Under the guidance of Zhuge Jin, Guan Yu traveled dozens of miles to the northwest of Pixian County, and finally saw the largest waterwheel project that Li Su was working on.

Du'an County is the Dujiangyan City of the later generations, and it is naturally the location of the Dujiangyan Water Conservancy Project.

Li Su, the marquis's fiefdom, is in Pi County, but who made him powerful, he is not only Liu Bei's number one cronie, but also the Taishou of Shu County, so he came to the prime area of Dujiangyan to buy land for experimental fields, and no one dared to obstruct him at all. Out of the city gate of Du'an County, the land in the wild is casually done.

As long as Li Su paid for it, the locals obediently sold the land to him. Besides, Liu Yan killed a large number of "Liu Bei's Neiying" before his death, and there were no big clans left around Chengdu, and large tracts of land were borderless land to be allocated, or directly disposed of at a low price to homesteaders.

Waterwheel-powered facilities require the most stable and turbulent water flow. Therefore, Li Su was not far below the mouth of the Feishayan and the treasure bottle, and when the water head was slightly stable, he built a lot of large waterwheels, all of which were built by Zhuge Jin in the six months from last year to the present.

In fact, the cost is not high, and the main thing that uses more money is the loss of tools and materials, as for wood and labor, it is easy to say.

Laborers are temporarily conscripted at a low price, and if the people are given a bite to eat, someone will come to work. Because Yizhou does not need to transport grain to the imperial court, there is still a lot of grain stored in the official warehouse, as long as it does not fight for many years, it can be eaten for many years.

Wood is easier to solve - after Dujiangyan, and then go to the upper reaches of the Minjiang River, there is Qingcheng Mountain on both sides, and the big trees that can't be cut down on Qingcheng Mountain are Fei axe saws.

In the future, Li Suke plans to go to a circle of mountains around the Chengdu Plain, including Qingcheng Mountain in the northwest, Mount Emei in the southwest, and Longquan Mountain in the east...... All of them are engaged in the industrial base of tea trees, pepper trees, mulberry trees and fruit trees, and find a way for the surplus labor force in the Chengdu Plain, so the big trees can be cut down and used.

Qinlong and Shu have been the main production areas of large trees since ancient times, and the large trees of Qinlong were gradually dried up until the end of the Tang Dynasty and the fifth dynasty, and the large trees of Shu were mined until the Ming and Qing dynasties.

"It's really a big construction, thanks to the wealth of Shu County, known as Tianfu, and after the war, a group of rich households were cleaned up, otherwise there really wouldn't be so much people's power available." Guan Yu looked at the row of the largest waterwheels and shook his head with a sigh.

Zhuge Jin led him into the largest waterwheel, and Guan Yu saw that there was a huge and ingenious mechanism inside, through some axles and connecting rods, the circular motion of the waterwheel wheel was transformed into a high-low reciprocating motion.

There is also a toothed chain transmission structure in the middle to achieve acceleration and force reduction, deceleration and afterburner, and finally drive an extremely heavy, far from being able to carry a sleek hammer to smash the anvil. There is also a red-hot iron plate forging on the anvil, but it seems that it is still in the experimental period, and it is not really forging things in batches.

This series of structures is a bit abstract, but in fact, as long as it is an analogy, it is easy for modern people to understand - the transmission mechanism of the steam engine is actually the reciprocating motion of the cylinder, which is converted into circular motion through the flywheel to output power. The hydraulic forging hammer is the opposite, turning the waterwheel wheeled by water force into the reciprocating motion at the other end of the connecting rod.

Therefore, even if Li Su was a liberal arts student in his previous life, he had watched so many videos and seen the basic principles of the steam engine. Although it was impossible to build a steam engine, it was easy to imitate the mechanical structure of the transmission, and it was done after a few months of experimentation by the craftsmen.

It's just that the reciprocating circumference of a "flywheel-connecting rod" and the reciprocating circumference of circumference, in the eyes of people like Guan Yu, the first glance is definitely full of visual impact.

"Stunned, huh? The first time I saw it, I was even more surprised than the general. In fact, even now, I have seen a lot, as long as I stare at it, after watching it for a long time, I will still feel the ingenuity of Brother Boya. Zhuge Jin poked him with his elbow next to him, and said some words of exclamation and comfort before pulling Guan Yu back to reality.

Guan Yu came back to his senses, pointed to a thin arc-shaped iron plate under the hammer that burned red and forged, and asked, "What is that forging?" Is it armor? This saves trouble, but it saves trouble, I'm afraid that people won't even be able to move after wearing it. No matter the size of the armor or one or two inches, or three or four inches, this piece of iron is more than two feet long. ”

Of course, the forging of iron armor is better than cold forging, and the strength and stress of hot forging are not as good as those of cold ends. For example, in the Song Dynasty, the famous Qingtang Qizi armor of the Western Xia people was cold-forged piece by piece with a hammer, and it was claimed that the strong crossbow could not be shot through within fifty steps. If you want to talk about the place of origin, it is not far from today's Yizhou - the "Qingtang Qiang" of later generations is the barbarian area where Liu Yan recruited "Qingqiang soldiers" and "Suo soldiers" before.

However, cold forging requires better steel blanks, and the high-quality steel in the late Han Dynasty was insufficient, and the pig iron wrought iron was smashed and smashed by direct cold forging, so when Li Su planned, he did not consider it at first, and would rather burn the iron red before forging.

Whether we can engage in hydraulic cold forging in the future depends on the accumulation and running-in of technology. Because cold forging also has higher requirements for the structure and force of the hammer, it is best to press down slowly with the same pressure as the hydraulic press, rather than relying on the impact force to rush, which will be broken. Li Su estimated that the hammer he made with his current technology would be at most twenty or thirty tons of forging force, and the maximum in the future would not exceed fifty tons, at best, it would be the industrial level of the Western Renaissance and the Age of Discovery.

The hammer is big, and there is a trouble that it is not suitable for forging a large number of small pieces, so it can only be forged directly in an extensive way to reduce the number of processing, which is why Guan Yu saw the strange curved large piece of iron armor.

Zhuge Jin explained on the side: "Brother Bo Ya said, this is called cuirass armor, referred to as cuirass, if you wear it for foot soldiers, it is still a bit cumbersome and inconvenient, but it is used by heavy cavalry who only charge on horseback, and the protective effect is very good."

This water hammer forging force is powerful, and the iron armor forged is extremely dense and solid. The thickness of the iron sheet can be two minutes, and the crossbow cannot be shot through until it is twenty paces, unless it is a bed crossbow, which must be within fifty steps. ”

The whole cuirass piece displayed by Zhuge Jin is actually the armor conceived by Li Su and imitated the Western cuirassiers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

At first, Li Su actually conceived the idea of forging 16th-century full-body plate armor with a hydraulic hammer, that is, the kind of Milanese full-body armor that was complete at the end of the Renaissance. But then it turned out to be too complicated, and the small pieces of deck with small pieces of small parts of the big forging hammer were not efficient at all, and the shape and craftsmanship were not good, and there were no craftsmen who could make the flexible joints of plate armor.

That's why he retreated to the cuirass. Don't look at the history of the whole cuirass appeared one or two centuries later than the Milan full-body plate armor, but its process difficulty is greatly reduced, and it is very convenient for mass production.

The rise of the cuirass is due to the popularity of black powder arquebuses, and even if the traditional full-body plate armor weighs 30 kilograms and has a thickness of two or three millimeters of iron sheet, it can't carry the musket bullets, and it can't walk if it is thickened.

Therefore, the princes of Western Europe abandoned comprehensive protection and changed to only the chest and abdomen of heavy cavalry, but the thickness was increased to five millimeters, which could protect against pistol bullets of the same period. Just such a steel plate on the chest weighs nearly 15 kilograms.

Li Su doesn't need to face a pistol now, as long as he guards against the crossbow and the waist crossbow, he can be a little thinner, and a cuirass is about 40 Han Jin (10 kg)

"That's how it works. But there are those that have been forged and cold, let me try it. Guan Yu listened with great interest, and immediately asked to take a piece of cooled piercing to see.

Zhuge Jin found him a trial work next to him, Guan Yu felt very uncomfortable after wearing it, but since it was said to be for cavalry, he decided to get on the horse and test it again, this time I felt better.

Zhuge Jin hurriedly explained: "After all, the size of this piece is not suitable for the general, and the temporary binding is not good, in the future, it will be divided into several batches of sizes, and the shoulders will be tied with belts, or directly embedded on the outside of the leather armor, which is equivalent to a heart guard that has been magnified several times, so it will be more comfortable." ”

Guan Yu dismounted and shook his head: "That can only be used by cavalry with guns and charges, and those who want to bend their bows and shoot arrows immediately will definitely get in the way." ”

Although Guan Yu is not very good at riding and shooting, he still knows how to do it.

"So it's not for the Wuhuan Raid, it's for the melee heavy rider." Zhuge Jin explained with a smile, "When Brother Bo Ya first thought of this method, he said that the iron armor of our army's heavy cavalry will be vacated, the generals will still wear the Xuan armor, and the heavy cavalry will wear iron cuirass, and the iron armor currently used by the heavy cavalry will be given to Gao Shun, and the camp will be expanded in the future."

Brother Bo Ya said that he couldn't reduce it significantly, but fortunately, there were one or two thousand iron armor before our army entered Sichuan, and later when the Ten Standing Servants rebelled, Brother Bo Ya took Wu Zhonglang and them out of Beijing, and got two thousand iron armor from the arsenal of the Beijing Division. I heard that the general asked Dong to return this time, and also captured a batch of elite armor of Hu Zhen and Lu Bu's army, as well as the equipment of Hua Xiong's heavy cavalry.

Brother Boya estimates that the upper limit of the trapped camp that our army can expand in the future is about four or five thousand people. Shuzhong's money, grain, people's power, and steel must be used on the blade, and those things that spend a lot of money and produce inefficient things may not be produced in the future. With 800 men in one battalion, there is only one battalion at present, and then four more battalions will be expanded, making a total of 4,000 men. The lord hopes that the general and Gao Shun will be trained within two years. ”

Don't underestimate the trapping camp of these thousands of people, it seems that the equipment has been gathered all at once, this is because Liu Beijun has repeatedly searched and accumulated iron armor reserves equivalent to forty percent of the Luoyang arsenal, so he has such capital.

Now, except for Dong Zhuo, the princes of Kwantung do not have this capital, and Yuan Shu can only make up more than 3,000 pairs of iron armor that can equip the trapped camp with the arsenal reserves of the whole army. Yuan Shao has to farm well and slowly produce to catch up.

After the cavalry unit replaced all the current 1,000 or 2,000 pairs of armor, they forged 5,000 pairs of cuirass in the past two years and attached them to the traditional leather armor, so that all the 5,000 Youzhou heavy cavalry that Liu Bei brought into Sichuan could be replaced. Anyway, the cavalry fought on horseback, and with the shelter of the horses, many parts were not easy to be injured.

If there is still an excess capacity of hydraulic forging hammers, it is not bad to use them to forge all-steel weapons and save manpower. For example, the horse slashing sword required to expand the trapped camp, the traditional use of the hundred refining method to repeatedly forge it is extremely labor-intensive for the blacksmith, with hydraulic mechanical forging, the cost can be reduced a lot at once, and the hundred refining weapons used by the generals can also be customized.

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PS: Because there is an intensive farming plot, this Wednesday will be two days to speed up the progress. If other conditions are met, additional changes will be calculated.