The Rise of Ming Dynasty 1646

Chapter 49
In the end, only the army horse failed to buy the expected quantity.

Only Shaozhou Zhaoji had about [-] military horses for sale, but no other merchants accepted bids.

The logistics department bought the one hundred and five horses at a price of 6000 taels, and they were all short Dian horses.

Fortunately, the Anhui merchant Zhang’s family said that they could source military horses, and they were tall Hetao horses, but each horse cost 85 taels, and it would take at least two months to arrive.

Zhu Linmi ordered six hundred horses without hesitation.Now the north of the Yangtze River has been occupied by Qing captives, and the places where the Ming Dynasty produces good horses are all in the north of the Yangtze River, so we must buy more while there are stocks.

After all the merchants left, Ying Tianxiang handed over today's purchase list to Zhu Linming, and the General Affairs Team of the Logistics Department had already stamped it, waiting for his final instructions.

I saw that there was no mistake in the long list of military supplies on the list, but the final total amount made Zhu Linming's eyelids twitch - 3 taels of silver!

If the scheduled Hetao military horses are included, the total amount will reach an astonishing 8 taels!
Although most of the payment is not paid until delivery, the pressure is still very high.

As Zhu Linmi's main source of income, Suji Iron Works now has a monthly sales of 3 taels and a net profit of nearly 5000 taels.

However, the fine steel sales market has been saturated for the time being. Maybe Ji Liang can open up a bigger market after selling the steel to Europe, but it takes nearly five months to travel from Macau to Europe by boat.Far water can hardly quench thirst!

Now the Dragon Guard recruits and veterans add up to less than 3000 people, and there is such a large expenditure. When the number of troops exceeds [-] in the future, it may be difficult to support military expenditures only by iron farms.

Moreover, once the troops start to participate in the war, there will be many expenses such as marching, road repairs, battle damage, wounded, pensions, etc., and the expenses will definitely be much higher than during training.

It is definitely unrealistic to rely on the imperial court to allocate money, and the household department itself is as poor as a ghost.

Zhu Linming found that under the current situation, some of the money-making plans in the plan must be implemented in advance.

He went through all the plans carefully, and finally decided to give priority to building a cement factory.

Cement was only a cheap building material in later generations, but in the Ming Dynasty, it could be sold as a high-end decoration material.

This thing can be fired with limestone and clay, and the cost is so low that it can be ignored. Basically, no matter how you sell it, you will only make a profit.

In addition, cement is also extremely useful in warfare.Zhu Linming had many exquisitely designed bastions in her mind.

This thing is actually a multi-layer city defense system with a concave polygon structure.Attacking any of its sides will receive cross-fire from at least two firepower points on the bastion.

At the same time, most of the walls are inclined inward, which can effectively deflect the impact of the shells.

It would be even more sour if the bastion was built with cement. Even with the strongest 24-pound artillery of the Qing army, it may not be able to break through after a month of bombardment.

In addition, although the production process of making cement is very simple, it is not easy to imitate.The firing temperature of 1300 degrees alone is enough to keep the copycats of this era out of the door.

On the one hand, Zhu Linmi sent Qiao Qian and several soldiers to find a place suitable for building a lime kiln—limestone is the core raw material for firing cement.On the other hand, he began to teach Song Yingxing the principle of firing cement.

He was still very reassured about Song Yingxing.This technology enthusiast has little interest in money, promotion, etc., but likes to delve into science and technology.It is absolutely impossible for him to betray Ming Dynasty's top doll technology database, which is Zhu Linmei.

When Song Yingxing learned that there is actually a powder in the world that can be as solid as a rock after being watered and dried, he immediately expressed with great interest that he wanted to make this thing by himself.

China is one of the countries with the most dense distribution of limestone in the world, and this kind of rock can be found almost everywhere.

Sure enough, Qiao Qian and others quickly found many lime kilns near the hills in the east of Longnan.Lime kilns are usually built in close proximity to places where limestone is produced in large quantities.

The next day, Zhu Linmi made a trip in person.

He checked several places where cement kilns could be repaired, but they were all not satisfactory.In the end he decided to just buy a lime kiln and forget about it.

After walking several miles along the foot of the mountain, Zhu Linmi found a limestone field that he was very satisfied with.

The scale of the calcination kiln here is not large, but it has a water mill, which is driven by water to grind ore, and the efficiency is quite good.

After negotiating with the kiln owner, he bought the lime yard at a high price of 4000 taels.Pay in three installments within three months.

The former kiln owner hired the nearby villagers to burn lime. Zhu Linmi not only kept them all, but also told them that they could find some relatives and friends to come, and they paid one tael of silver a month and took care of two meals.

Being able to eat in this era is a huge attraction. In the next few days, dozens of villagers came one after another, and the entire limeyard, oh, now the cement yard's labor force was immediately abundant.

In addition, Zhu Linmi also recruited the masons who had participated in the construction of the hot blast chamber in Suji Iron Works, and asked them to build three more hot blast chambers next to the lime kiln.

However, when the lime kiln was connected to the hot air chamber and started the first trial firing, something went wrong. The lime kiln, which was originally designed to withstand [-] to [-] degrees of heat, was blown by high-temperature hot air and cracked within a few hours.

Zhu Linmi didn't feel depressed, after all, the production efficiency of this old-fashioned lime kiln is too low, so it is better to simply build a new shaft kiln.

To be honest, he is not familiar with shaft kilns for burning cement, but he knows the structure of steelmaking blast furnaces, and he also knows that both of them require a high temperature of 1300 degrees, so as long as the inlet and outlet ports are changed, they should be universal. .

He drew detailed drawings, and the construction work was handed over to Song Yingxing.

To be honest, Mr. Song, who is very familiar with ancient crafts, is much more efficient than Zhu Linmi in directing the construction of the cement kiln.

Ten days later, the shaft kiln built of refractory bricks was built and started to ignite.

Zhu Linmi once again came to the cement field to guide the firing process for the first time.

Song Yingxing ground and mixed limestone, clay, and sand according to the cement raw material formula he said.

It's just that Zhu Linmi doesn't remember the mixing ratio of the three, so it is tentatively determined to be eight parts limestone, two parts clay, and a little sand.

The charcoal in the shaft kiln has been burned red, and Song Yingxing directed the craftsmen to pour the mixed ash into the shaft kiln from the top, then another layer of charcoal, another layer of mixed ash, and so on until the shaft kiln was full.

Then six strong men pulled the two bellows at the same time, and a large amount of air was blown in from the bottom of the shaft kiln through the hot air chamber.The kiln temperature rose rapidly.

It usually takes four to five days to burn lime in a kiln, but with the use of a new type of vertical structure kiln body, coupled with the hot air blast chamber, Zhu Linmi estimates that it will take only one and a half days, and the kiln temperature can reach the goal of 1300 degrees .Then calcined for half a day, it should be able to form cement out of the kiln.

Two days later, Song Yingxing transported several large baskets of finished products from the shaft kiln to the Longwei Barracks, and presented them to Zhu Linming.

Zhu Linmi glanced at it and knew that the firing was not successful. Although some gray cement substances could be seen, there were still a lot of white hard lumps mixed in, which should be caused by insufficient firing.

He ordered Song Yingxing to replace the human bellows with animal power blowing equipment, increase the proportion of sand grains, prolong the firing time, and try again.

Song Yingxing nodded and wrote it down, and was about to turn around and leave when Zhu Linmi suddenly remembered that the reaction of Portland cement seemed to require the participation of aluminum.

So he immediately stopped Song Yingxing and asked him to add some iron ore powder to the raw materials.It was the only thing he could think of containing aluminum right now.

　Forewarning, the Dragon Guards will start to clean up Jianlu in three days!
　　I would like to arrange some name-calling for everyone to thank you for your generous support.Please leave a message in the book review for the following brothers to write down your name, I hope everyone will join us ^_^
　　Fei&ying, 198215dai, Qingshuiyu, zhangjianhua, Jishu, looking back, repatriated Africans, 185******29, weather organic phosphorus classmate.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)