Yang Fan was called by Zhao Hao in a letter, saying that he wanted him to see with his own eyes what the shipbuilding technology of the Ming Dynasty has fallen behind now.

It is not easy for Yang Fan to admit this, after all, he is the Longjiang factory that produced Zheng He's treasure boats. Therefore, knowing that it was a radical method, he still came.

Yesterday, the castle-like, but art-like Oriental Beauty stopped him as soon as it entered the shipyard. At the level of a shipbuilding specialist, he could see at a glance how difficult the ship was to build. When the Oriental Beauty was docked in Zuotang, he couldn't wait to go up to visit and studied it for a whole day.

In the end, Yang Fan had to admit that the world's most proud Daming shipbuilding technology is now really lagging behind the Taixi people, which makes the proud Daming craftsmen embarrassed?

When he saw Zhao Hao, his arrogance unique to technical talents in the past was gone, and the whole person was listless. It seems that it is still difficult to accept the fact that the shipbuilding technology of the Ming Dynasty is no longer the first in the world.

There's no way, the Celestial Empire has been in power for a long time, and I want to be the first in everything, and it's uncomfortable to have a second occasionally.

"This is called sailing against the current, and if you don't advance, you will retreat. We've stopped moving forward for a hundred and fifty years, and it's normal for us to be overtaken. Zhao Hao patted Yang Fan's shoulder, this is what he wanted. This is a good thing, if you don't recognize the gap, how can you catch up? ”

"Yes." Yang Fan nodded heavily.

"Let's go, let's go and see." Zhao Hao patted the sloppy again, and walked into the shipyard surrounded by everyone.

~~

The shipyard covers an area of more than 600 acres, which belongs to the group's first-class security unit, and a whole security brigade is responsible for its security work.

After the Tamna Garrison District became independent from the Jiangnan Security Company, Zhao Hao reorganized the security company in accordance with the principle of 'external emphasis on the inside and light on the inside', changing from the original vertical management model to flat management. There is no special team leader, only according to the needs of the group, to the specific company factory, the corresponding security team.

a 500-strong security brigade from the first-level security unit; a 100-man security squadron from the secondary security unit; The Level 3 security unit has a security team of 20 people. The security teams are not subordinate to each other, and the company is directly responsible for daily training and logistics support.

This will obviously weaken the combat effectiveness of the security team and make them truly become security guards, but Zhao Gongzi must use this way to make it clear that he has no disobedience within the group, so as not to give birth to any undesirable thoughts in the future.

The whole factory covers a very wide area, and the quantitative management that Zhao Gongzi has always advocated in the factory area is implemented, and everything seems to be in order.

The first thing they entered was a huge lumber yard, and in the era of wooden sailing ships, wood naturally played a leading role.

The lumber yard has a separate wharf. Next to the trestle, a fleet of logs is unloading. The Popeye crane lifts the logs, which have only been lightly trimmed, ashore and loads them onto flatbed ox carts.

There are also railroad tracks on the ground, on which the wheels glide so that a single cow can easily pull up a whole wagon of logs and send them to the lumber yard not far away.

This section of rail is exactly one kilometre long and is made of wrought iron. The railway that Zhao Gongzi promised to build for Lao Xi'er is this kind of thing. But firstly, Lao Xi'er offended him, and secondly, Wuhu did not have such a large production capacity, so he could only let Lao Xi'er wait.

Zhao Hao took a 'cow-drawn train' with great interest, entered the lumber yard, and saw that all kinds of wood were neatly stacked inside. There are fir, elm, camphor, locust, cypress...... There are always more than a dozen kinds of timber, and most of the lumber yard is piled up.

"I'm afraid there are tens of thousands of roots, right?" Zhao Hao climbed the lookout and overlooked the entire lumber yard.

"All kinds of wood add up, almost 23,000." Sloppy replied.

"How many?"

"Eighteen." Ma Hao explained: "The mast of the Qianliu sea ship is made of straight cedar wood, and the beams and fangs are made of camphor wood and locust wood. The shallow board is not limited to any wood; rudder rod with elm, nut; Door closing stick with thick wood, locust wood; Turret with fir and cypress ......"

"With so many different timbers, won't it affect the performance of the boat over time?" Zhao Hao asked strangely.

"It would be nice if we could only use two or three kinds of wood." Ma Hao smiled bitterly and said, "But this is also something that can't be helped." There is very little wood in the south of the Yangtze River, and the timber we ship is purchased from Huguang, Sichuan and even Yunnan, Guizhou and Fujian, and the cost is amazingly high. ”

"Rest assured, in the next year, this problem will be solved." Zhao Hao smiled. According to the "Oita Treaty", the Japanese king has organized manpower to start cutting wood to pay off the debt.

"That's great!" Ma Hu suddenly smiled from ear to ear. Since last year, Jiangnan Group has purchased timber for shipbuilding, which has directly led to the high price of timber and the plummeting profits of shipbuilding. He didn't dare to raise the price with the Chen gang leader who bought his boat, which made him feel a lot of pressure.

"If there is anything else in short supply, I will solve it for you when I say it." Zhao Hao asked as he walked down the lookout.

"Then there's the iron shortage." Sloppy said: "A thousand-material sea ship needs three anchors, plus nails and hooks and loops of various sizes, a total of 5,000 catties of wrought iron." But on the Wuhu side, only 20,000 catties can be transported in a month, resulting in the ship having to wait for the anchor to be launched. ”

"Our Longjiang factory is also short of iron, and 40,000 catties of iron a month is not enough." Yang Fan hurriedly took the opportunity to say.

"Solve it, and I will solve it for you next year." Zhao Hao agreed, but he didn't have the confidence he had before. Because not only the shipyard is short of iron, but also the companies of the group and even the Tamna Island are short of iron!

In fact, the steel mill in Wuhu has already opened enough iron-making furnaces. didn't expect a Jiangnan group to be scrap metal than Hu Zongxian's anti-Japanese war at the beginning. Seventy percent of Wang Yu's steel is supplied to Jiangnan Group, but it is not enough......

Wuhu can only continue to expand production capacity next year, but the group's demand is also increasing day by day. I'm afraid that the 01 side will not be able to make a breakthrough in one day, and the situation of iron shortage everywhere will not be changed for a day.

~~

Leaving the lumber yard, the group went to the drying kiln, surrounded by a high firewall. Timber from the lumber yard is sawn and split into individual timbers and transported here for drying.

If it is dried in the natural shade, it will take at least one or two or even two or three years for the wood to be used. Zhao Hao couldn't wait so long, so at Yang Fan's suggestion, he spent a huge amount of money to build this huge drying kiln.

The whole drying kiln is composed of two parts: the boiler room and the drying kiln, and the huge manpower bellows continuously sends the hot gas in the boiler room into the drying kiln through the pipeline to continuously heat the air inside.

In the drying kiln, the rough-processed wood is stacked on the shelf, and after preheating, drying, and intermediate treatment, it can generally be out of the kiln in about a month. In fact, the wood that was mass-produced commercially produced in later generations also dried quickly in this way, as long as the temperature and humidity were well controlled, the effect would not be much worse than that of traditional shade drying for many years.

The kiln was hot and stuffy, and there were old carpenters in single clothes who were taking care of them with apprentices. Their job is to control the humidity inside the kiln. When the moisture is baked out makes the kiln damp to a certain extent, open the window for ventilation.

This is an empirical job, and at present, there are no more than ten people in the entire Jiangnan who can master this humidity. Of course, the main reason is that ordinary carpenters do not burn the buns, and use baked wood to speed up drying, which is very expensive.

Ma Hao told Zhao Hao that the biggest problem of the current drying kiln is that the capacity is limited, and the drying capacity is less than one-fifth of the wood required by the shipyard, and it can only provide drying for the ship materials in key parts. In order to be in a hurry, the plates of the secondary parts such as the deck and the cabin are directly used after roasting on the fire......

"Then continue to expand the drying kiln!" Zhao Gongzi waved his hand when he heard this, and said arrogantly: "Isn't it enough to create five more like this?" ”

After a pause, he said: "Five is not enough, let's build ten of them in one go!" If you don't have enough money, make a report, and I'll ask President Jiang to give you special approval! ”

"Hey, yes." Sloppy nodded hurriedly and wiped his sweat.

Yang Fan and the others were also sweating, one was hot, and the other was scared. How much does it cost to do this? Did this Zhao Gongzi dig up the silver mountain overseas?

~~

Out of the yard of the drying kiln, the outside suddenly opened up, on both sides of a wide and straight cement road, there are woodworking workshops, iron workshops, oyster shell workshops, penggong workshops, rope workshops, cable workshops, paint workshops...... The tall factories made of bamboo-reinforced concrete are enough to withstand the strongest typhoons.

The inside and outside of the workshop are well organized, which shows that it is not sloppy, and it is really strict in the management.

Zhao Hao praised the sloppy a few words, he did a really good job, and he could write a credit. The little tiger brother is so happy that he can't keep his mouth shut.

In just over a year, he transformed the sand boat gang shipyard, which can only produce 400 sand boats, into the Jiangnan Shipyard, which can produce 1,000 Dafu ships. It is necessary to combine the original shipyard with the two groups of craftsmen hired by Jinling and make them obey the rules and regulations, and the hardships paid in this can be imagined.

Then everyone put on their masks and entered the carpentry workshop. Sawdust is flying inside, and carpenters are working with small workers.

In this era, whether in the East or the West, the design of ship types was mostly carried out by shipbuilders with their own experience and the construction of French on-site lofting passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. There are no precise data and drawings, but the boat is basically the same, and the trick lies in the use of molds to standardize production.

For example, the Jiangnan factory is currently mainly engaged in the manufacture of thousands of seagoing ships. Experienced shipbuilders will first build a prototype ship out of pine and other lightweight boards, and then dismantle it, and number each part to be used as a mold for official production.

The workshop director divides the carpenters into several groups, and each group only needs to be responsible for the copying and production of a part of the mold, which greatly simplifies the work of the carpenters and makes the production skilled and efficient.

Moreover, if there is a mold, there are accurate specifications, it is easy to check whether the processed wood is qualified, and with strict quantitative management, the scrap rate can be controlled below one percent. And the scrap rate of European shipyards of the same era was more than 1 in 10!

ps. Today's birthday of the eldest in the family, try to write another chapter......