After the New Year, the holiday is over, but people's hearts are still scattered - after all, the Shangyuan Festival is still ahead.

When Han Gang returned to the Ordnance Prison, the atmosphere in the yamen was also lazy and lazy. And the first thing at the beginning of the New Year was that the ordnance supervisor Cheng Bai Zhang stood up and said that the lamp mountain in the prison this year was somehow broken during the New Year, and it must be repaired quickly, otherwise it will not be able to catch up with the Shangyuan Lantern Festival, but it will be disgraced in front of the Son of Heaven.

'Oh, that's amazing! Han Gang buried the sarcastic words in his stomach, and the current custom is like this, and he has no intention of resisting it.

The excitement of New Year's Day is only at home, but the excitement of the Shangyuan Festival is on the streets. Local prefectures and counties all put lights on three days, while the capital puts lights on five days, from the fourteenth day of the first month to the eighteenth day of the first month. The superintendents of the government, the royal family and nobles, and even the guilds almost all have to set up lanterns and make lantern mountains.

These lanterns and lantern mountains have been built since the winter solstice. On the fifteenth day of the lunar month, there are many lanterns put in Jinglongmen to 'pre-appreciate'. However, the lamp mountain of the government, the hospital, the prison, and the department of the yamen only appeared during the Shangyuan Festival.

Whose Dengshan won the most applause when it appeared, whose face has brilliance, if it can be favored by the Son of Heaven, it will be even more incredible, and it will be a glory throughout the year. It really has to wait until the festive atmosphere has passed, and that is after the eighteenth day of the first lunar month.

Zeng Xiaokuan was in the Privy Council today and did not come to the prison, and Han Gang had no intention of waiting for his opinion, so he asked directly: "Who is in charge of the matter of Dengshan?" ”

Bai Zhanggong said: "It's Xia Guan." ”

Thinking about it, if it weren't for Bai Zhang's host, he wouldn't have taken the initiative to stand up and report. Han Gang said: "If this is the case, then you are solely responsible." You are more familiar with the personnel in the prison than I do, and you will select the personnel. If necessary, they can rush to work day and night, and the extra expenses will be taken from the minister's account. ”

"......" Bai Zhang hesitated for a moment, but did not immediately agree.

"Isn't it possible to repair Dengshan with how many manpower?"

Bai Zhang said: "The officials of Dengshan have already gone to see it, and the whole thing has collapsed. It is easier to make a new rebellion than to repair it. ”

Han Gang felt slightly impatient in his heart: "Then make it new!" Fang Cai also said, you are fully responsible, Zeng and I both promise to see the lamp mountain in the prison on the royal street on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month. ”

Bai Chang took the order.

The matter of Dengshan was decided, and this unobtrusive task was pushed back to his subordinates, and Han Gang still had a lot of official duties to deal with urgently from an annual leave in prison.

The subordinate officials in the ordnance prison did not play any tricks for Han Gang, and the files and copywriters handed over were all divided into categories, and the suggestions were pasted on the copywriting for his reference.

Many officials in the yazhong, in order to give the new officials a dismissal. Often, a large number of official affairs and some categories will be piled up together, so that the officials will not be able to approve it, and they will retreat after the difficulty. Han Gangben was also mentally prepared, but the subordinates of the ordnance supervisor were honestly looking for rules - I don't know if this was the kindness released by Lu Huiqing and Zeng Xiaokuan.

But after all, there are a lot of things, and by the time Han Gang finishes handling all the official business in hand, it will already be afternoon. Fortunately, this is not the case every day, otherwise Lu Huiqing and Zeng Xiaokuan would not have been able to carry three, four, five or six, and sometimes even more than a dozen part-time errands.

After drinking a cup of hot tea and resting for a while, Han Gang called the little official who was waiting outside the door to come in: "Go and find the heads of the gold and the furnace." ”

After listening to Han Gang's instructions, the little official hurriedly ran out. After a while, the heads of the four workshops responsible for forging steel and smelting iron and forging iron parts in the ordnance supervision were all found.

These heads are all officials, with military positions on their bodies, and they are wearing cyan official robes. However, some have already entered the stream, from the ninth grade to the ninth grade, and some are unqualified foreign officials - they are allowed to wear green robes. Basically, they all worked hard to get up, each of them was forty or fifty years old, and from the outside, they were all craftsmen, and they didn't match the official uniforms on their bodies at all.

After they saluted and sat down, Han Gang said straight to the point: "I guess you have all heard what this official plans to do, right?" ”

Everyone nodded in response, and replied in unison: "Xia Guan understands." Let the giver be untold. Whatever the people say, the officials will do. ”

The news that Han Gang planned to build an iron ship had spread in Beijing, but the officials in the ordnance prison all knew that at least before the Chinese New Year, the newly appointed military superintendent had not moved, and he would definitely have to mobilize people to start work after the New Year.

"To build an iron ship, the first thing is to have good iron, which must be tough, easy to bend and build, and able to withstand the impact of wind and waves. This is the first thing on the list, so the official wants to ask if the furnace and gold can provide suitable iron parts. ”

The four people sitting here are all true experts, and if Han Gang wants to build an iron ship, the first step is to listen to their opinions.

To tell the truth, there are some officials who do not know how to learn and do nothing, and there are only those who know how to chant poetry, but there are indeed many outstanding talents, and more officials, especially the low-level bureaucrats involved in practice, are far more familiar and proficient in the work at hand than later generations imagined. The reason is also very simple, if you are all useless, how to govern a huge country?

The head of the big furnace, Zang Zhang, is such an expert. He is already sixty years old, and his reputation is not low among the fifty-one works of the Arsenal Prison, and he is the most daring to speak among the four: "If you say good iron, then you can't use the northern iron smelted with coal." Stone charcoal is used for iron smelting in the north, charcoal is used in the south, and bamboo charcoal is used in Shuzhong. The iron smelted from the charcoal is more brittle, and the iron in the south and Shu is much stronger. Now the iron used in the prison is mostly from Xuzhou, and if the horse chopping knife is replaced with Hebei iron, it will be broken if it can't kill a few people. Iron whips and stirrups can be used on the North Railway. If you want to build an iron ship, you must use Xuzhou iron. ”

The armament supervisor mostly uses Xuzhou iron, Han Gang knows how to say. Iron ore is generally smelted directly in the mine, and after the ore is tempered into iron, pig iron ingots are sent to Beijing. Xuzhou's Liguojian has 36 metallurgies, and the total number of craftsmen engaged in smelting is as many as four or five thousand, and the number of miners is as many as tens of thousands, which is an important town in the northern iron industry. However, there were no coal mines found in Xuzhou at this time, so it could only rely on charcoal for smelting.

However, you can't smelt good iron with coal, and Han Gang doesn't know what Lu Dao is for.

Well, in fact, Han Gang's understanding of the steel industry is only limited to blast furnace ironmaking, open-hearth steelmaking, and slag can be recycled, which is common sense that appears in textbooks. That's all, I don't know anything about the Chinese technique. I can't remember the appearance of the blast furnace and open hearth.

By the way, the raw materials for ironmaking are iron ore and limestone, as well as coke, which is also due to the illustrations in the textbook. In addition, he also knew that coke is the product of dry distillation of coal, and the by-products are coal tar and gas. As for the rest, it's really confusing. It can only rely on the techniques and experts that have appeared in this era.

"Is it the wrong place to produce carbon?" Han Gang asked.

"It's not that the north is at odds with the soil. In terms of iron, Khitan iron is the best. Xiaguan remembered that he didn't know whether the Qingli or the Huangyou period, that is, when Emperor Renzong was still in power, there was iron in the gifts of the northern envoy He Zhengdan. Tan Yun, the head of the small furnace, replied: "It's just that the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire, and earth, to forge iron and smelt iron, the five elements cannot be missing." However, the pig iron smelted from charcoal is lacking in wood in the five elements, so it lacks toughness. ”

Han Gang shook his head secretly. There must be something wrong with this reasoning. When he talked about the treatment of fractures, he used the theory of the five elements as an argument, and now it has been written into the medical book of the Taiyi Bureau. Unexpectedly, right now, iron-making is also mixed with the five elements.

Xiao Jin followed closely: "If you talk about charcoal, now in the northern people's homes, it is not less than the use of firewood." Xia Guan remembered that Guanzhong also used a lot, just like Yanzhou [Yan'an], ordinary people almost didn't use firewood and grass. ”

Han Gang still remembers Yanzhou vividly, but he was forced to go there by Wang Anshi and Han Jiang. I have a deep memory of the air quality in Yanzhou, which is comparable to that of later generations: "There are three roads in the sand pile and two cities in the coal smoke." The people of Yanzhou do use coal. ”

"It's the same with Kaifeng." Tan Yun said: "Kaifeng can afford to use charcoal as the door of wealth, and the palace uses more non-smoking tribute charcoal." However, ordinary people use the charcoal transported from Jiudingdu in Huaizhou [now Qinyang, Jiaozuo, Henan], just because it is cheap! ”

Jiudingdu is the largest coal trading and transshipment place near Kaifeng, after the coal from Hedong [Shanxi] is mined, it is transported to Huaizhou through Taihang, and then transported from Jiudingdu to the capital by the Bianhe River.

"How many rich families in Hedong and Hebei rely on coal to make a living now...... Zang Zhang turned his head to Li Quan, the head of Dajin who had not made a sound, "Li Xiaoyi, the one who is now in charge of the ninth coal field in Henan is your brother-in-law, right?" ”

Li Quan nodded and replied briefly: "Yes." ”

The Henan that these two are talking about is not Henan south of the Yellow River, but Henan south of the Bianhe River. Outside Kaifeng City, along the Bianhe River and Wuzhang River, there are the first to tenth coal-fields in Henan, the first to the tenth coal-in fields in Hebei, and the coal-fields such as Jingxi and Fengji.

In these coal fields, the coal piles are piled up into mountains, and millions of soldiers and civilians in the capital consume hundreds of thousands of catties of coal every day, all of which are transported into the capital from the coal fields. Hangang, who lives in the west of the city, as long as he goes out and leaves the fangmen, can see the sleigh trucks carrying coal into Beijing every day, dragging a long string of them along the Bianshui River.

But today we're talking about iron, not coal. The words had already been deviated, and Han Gang pulled the topic back, ""

"What if it was cast?" "During the Ming Dao period, the Baoxiang Zen Temple cast iron Buddha, thousands of hands and thousands of eyes. It was cast once, and none of the hands or eyes were missing. It was personally supervised by Li Xiaoyi and his Lao Tzu. ”

"Nope." Han Gang immediately shook his head, "That kind of iron boat can float on the water." Real ships, from the keel, ribs to the hull, are all composed of parts. However, the keel and ribs can be cast, preferably steel rather than iron. ”

"It's going to be hard." Zang Zhang frowned with white eyebrows, "Today's steel is mostly from Cizhou - Tuangang, also known as steel filling." The one used to make the chopping knife is Cizhou steel. But even the horse chopping knife can't be made of steel, and thousands of steel knives are just fine, but it's 200,000 handles a year, and they can't afford to use it at all! Can only be clamped on the blade. ”