Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 280 Xinhua Castle ([-])

Shi Qinjie stood in the newly built wood processing factory by the Coconut River Reservoir in the east of the city, and carefully observed the factory, which was operated by some technicians supported by local support.Most of the management and technical personnel in the factory are foreigners from the local area, and a small part are recruited from the local Irish immigrants. As for the general workers, they are the Eight Banners slaves or Malay slaves.

The wood processing plant is divided into two parts: processing workshop and drying workshop.The drying workshop has only built a temporary small drying kiln, about three meters high, using the fumigated drying method that has been eliminated in the east coast.That is to say, the wood is stacked together, and then burned with a small fire at the bottom of the pile, and the wood is dried by the heat of the smoke generated by the combustion.This method not only has a slow drying speed and uneven drying, but also easily causes fires and causes relatively large environmental pollution.

At present, this "backward" technology has been eliminated in the local area and replaced by a more advanced tunnel smoke drying method.That is, many rectangular brick flues are set up around the inside of the drying kiln wall, and the top of the flue is covered with holes.During production, fuel is put into the flue to burn, and then the wood is dried by burning smoke.It can be seen that this method of drying wood is not essentially different from the previous one. Its advantage is that the wood pile is completely out of contact with the open flame, and the wood is heated and dried by heating the humid air in the kiln as a medium. Dry, so that the possibility of fire is greatly reduced.

However, when Xinhua Castle started this project this time, new local technicians suggested to Shi Qinjie to use the waste heat from brick kilns to dry wood.They believe that the lack of coal in the New China region and the hot and humid weather make it difficult to collect dry firewood fuels. In addition, the traditional drying kiln requires a large number of feeders and firemen, so it is not very suitable for the New China region where there is a shortage of labor. .

It just so happens that the brick-making capacity of the small clay kiln currently in use outside Xinhua Castle is relatively limited, and after several months of rainy season, the kiln body originally made of clay has been severely damaged. At the end of the rainy season in April, construction of a large-scale brick-making wheel kiln will be started to solve the above problems once and for all.

This wheel kiln is similar to the wheel kiln built earlier in the local area. If it is produced normally, it will not be a problem to produce more than 500 million standard bricks per year (there are currently three local wheel kilns, each with an annual output of 3600 million standard bricks. The workers include A total of more than 2000 people including slave labor).However, with such a large production capacity, the number of workers required is definitely not small. Pei Suoning, who presided over the construction of the brick kiln factory, told him bluntly that it may need about 500 people.Because a large number of skilled workers are needed to make adobe every day, at this time, Shi Qinjie really misses the automatic brick making machine in the 21st century.It is said that the local people are already researching this kind of machinery, but it is not urgent. It seems that Xinhua Castle still needs a lot of manpower to make bricks by hand.

If the new wheel kiln is calculated according to the local data parameters, it can produce about 6000-8000 cubic meters of waste gas per hour, and the temperature is about 80-100 degrees.The ignition point of wood is 250-300 ° C, which can be used to dry wood.According to estimates, such a flow of waste hot air is more than enough to dry two kilns with a capacity of 5000 to 6000 cubic meters (referring to the capacity of wood).According to the calculation that it takes an average of six days to dry a batch of wood, there is no problem in drying more than [-]-[-] cubic meters of wood every year.With so much wood, it is enough to build a few battleships, not to mention the main merchant ship manufacturing here in the future. Perhaps, the New China Colony can export a certain amount of shipbuilding wood to China in the future.

Of course, the navy department is quite picky, and those stubborn guys currently only accept wood that has been dried in the shade by special means to make the hull of a warship, and refuse to use any wood that is quickly dried in a kiln, on the grounds that the quality of the dried wood is unreliable .Therefore, in the future, the timber exported to China can only be used by the two local shipyards to build merchant ships and fishing boats. If it is not possible, it can also be used by local timber processing factories to manufacture carriages, tools, furniture, gun stocks and other components.

For the suggestion put forward by the technicians, Shi Qinjie only thought about it for a while and then readily agreed.There is no way, unlike the Pingan Coal Mine in New China, where there is a continuous supply of coal from the Pingan Coal Mine. Like burning bricks, the slaves can only collect firewood and dry it before burning it.The only coal that was transported locally was also used by lime kilns and cement kilns to burn lime and cement.It can be said that if you want to develop any energy-intensive industries in the New China region, you will not get permission from Shi Qinjie unless it is necessary. Therefore, it is true that the technicians proposed to use the waste heat from the brick kiln factory to dry wood. His appetite is gone, without him, the main reason is to save a lot of fuel.

Although construction is inconvenient during the rainy season, the wood processing factory still took advantage of the rare sunny weather during the rainy season to build many wooden canopies on the already leveled land.Under the canopy, many slaves from the Eight Banners are building factories. Recently, due to the large amount of bricks used for building the city wall, the timber processing factories are allocated very little quota, probably less than 2000 yuan a day, so the progress has not been fast.For this reason, the person in charge of the factory took advantage of Shi Qinjie's visit and began to lament his bitterness, complaining about the lack of building materials, his difficulty in completing tasks on time, and so on.

Complaints from the factory manager Shi Qinjie knows very well that if they fail to complete the tasks, they will be judged by themselves. Complaining to themselves at this time is considered an early vaccination.Shi Qinjie also laughed at this matter, and let it go, after all, it is really not his fault.

But when it comes to the lack of red bricks, it is indeed a major problem restricting the development of Xinhua Castle today.According to the output of the existing small earthen kiln (annual output of 350 million), the bricks are really not enough, not to mention other things, this city wall is a super big consumer of bricks.Shi Qinjie calculated that if the city wall under construction was not mixed with a large amount of stones and all of them were built with existing large-sized city wall bricks (four times the size of standard bricks), it would cost about 4 yuan per meter of city wall. meta bricks.This consumption is astonishing. It is necessary to know that the local production of bricks is nearly 600 million pieces per year, but it is still not enough for use.No, the city walls of several newly built settlements in the past two years have either not been completed, or they have only been built with small castles hundreds of meters away. This is still in the case of a large amount of mixed stone and wood. .

Therefore, instead of relying on bricks transported from the local area (each transport ship transports 20 standard bricks), the construction of Xinhua Castle might as well rely on its own efforts to burn bricks locally.The construction of the Fort in the River in South Africa was a good example. Mo Ming and Liu Ang set up several small kilns using bricks brought from the local area, and then drove a large number of indigenous people to quarry. It was just a small castle, and it was expanded several times after there were surplus building materials to get what it is today.

"It's such a headache." Shi Qinjie was also a little anxious, who made the automatic brick making machine not come out yet?If the slaves here are allowed to make bricks by hand, even if they are allowed to work 14 hours a day, that person can make a brick of 200 yuan a day, not to mention that the clumsy slaves at the beginning may not be able to make it. to such a high labor efficiency.Moreover, the capacity of the current small earthen kiln is also limited. More than 3 bricks can be fired at one time, and it takes three days to burn one time. Between the teeth.

"It seems that the work of the last round kiln has to be done quickly." Shi Qinjie thought to himself, "Well, the construction will start as soon as the rainy season is over. The bricks burned for a while will have to be stored. The batch of refractory bricks shipped this time I also have to keep it. The initial plan for a rotary kiln with an annual output of 1500 million standard bricks seems to be a bit conservative. Next, repair the city walls, build houses, repair docks, repair irrigation facilities, repair forts and even repair factories, which will not use a huge amount of construction materials. I am so worried, and I don’t know that the land turtles in those European countries come every time. How does a colony build a stronghold? Do you build thatched shacks and wooden houses for a year or two like those natives at the beginning? Or do you drive a large number of local slaves to dig mountains to build houses?"

After watching the drying workshop, Shi Qinjie went to the processing workshop next door.There is nothing to say here. Some carpenters from the local area, with a group of apprentices newly recruited locally, are processing logs.After the logs were felled from the logging camp in the upper mountain, the branches, leaves and bark were removed on the spot. The remaining logs were then pulled by the slaves along the river to the processing workshop, and then neatly stacked under the canopy on one side, waiting The carpenters in the workshop come to moisturize, embalm and kill insects.

Along the bank of the reservoir, the workshop has also installed several simple wooden hydraulic sawing machines, hydraulic woodworking lathes and other things, which are the tools carpenters will need to process wood in the future.It is a pity that the most advanced domestic steam sawing machines and steam woodworking lathes are absolutely forbidden to flow into any overseas colonies at this stage, and it is not easy for anyone to say hello.Therefore, these local carpenters can only continue to use the "backward" equipment they have used for many years to process wood.

After watching the wood processing factory, Shi Qinjie gave some instructions, and then walked towards the office in the city under an umbrella surrounded by guards.

(End of this chapter)