing of high-carbon steel.

Therefore, the carbon content of the material depends on the processing level and application requirements, and it cannot be random.

This is why the wrought iron produced by Daye Iron and Steel Company has more than a dozen different specifications. Different industries have different requirements for the strength, toughness and machinability of steel.

The size of the parts also directly affects the processing level.

The larger the parts, the more difficult it is to process them.

Of course, these are all because the overall smelting level of the Great Chu Empire is still relatively limited, such as the obvious indicator of furnace temperature, which barely reached [-] degrees after more than ten years of tossing.

If the furnace temperature can reach more than 500 degrees Celsius, then there is no need to be so troublesome, and pure molten iron can be produced directly, because the melting point of iron is 1538 degrees.

After the pure molten iron is produced, the follow-up is simple. The carburizing operation can be carried out according to the needs of the material. By adding appropriate carbon elements, iron-carbon alloys with different carbon contents can be obtained, that is, steel.

At that time, if you want low-carbon steel, you will have low-carbon steel, and if you want high-carbon steel, you will have high-carbon steel.

Moreover, other messy elements can be added according to the needs to produce various ferroalloy materials.

In addition, after the furnace temperature reaches the requirements, direct casting can be adopted to obtain large steel parts with satisfactory performance, instead of hard and brittle pig iron as before...

In particular, ultra-large steel parts can basically only be formed by casting, and the production and processing level of large steel parts often also represents the basic capabilities of a country's heavy industry.

Even in later generations, only a few truly heavy industrial powers are able to directly cast super-large parts that weigh hundreds of tons at every turn... not to mention hundreds of tons, even if it is dozens of tons, no country is capable of casting. Can play around.

As for the current... Great Chu Empire, there is still a long way to go to reach this level. At least for now, it is not possible. They have not even solved the most basic problem of furnace temperature, and they cannot completely melt pure iron.

So they can only adopt a more primitive method, first produce low-carbon steel with lower carbon content for casting or forging, and properly add carbon elements in the subsequent process to improve performance.

But in any case, the Great Chu Empire has initially solved the mass production problem just now.

For this reason, the navy has also launched the iron-ribbed wood-hull ship plan. In this plan, it is not only to explore and study steel as a ship's load-bearing structure, but also to seek to further improve the performance of warships and reduce costs. Rib of heavy responsibility.

And this point has nothing to do with performance, as long as it is because the warships and large armed merchant ships used by the Great Chu Empire Navy are all new ship types, and this new ship type is improved from the Galen ship type.

Let’s not talk about the quality of this type of ship, but they have a characteristic, that is, there are a lot of ribs in the frame of the ship.

And these ship ribs are not straight, but have a curvature.

Because the plasticity of wood is very poor, it is difficult to make the original straight wood into a curved one. We can only choose the naturally curved wood as the ship rib material.

It is conceivable that this kind of material is very difficult to find, and if there is manual intervention in the wood production process, it will take a long time, not a few years... decades!

The Ship Administration Department submitted a report saying that the ship's ribs must be natural bent wood, and the local production is very small, and a considerable part still needs to be searched and imported from various places in Southeast Asia, but the quantity is not much, even if the empire is now all over the world. This kind of natural bent wood, but if things go on like this, I am afraid that there will not be enough ship rib materials for shipbuilding in a few years.

But the iron rib can perfectly solve this thing.

There are a lot of iron and steel for the Great Chu Empire, so the iron ribs used for shipbuilding are more demanding, and the production is more troublesome, but still the same sentence, these can be solved as long as a certain price is paid.

Many factors finally led to the navy's vigorous iron-rib wood-hull ship plan.

Then it went a step further, planning to restart the iron cast artillery plan again after more than ten years, trying to reduce the cost of artillery by casting wrought iron artillery.

However, although the navy launched the so-called wrought iron casting artillery project, the army was indifferent... It's not that the army didn't pay attention to wrought iron, and didn't know the situation of wrought iron. In fact, the army actually knew and paid attention to the big guns earlier than the navy. The iron and steel company's mass production of wrought iron was even used earlier, and now the newly produced artillery mounts have already begun to use these wrought iron.

But... these are limited to gun mounts!
As for the barrel, the Army still firmly uses the bronze barrel!

The army is not the navy, and the two sides have different requirements for artillery.

What the navy requires is power and accuracy, but it is not sensitive to weight. At the same time, because the navy's artillery is big, it is also more sensitive to cost.

That's why the navy said that cast iron cannons can achieve [-] to [-] percent of the performance of bronze cannons, and they dare to directly equip them on a large scale.

But the army, they are very sensitive to the weight of the artillery, on the contrary, the power is second, and the weight is the most important thing for the army.

As for the cost, the army's artillery is all small-caliber and relatively short-barreled artillery, which is much cheaper than the navy's large-caliber long-barreled cannon.

A large-caliber artillery of the navy weighs two to three tons alone... But a 115mm field gun commonly used by the army weighs only a few hundred kilograms.

There is also a big gap in quantity. Navy warships are equipped with dozens of cannons at every turn, and first-class battleships have more than a hundred cannons.

As for the army, it is a first-class division of combat readiness, and the number of artillery is only a few dozen.

So the army seems to have a lot of artillery, but in fact the navy is the big gun user...

So relatively speaking.The Army is less sensitive to the cost of artillery than the Navy.

Coupled with the requirements for accuracy, service life and weight, the Army firmly chose bronze artillery.

Unless the iron cast artillery can keep up in performance, they will not choose iron cast artillery.

However, although the army firmly continues to use bronze artillery in terms of artillery, the army's opinion is different when it comes to muskets!

Although the army did not make any big moves like the navy, in fact, many of the army's weapons and equipment have benefited from the mass production of wrought iron.

How should I put it, but the procurement costs of all weapons and equipment that have anything to do with iron have dropped significantly.

In the past, the output of wrought iron was low and the cost was high, but now that Daye Iron and Steel Company has introduced the mixing method, the output of wrought iron has increased by leaps and bounds, and the cost has also dropped significantly.

This also reflects the cost of weapons and equipment of various iron products as end products.

After all, almost all iron products nowadays are processed with wrought iron as raw material. If the output of wrought iron increases and the cost decreases, the price of iron products will also decrease accordingly.

Whether it is the army or the navy, almost the entire defense industry has benefited from Daye Iron and Steel's technological breakthrough.

The national defense industry is actually still a small head, and the real benefit is actually the entire industry of the Great Chu Empire.

The output of steel and coal is regarded as an important indicator of industrialization because these two things are extremely important.

Strictly speaking, coal also serves steel.

Therefore, if you want to measure the national strength of a country in modern times, um, specifically during the first industrial revolution and the second industrial revolution, you can just look at their steel production.

simple and clear!
During this period, countries with large steel production were basically great powers.

And the one with the most is the undisputed world boss!

Even in the period of the third industrial revolution, although steel production capacity is not the most important indicator, it is still an important indicator to measure national strength.

This shows the importance of steel!
In today's Great Chu Empire, the development of the steel industry also plays an extremely strategic role.

With the continuous development of the steel industry of the Great Chu Empire, the national strength of the Great Chu Empire is also increasing.

In the very beginning, Funiu Mountain and even during the first two years of the official proclaiming of the emperor and the founding of the country, the Great Chu Empire did not have any steel industry, and even the iron materials needed to make weapons were smuggled and purchased outside.

After crossing the river and capturing Wuchang, and even taking Daye, the Great Chu Empire officially started to develop the steel industry. At that time, there was no technology to speak of. It was nothing more than throwing money at people and relying on the most primitive methods to forcibly increase production. .

Daye Iron and Steel Company was established during this period.

At that time, Daye Iron and Steel Company had very low technological content, and used old-fashioned methods to smelt steel, especially the production of wrought iron still relied on the original method of frying steel. In order to obtain enough wrought iron, Daye Iron and Steel Company at that time The iron and steel company's steel frying factory is extremely large in scale, with a large number of workers, and all of them are densely packed with steel frying furnaces!

Later, through continuous improvement, water power was introduced, and a larger iron furnace was built. Although the steel frying method was still used, manpower was replaced by mechanical equipment to a certain extent, and the production capacity scale was improved.

This production capacity can basically only meet the needs of national defense and basic livelihood needs, and the overall output is still very low.

But even if this is the only thing that makes Luo Zhixue look down on production capacity, it still allows the Great Chu Empire to have the wrought iron production capacity that surpasses other countries. These wrought iron not only meet the domestic defense and the necessary livelihood needs of the people, but also produce It exported a large amount of various iron products, especially weapons, and brought a huge amount of foreign exchange income to the Great Chu Empire.

And now... the wrought iron output produced by Daye Iron and Steel Company in half a year is more than the combined output of wrought iron produced by all the iron and steel companies in the country last year...

In just one year, Daye Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. has increased the national wrought iron production by more than three times, and more importantly, this is just the beginning.

The internal production expansion plan of Daye Iron and Steel Company is still in progress. Once the expansion is successful, the wrought iron production capacity of Daye Iron and Steel Company alone will be equivalent to twice the total wrought iron output of Chengshun in the past 14 years!
The Great Chu Empire not only has Daye Iron and Steel Company, but also Dangtu Iron and Steel Company, Liaodong Iron and Steel Company, Liaoyang Iron and Steel Company, Qiongzhou Iron and Steel Company, Tianjin Iron and Steel Company and more than a dozen medium and large steel companies.

Moreover, these steel companies are all directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry of Industry has taken the lead in contacting these steel companies directly under the Ministry of Industry for negotiations. The steel companies have obtained Daye Iron and Steel Company's Daye Iron and Steel Company by paying patent fees. The patent authorization of the mixing method is now also in the process of related technical preparations.

This year it may not be possible, but next year, these iron and steel companies will gradually adopt the Daye mixing method to produce wrought iron.

At that time, the wrought iron production capacity of the Great Chu Empire will show explosive growth.

Now, the Iron and Steel Department of the Ministry of Industry has begun to worry that the major steel plants are expanding production, but the coal production capacity and iron ore production capacity are insufficient. At that time, there will be empty iron factories, but there will be no coal and iron ore. white blind...

In addition, they are even more worried that increasing the production capacity of wrought iron to more than ten times or more in just one or two years will lead to a surplus of wrought iron that cannot be sold.

Although the domestic demand for iron products is huge, it is not unlimited. If it cannot be sold after expanding production, wouldn't it be the end...

For this reason, many people in the Iron and Steel Department of the Ministry of Industry are quite worried.

In the end, the people from the machinery department next door reassured them: as long as the price is cheap enough, the domestic machinery industry will charge as much as they can!

Nowadays, there is almost no end to the demand for machinery and equipment in major domestic factories, but because the price of machinery and equipment is too expensive, many factories cannot afford it, or are reluctant to buy so much.

However, if the price of upstream iron materials falls, then their machinery industry will naturally follow suit, relying on low costs to expand the total sales of various types of machinery and equipment, which can further reduce the cost of the end products of each downstream factory, and these end industrial products Lower prices, access to more markets.

It can be summed up in one sentence: I am not afraid that you have too much iron, but I am afraid that you will not lower the price!
If it was a capitalist who came over, they would spit on these officials of the Machinery Department: Why did I lower the price, why should I only earn ten yuan if I can earn one hundred?

But the heads of the major heavy industry factories in the Great Chu Empire are not capitalists, but officials!

The Ministry of Industry is not a consortium, but an industrial department of the empire!

Therefore, after a round of discussions among the various departments within the Ministry of Industry, they quickly made a decision to reduce the price!

It's not just the price drop of wrought iron, but a series of downstream products, such as mechanical equipment and various iron products, have been reduced in price!

Several people in charge of the light industry also said that with the reduction of equipment prices and production costs, they can also reduce the price of light industrial products such as cloth, which will benefit the people and further expand the export price advantage of imperial products.

If this meeting is known to other countries or forces, especially the princes and princes in India where cotton cloth is mainly produced in several handicraft workshops, they will definitely jump their feet in anger...

Nima, Chu Manzi's cotton cloth is already cheap enough, and the price needs to be reduced... Then they are still playing a fart!

Now a large number of employees in the hand-woven textile industry on the Indian peninsula are almost unable to survive, and they are barely maintained by the trade protection of the local princes and nobles.

If the price of cotton cloth in the Great Chu Empire continues to drop... I am afraid that even local trade protection will not be able to prevent the large-scale extinction of the cotton textile industry in the Indian Peninsula.

This is the power of industrialization. In fact, the Great Chu Empire did not specifically target the Indian Peninsula...not even the cotton spinning industry in any indigenous country or power.

The cotton spinning industry of the Great Chu Empire mainly supplies domestic consumption, and the proportion of exports is actually very low.

With a population of more than 2 million, no threat of war, continuous economic development, and the beginning of industrialization, the mainland of the Great Chu Empire is the largest consumer market on this planet!

Even if it is silk and porcelain, which are traditionally exported in China, most of them are actually sold domestically, and the proportion of exports is not high.

The same goes for cotton!
The production and operation of most of the textile companies in the Great Chu Empire always focused on the domestic market, especially Hanyang Textile Company and Su Qin Textile Company, the two rivals. The fierce competition between them was always centered around the domestic market. ongoing.

As for exporting, they do it too, but that's just going with the flow.

Not to mention a large number of small and medium-sized textile companies in the country. They can't even find other domestic markets. They basically rely on the local market to survive, and exports are too far away from them.

Therefore, the proportion of cotton cloth exports from the Great Chu Empire is actually not large, but such cotton cloth exports still directly crushed the handmade cotton spinning industries in neighboring countries!

In the Fusang Islands, there are no practitioners in the handmade cotton spinning industry in those cities. Those people in the past either changed their careers or jumped into the sea...

The same is true of the Nanyang Peninsula and the islands, especially with the strong expansion of the Great Chu Empire in Nanyang, after the war forced all countries to fully open their markets, the local handmade cotton spinning industry counted as one, and all of them were completely hit to death.

On the Indian peninsula, even though some indigenous princes implemented trade protection measures, the cheap cotton cloth from the Great Chu Empire still had a strong impact on the survival of the handmade cotton spinning industry on the Indian peninsula.

After all, the Indian peninsula is quite large, and not every maharaja has a large-scale handmade cotton spinning industry. For many Indian maharajas, cotton cloth is imported anyway.

Finding nearby princes to import cotton cloth also costs money, and it is equivalent to funding the enemy. The most important thing is that it is expensive.

Importing cotton cloth from the Great Chu Empire is much cheaper and can save a lot of money. Moreover, the Great Chu Empire is far away, and there is no direct threat to them, so they can do business with the Great Chu Empire with confidence.

The Indian peninsula is not monolithic, which also gave the cheap cotton cloth of the Great Chu Empire room to enter the market of the Indian peninsula.

This is still before!

If the price of cotton cloth is further reduced, I am afraid that the handmade cotton spinning industry in the entire Indian peninsula will suffer a devastating impact, even if there is a so-called trade protection policy.

What's more, the military of the Great Chu Empire will not always tolerate a small group of natives in the Indian Peninsula and continue to infringe on the legitimate interests of the merchants of the Great Chu Empire.

The navy has long made a promise to the domestic industry, well, basically what the boss of the navy said when chatting with Ji Dehua, the new secretary of the Ministry of Industry: When we have the opportunity, our navy will help the domestic industry to bring justice sooner or later Yes, when the time comes, stuff those native princes playing trade protection into the barrels of naval guns and shoot them into the Indian Ocean!
Well, our navy is a little tight recently, why don't you say hello to the Songjiang Naval Shipyard and the Guangzhou Shipyard and ask the shipyard to lower the price.

The current battleship is too expensive, can it be less than tens of millions.

However, Ji Dehua, the new secretary of the Ministry of Industry, didn't take any notice of it: it's easy to talk about other things, but it's not about money...

Besides, Ji Dehua didn't have the right to directly ask his subordinate shipyards to cut prices!
Although the Ministry of Industry is directly in charge of the major shipyards, the Ministry of Industry is only responsible for macro-management and payment, and the direct coordination of various enterprises... but it does not involve the specific operations of the enterprises under the Ministry of Industry.

The enterprises under the Ministry of Industry, including the Songjiang Naval Shipyard and the Guangzhou Shipyard, the two largest and most technical government-run shipyards in China, operate independently and are responsible for their own profits and losses.

And money is even more difficult to deal with. If Ji Dehua dares to ask the shipyard below to cut the price, the other shipyard dares to ask him to pay for it... Otherwise, don't dream that they can sell their own interests.

There are thousands of people in the huge shipyard, and there is a large number of lumberyards behind it. Many suppliers such as transportation, wood processing plants, machinery and equipment, rope sailing, etc. all rely on the navy's shipbuilding funds to support them.
You, Ji Dehua, said that if you lower the price, you will lower the price... This is impossible.

The minister of the Ministry of Industry seems to be awesome, but Ji Dehua is now only a co-organizer, not a minister of affairs.

Even if it is the minister of affairs, if Ji Dehua dares to make this request, they will dare to let Ji Dehua support so many people!
Therefore, Ji Dehua directly ignored the navy's request... and then put on an appearance that domestic markets are enough for me to worry about, and foreign markets like to do whatever they want.

As for the Indian peninsula, who doesn't know that your navy wants to get through the Strait of Malacca in your dreams, and then set foot in the Indian peninsula!
As for us, our Ministry of Industry, alas, who told you that we are keen on the market in the Indian peninsula... We are too busy with the domestic market now, so how can we have the time and energy to toss about the foreign market!

The foreign market is actually the same, well, especially the market in the Indian peninsula, which is the best, but it doesn’t matter without our Ministry of Industry...

Marines!
(End of this chapter)