Zhang Xiaofan received the production task list sent by His Royal Highness King Yan from his father, which clearly listed how many pieces of weapons and armor were handed over to the Metropolitan Protectorate every month, and the production volume was planned to reach the end of the year. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

The demand for the capital protection mansion is huge, and the urgency of the request makes Zhang Xiaofan a little surprised.

With the current capacity of the ironworks, it is almost impossible for the ironworks to be suspended, and it is possible for the workers to produce for a whole month without repairing the leave.

"Dad, I have to call the heads of various departments of the ironworks to discuss together, and clarify the production capacity of each department in order to allocate manpower well. If you really can't make enough weapons and armor on time, you can only write to His Royal Highness King Yan to explain the situation. Either ask Your Highness to send more skilled blacksmiths, or ask for a lower number of deliveries per month. ”

"Okay, I'll send someone to call the heads of departments to come right away."

Zhang Gensheng has been worried for most of the day since he received the production task from King Yan, which is even more difficult than last quarter when they had to make farm tools in the ironworks.

The only weapon to be made is the arrow, even if it is an apprentice who has only been here for a few days, followed by the spearhead.

But horizontal knives, obstacle knives, Mo knives, steps, horse lance heads and various iron armor leaf accessories, including Mingguang armor, are very time-consuming, and it is necessary to consider the technical level of the blacksmith and whether he can make a good weapon.

Like three kinds of Tang knives and lances, blacksmiths with poor skills can not fight well, otherwise there will be no Tang Dynasty, and after the death of the Tang Dynasty, the pinnacle of cold weapons in Chinese history was finally lost.

The ironworks are divided into five departments: mining, coking, timber, blast furnace and manufacturing, each with a director and two deputy directors.

In addition to the five production departments, there is also an inspection office, which is staffed by a supervisor, who supervises all operations of the ironworks in a manner similar to that of the imperial court.

After hearing the news, the heads of the five departments gathered together, laughing and laughing, except for a silent inspector who was muffled and silent.

In order to ensure that there would be no laymen to guide insiders to play the piano in the ironworks, and the technical level continued to rise, Li Yu appointed fifteen directors and deputy directors who were skilled craftsmen in various fields. In order to facilitate their management of their own departments, they have also undergone some training and are equipped with management personnel recruited from commercial banks to assist them.

When the supervisors got together, everyone was not a cultured person, the image was rough and informal, and it was not a matter to say anything and laugh out loud. Unlike the officials in the officialdom who got together to talk about things, Wen Zou Zou ridiculed the officials who were in charge of themselves in the past, which undoubtedly made the faces of the inspectors sitting on the side darker.

After Zhang Gensheng signaled everyone to be quiet, he roughly explained the reason for summoning them this time, and the new production task sent by King Yan.

When the supervisors heard this, they talked a lot and sighed that it was another busy season.

The director of the manufacturing department sighed and said: "I thought that after finishing the work of farm tools, everyone could be idle for a while, but looking at this situation, there is no leisure this year." ”

"When are you a craftsman, when do you have a free time all year round except for the New Year?"

……

"Uncles, at present, we need to know what is the actual production capacity of our ironworks for a month? What is the manpower of each department? Will it be possible to craft a sufficient number of weapons within the time required by His Highness? Everyone needs to give a clear data. If not, our ironworks should explain to His Highness as soon as possible, otherwise, the ironworks will not be able to hand it over by then, His Highness will blame it, and the big guy will not be able to bear it. ”

Zhang Xiaofan saw that the topics of these uncles and uncles who were dozens of years older than him were getting more and more deviated, and promptly reminded them of the main matters of this meeting.

As for the technical level of his subordinates and the production capacity of the department, they are the veterans who are on the front line, skilled and in charge of various departments.

Zhang Xiaofan said that the matter was quite serious, so that the directors of the five departments hurriedly calculated the production capacity of their departments in January.

At this time, these directors realized how unreliable the results calculated by memory alone were without looking at the daily production data counted by the assistants arranged by Yan Wang for them. They have asked for instructions to go back and sort it out, and then report the production capacity of their respective departments tomorrow.

After the January production data report of each department came up on the second day, Zhang Xiaofan found that in addition to the manufacturing department, the production capacity of the other four departments was no problem.

There is no problem with the raw materials of weapons and armor, but in terms of construction, according to the director of the manufacturing department, the number of blacksmiths who are skilled in making weapons and armor is insufficient. Most of the new blacksmiths recruited this year used to work in their hometowns to make farm tools, and they have been doing their old jobs in the past few months when they arrived at the ironworks, and they have no experience in making weapons. The manufacturing department completed at most half of its tasks in January.

Seeing this result, Zhang Gensheng was full of sorrow.

Zhang Xiaofan had no choice but to persuade: "Dad, for today, I have to go to His Royal Highness King Yan to explain the situation, and the ironworks are unable to complete the output as planned." ”

Zhang Gensheng waved helplessly and said: "You can draft and send someone to Pyongyang for this matter." ”

Zhang Gensheng's education level is not limited, and he can't write decent documents, so he has to give full authority to Zhang Xiaofan, the second son who is not shallow in learning.

Nuo is not Zhang Gensheng's family has good prospecting and mining skills, he used to lead hundreds of people to mine iron ore in his hometown, and his experience in managing craftsmen and miners was valued by Li Yu, and he was appointed as the owner of the ironmaking workshop when no one was available.

Watching the second son write a book on a blank piece of paper with a pen in a row, Zhang Gensheng sighed, the second son, who has been smart and talented since childhood, did not take the imperial examination to be the official according to his ideas, but was willing to mix with a group of craftsmen to learn the cheap profession and was secretly sad.

Zhang Xiaofan returned to his experimental crucible blast furnace after finishing the iron-making workshop, and the three assistants in charge of taking care of the blast furnace ran over with a look of surprise and said, "Eryang has made steel." ”

"What?" Zhang Xiaofan had just finished working on the ironworks, and his mind was a little confused.

"It's the molten iron you smelted before you left yesterday, and after pouring and cooling, it's steel and not molten iron."

Zhang Xiaofan said with a shocked face: "What you said is true? ”

"It's true!" The assistant replied in the affirmative.

"Let's go, take me there."

Zhang Xiaofan came to the molten iron pouring place, looked at it, and sure enough, it was in the abrasive made of Guanyin soil

Unfinished, to be revised later:

It has long appeared in China, the earliest can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and was most prosperous in the Han Dynasty, but it gradually declined during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, probably because the high-quality iron ore with low sulfur and low phosphorus was consumed, and the steel smelted with crucibles was not guaranteed in quality and high cost, so it was gradually eliminated. However, in some parts of Shanxi, there is a crucible iron-making process, and many experienced blacksmiths know how to make crucibles. And Chen Dexing's help to them was nothing more than making crucibles and crucible furnaces out of refractory kaolin. This allows the crucible to be made at a higher temperature.

Later generations of Huntsmann crucible steel required a high temperature of 1,600 degrees Celsius for smelting, and crucibles made of ordinary clay simply could not withstand it. Of course, not enough furnace temperature does not mean that steel cannot be made, and the ancients were very able to understand the concept of improvisation.

In 1740, B. Hunsman of England invented the crucible steelmaking method, and for the first time in European history, liquid molten steel was smelted; The key to this invention was to create a refractory material that could withstand high dawn temperatures of 1600°C to make crucibles. Since then, all kinds of high-quality steel, such as tool steel, have been smelted by the crucible method.

The crucible method was the first method of producing liquid steel in human history. However, the production volume is extremely small and the cost is high.