As the old saying goes, if you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 After ordering Li Banghua, Bi Maokang and Sun Yuanhua to lead the entire Arsenal to supervise the construction of flintlock pistols and imitation Hongyi cannons, Emperor Chongzhen finally let go of another major matter in his heart.

It's a matter of life and death. Today's Ming army is not the opponent of the Houjin army in the field, on the one hand, of course, because the Eight Banners are brave and good at fighting, on average, the quality of individual soldiers is more than twice as strong as the army of the Ming Dynasty, and it is several times stronger than the guard army in the interior.

Needless to say. After Nurhachi raised his army, the Eight Banners army fought everywhere and successively defeated the Jurchen tribes in the northeast, such as Hada, Huifa, Yehe, Ula, and Wanyan.

By the time Huang Taiji succeeded to the throne of the Later Jin Khan, the Later Jin had already relied on force to unify almost all the Jurchen or non-Jurchen minority tribes in the Liaojihei area in later generations. Later, Jin also trained a large number of brave generals and soldiers through continuous campaigns.

This is also the reason why the Ming border army, which has been peaceful for a long time and neglected the battle formation, has been defeated again and again after encountering the Houjin army.

Of course, on the other hand, the reason is that the military armament of the Ming Dynasty is slack, not only there are no qualified soldiers, but also no qualified weapons, the arquebus lacks maintenance and rusts, most of them are useless, the operation is complex and the firing range is short, and in the face of the enemy's cavalry, there is only one chance to shoot.

Not only firearms, but even the casting of cold weapons such as swords and armor gradually fell behind Houjin, the quality was inferior and unbearable to use.

Fortunately, now that Daming has reopened Zunhua Iron Metallurgy, Baiye City has now become the cold weapon forging center in the north of Daming again, and it is also thinking about moving towards the hot weapon casting center.

Now Liaodong, Shanhai, Dongjiang, Jizhen, and Xuanfu have gradually used the Qi knives, iron spears and arrows made by Li Banghua and Bi Maokang and others in the Baiyecheng Ordnance Bureau.

Not long ago, Yuan Chonghuan brought the armament materials to the three sides of Shaanxi, and even included the latest forged iron plate armor from the Ordnance Bureau.

The manufacturing method of this plate armor is, of course, the current Emperor Chongzhen to tell Li Banghua, and Li Banghua personally led people to successfully try to produce it.

Compared with the traditional Mingguang armor, fish scale armor, and chain mail, the forging of plate armor is much simpler, strictly speaking, it is just two thin iron plates on the chest and back, and the shoulders are slightly curved, which does not hinder the waving of arms, and then above and on the left and right of the iron plate, a row of holes is reserved, tied with a leather cord, and put on the upper body, it becomes a simple but durable armor.

Wearing such iron plate armor, an arquebus could not penetrate a hundred paces, let alone a Tartar or a thief's bow and arrow.

Nowadays, there are more than 20 erected iron-making furnaces in Zunhua Baiye City, which do not go out day and night, and produce more than 50,000 catties of refined iron and 8,000 catties of steel every month.

Judging from the future generations, such a production capacity is nothing at all, and the 50,000 catties that sound like a lot are only 25 tons, and 8,000 catties are only 4 tons.

In later generations, the annual output of steel was measured by tons, and it was often more than a billion tons, and a local steel plant casually produced tens of millions of tons of annual output.

For example, after more than 300 years of continuous mining, the Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant in the same area can still produce more than 16 million tons of steel a year, and the iron ore resources and coal resources used by it are also provided by this same area.

Therefore, the potential of the steel industry in Zunhua Baiye City is absolutely endless.

Of course, such steel production is naturally not enough compared with later generations, but in the history of the same era, it is also possible.

According to historical records, by the time of the Xuande period of the Ming Dynasty, the output of Zunhua Baiyecheng Iron Smelting Plant had reached a permanent output of 300,000 catties, becoming the largest iron smelting plant in the north.

In sixteenth-century Europe, there were only a handful of countries that could produce this kind of production.

At that time, the Zunhua Iron Smelting Plant was able to have such production capacity because this area not only had a large amount of iron ore and good quality, but also the ore here was rich in a mineral commonly known as fluorite or snake eye.

This later scientific name is calcium fluoride mineral, which is a natural flux, which is very helpful for refining iron ore, and can usually achieve better smelting results at the same furnace temperature.

At the same time, at the prompting of the emperor, the shaft furnace ironmaking method of coke and iron ore was superimposed, which was higher than the simple use of charcoal, and the furnace temperature was higher, and the effect was naturally better. In the vicinity of Baiye City, there are not only abundant iron ore reserves, but also endless coal reserves.

In the early Ming Dynasty, ironmaking mainly took charcoal, and did not use coal, not because coal could not burn the high temperature required for ironmaking, but in the coal that has not been coking, it contains a large amount of sulfur, with such coal, mixed with iron ore into the furnace for calcination, the molten iron smelted contains more sulfur, brittle, not suitable for forging weapons and armor, of course, it is even more unsuitable for casting guns.

At that time, the Ministry of Industry sent a letter to the Wanli Emperor, asking for the dismissal of Baiyecheng Iron Smelting, one of the reasons was that the quality of using coal to make iron was not good, and the cost of using charcoal to make iron was too high, and the Ministry of Industry had more input and less output, and the financial difficulties could not be sustained.

This problem, now the Chongzhen Emperor, who has the soul of later generations, has certainly taken into account, since he decided to reopen the iron works in Zunhua Baiye City and other places, he has decided to use coke instead of charcoal to make iron.

In fact, the firing of coke is the same as the firing of charcoal in terms of technical process. Charcoal is obtained by drying wood and coke is obtained by distilling coal.

In addition, while the coke is fired through the smoldering process of dry distillation, a large number of by-products are obtained, which are coal gas and coal tar.

In this era, gas naturally could not be preserved and used for a long time, but coal tar could be put into use immediately, at least to make lamp oil, or fire oil.

Due to the adoption of the method of coke ironmaking, the production capacity of the Baiyecheng Iron Smelting Plant also has a stable guarantee, and now the production and casting of cold weapons in the Ming army is back on the right track, forging 2,000 Qi knives of Baotou steel every month, 3,000 pairs of plate armor without steel, 3,000 pieces of hat helmets rolled by iron sheets, 1,000 giant shields covered with iron sheets, and 10,000 other spear heads and arrowheads.

Now the Ordnance Bureau, which was originally subordinate to the Ministry of Industry, has been assigned to the Armament Institute, but its functions have not changed, and it is still mainly to supervise the manufacture of cold weapons, while the Gunpowder Bureau and the Firearms Bureau, which were originally relocated from Beijing to Tongzhou, are still mainly to supervise the manufacture of firearms, and the division of labor is very clear, and the output has gradually increased.

Since Sun Yuanhua received the task of supervising the manufacture of muskets and artillery, he sent his son to follow the missionary Luo Ruwang to Haojingao to buy muskets and artillery, and on the other hand, he took Tang Ruowang and Xiong Sanba to build a gun factory and several factories in a mountain col close to the Lu River in Tongzhou.

In one of the huge workshops was a huge high-temperature iron-making furnace, enclosed with concrete on the outside, clay and red brick on the inside, and on the lower sides were several huge bellows, which were constantly blowing air into the shaft furnace.

In addition to a tall iron-making furnace, there were two smaller forging furnaces in the huge workshop, all of which used coke instead of charcoal to raise the furnace temperature.

There are several deflector holes that can be opened on the tall iron-making furnace, and on the ground below the deflector hole is a made artillery clay fan, and the molten iron is injected into the clay fan through the diversion hole, and after cooling and solidifying, knock out the mud fan wrapped in the outer layer, as well as the clay fan in the middle of the cannon barrel, and an iron cannon is cast.

In order to ensure the quality of the iron cannon, the production of the clay fan is very critical, to choose the best clay, repeatedly wash to remove impurities, and then use the clean clay after repeated washing and precipitation to make the clay fan, after doing a good job must be fully dried, and just this process takes half a year.

If the mud fan is not completely dry, after the high-temperature molten iron is poured in, either the mud fan will crack, or there will be fine pores in the middle of the iron cannon, which is easy to blow up, so although the process can be used at one point, it really can't be a little sloppy.

Since Sun Yuanhua was the leader of the task, he took Xiong Sanba, Tang Ruowang, and the craftsmen and technicians who had cast muskets and artillery from the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Industry before, and made three clay models with reference to the caliber size of the Portuguese Hongyi cannons, only the one that used the bronze melt was successful, and a bronze Hongyi cannon was cast, while the other two clay models were scrapped in the process of casting iron cannons, and the iron Western Hongyi cannons were naturally not successfully cast.

But the emperor did not get angry after receiving the retribution, but encouraged them to continue to try, because now the Chongzhen Emperor knew that Tang Ruowang and others were successful in history, and when they successfully cast the first batch of red-clothed cannons, accumulated a certain amount of experience, and brought out a group of skilled craftsmen, and then withdrew this group of Westerners, let Sun Yuanhua, Sun Heding and Ming craftsmen try to cast cannons with iron molds, so as to increase production.