After inspecting the shipbuilding, Liu Bei went to inspect the situation of the weapons again. Along the way, there was a war horse that had to be killed because its hooves were smoothed out, and Liu Bei's heart moved.

When he had just crossed, Liu Bei found that there were no stirrups and horseshoes in this era. It's just that Liu Bei's riding skills have reached the level of cell memory, so he can ride a horse smoothly. Later, I felt that if the stirrups were made out in advance, I was afraid that it would greatly enhance the combat effectiveness of the nomads, so I concealed it. Now it seems that the stirrups should continue to be hidden, but the horseshoe can be taken out. At the moment, he let the people around him record the idea, and when he arrived at the iron factory, he ordered someone to make a horseshoe.

Jinan Licheng Iron Works, the blast furnace of ironmaking was established on the edge of Jishui, and the Han Dynasty had begun to use blast furnace to make iron.

The blast furnace will not stop all year round, and if it stops, dozens of tons of molten iron in the furnace will solidify, and it will be difficult to melt again, and the entire furnace will be scrapped.

The blast furnace of the Han Dynasty is about two zhang five or six feet high, the furnace cylinder is oval, and the furnace wall and furnace base are rammed with black-brown refractory soil. From a distance, it looks a bit like an oversized vase with a big belly.

When Liu Bei came to Jinan, he saw such a hot scene.

Iron-making craftsmen repeatedly load the blast furnace with iron ore, coke, and limestone from the top of the furnace, and blow preheated air from the air vent located at the lower part of the furnace along the furnace perimeter. At high temperatures, the carbon in the coke is combined with the carbon monoxide produced by the combustion of oxygen in the air, and the oxygen in the iron ore is removed during the rise in the furnace, so as to reduce the iron to obtain iron. The molten iron is released from the iron mouth.

It is mainly used to blow the air with water, with less force and more work. Because now the water has frozen, the wind is blown with animal power.

The three iron factories in Dongpingling, Licheng and Linzi are in full operation, and can produce more than 200,000 catties of iron per day.

At the beginning, the main production was agricultural tools, such as iron ploughs, and the cost price of an iron plough was about 3,500 yuan, and when it left the factory, Liu Bei bought it at a price of 4,200 yuan, and then sold it for 5,000 yuan.

It looks like a profiteer, but in fact, according to the transportation conditions of this era, this price can only be said to be barely profitable. Moreover, a large number of government soldiers did not have enough ability to pay, so Liu Bei used loans to lend a large number of farm tools to everyone, and repaid them with grain in the future, or they could also repay with military exploits.

Originally, Liu Bei didn't have so much money to buy armor and weapons for the soldiers, the money in this era generally refers to copper coins, sometimes gold, although the soldiers have no ability to pay, Liu Bei also has no ability to find a large number of copper coins.

However, Liu Bei controlled a large amount of grain through Tuntian, and in the troubled times, this was a hard currency that maintained more value than copper coins and gold, so Liu Bei issued a large number of banknotes with the grain standard, each with a face value of 100 yuan, which could buy 100 catties of grain.

Because there are no conditions for the issuance of credit money, it is not called money, but only food stamps.

The food stamps are made of fine white paper, which is a square of five inches in length and width, with the words "One hundred catties of grain can be exchanged with the ticket" on the front, and a line of small characters below is "Those who dare to forge will be beheaded, the three tribes will be enslaved, and the family property will be confiscated." There are whistleblowers who have half their money. ”。

The back is stamped with the big seal of Liu Bei's Qingzhou Thorn History and General Zhengdong, and below is a line of small characters with numbers from one to two million numbers, because Liu Bei has more than 200 million catties of grain in his hands.

Later, Liu Bei stipulated the ratio of food stamps to salt and ironware, and used the output of Liu Bei's newly acquired Licheng, Linzi Iron Factory, and Haiyan Factory by the sea as a guarantee, and in a short period of time, a lot of money was also issued, and the role of money was mainly circulation, since it could buy things and be used to pay taxes, why should it be copper money, therefore, it greatly relieved Liu Bei's financial pressure.

There are even some staff members who don't understand the economy, since this is the case, why not simply print more food stamps, which was vetoed by Liu Bei, or according to how much grain there is and how many coupons are issued, otherwise there will be an inflation and economic crisis, which will be detrimental to their own rule.

Now Liu Bei occupies the land of the four counties of Qingzhou, with 300,000 households under his command and a population of 1.7 million, but there are about 100,000 households, and 500,000 are prisoners of the Yellow Turban Army who belong to slaves.

Because Liu Bei recruited a large number of Taishan soldiers and placed tens of thousands of soldiers from Qingzhou Prefecture, Qingzhou, with a population of less than two million, actually had more than 80,000 soldiers, which was still the number after Liu Bei retired a group of elderly veterans.

With an army of 80,000 people, there are more than 10,000 soldiers above the fifth level who were named scholars by Liu Bei, and it is not a small number to prepare armor and weapons for so many people.

For the armor and weapons of the government soldiers, Liu Bei's approach was to give the soldiers and the three iron factories of Dongpingling, Licheng and Linzi the standards of weapons and armor at the same time, and then send a sum of money to the soldiers for weapons and armor and let them buy them themselves.

This is to imitate the old wisdom of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Western Jin Dynasty once sent troops to fight, but the weapons and armor of the government were too bad, which caused the dissatisfaction of the soldiers, and finally the emperor ordered that the soldiers enter the arsenal and choose their own weapons and armor, which is considered to settle the matter. It can be seen from this that soldiers are still very serious about their weapons, armor and other equipment, and if they are not serious, they will not be able to go to the battlefield to fight, and if they are not serious, they are not looking for death.

Now that everything has just begun, it is really the time to make rules, if you take the large-scale government procurement route at the beginning, it may be no problem in a short time, but after a long time, you must have spent a lot of money to buy a bunch of inferior products with high prices and poor quality, and the difference in the middle was greedy.

But if you give the standard and then let the soldiers purchase it themselves, there will be no problem, it is all your own things, personal property, how can you buy such high-priced and low-quality things. Besides, there must really be people who are greedy for cheap, to buy low-cost inferior goods, and there are officers to inspect them, and besides, are they really not afraid of losing their lives on the battlefield?

It is still the era of handicrafts, and handicrafts are, after all, different from the production of the era of big industry. The quality of the product depends entirely on the skill level and motivation of the craftsmen. The level of skill depends on experience, and motivation depends on the reward and punishment mechanism.

Therefore, in ancient times, craftsmen were often used such as "the name of the craftsman", that is, the name of the craftsman must be engraved on each product, and the good work will be rewarded, and the poor will be punished. Even so, it may have been fine at first, but as the bureaucracy corrupted, it was not possible to provide truly sophisticated weapons at the end of the day. Working for the public, who is particularly painful will really work hard and strive for excellence.

Therefore, Liu Bei disbanded all the various weapon craftsmen collected by his subordinates, and gave each person a sum of capital, which was counted as Liu Bei's shares, of course, Liu Bei did not occupy too much, as long as thirty percent, this was more to find a backer for the craftsmen, lest they be collected by local tyrants.

Liu Bei asked them to produce their own weapons to sell, and the more they earned, the more they shared. With this trick, Liu Bei not only saved the effort to supervise the production of weapons, but also obtained a large number of excellent weapons.

This is also the beginning of Liu Bei's power, and the bureaucratic system under his command is relatively weak, if the bureaucratic system is strong, how can it be possible to let go of the fat meat of arms procurement.

The 200 million food stamps, plus Liu Bei's other money, almost 300 million yuan of large orders, suddenly greatly stimulated the development of Qingzhou's handicraft industry.

In fact, to manufacture 10,000 people's armor and weapons, the three iron factories in Dongpingling, Licheng and Linzi are fully operational, and it is only a few days of hard work to refine all the steel, but it is a waste of time, but the bosses of each weapon workshop have patted their chests and assured Liu Bei that within six months, they will be able to build all the armor and weapons that Liu Bei needs.

Liu Bei nodded in approval, half a year is enough, anyway, I didn't want to fight.