In addition to breech guns, there are other things that Yang Rui does not pay attention to, and Xu Jiabao also understands his thoughts, so he only accompanies him around the workshops where cannons are made. The fastest chapter update is that Yang Rui started from the steelmaking workshop again, and read the whole process again, but at this time the production has stopped, and only the raw materials and equipment can be seen. "In the past, the steel used to make guns was made of British Haimo Tai pig iron mixed with Hunan Zikou pig iron seventy percent, plus Siemens crushed steel or scrap steel of the factory three percent refining, Simons crushed steel or the steel used by the factory, in fact, is also made of low-phosphorus pig iron. The phosphorus content of Haimotai pig iron is very small, only 2 parts per 10,000, while the phosphorus content of Hunan Zikou pig iron is 5 parts per 10,000, and the sulfur content is not high. In addition, the factory also has Swedish pig iron, which contains less phosphorus than 2 parts per 10,000 and less sulfur, usually 1 part per 10,000, but Swedish pig iron is not used to cast guns, only used to make mild steel sheets. ”

Xu Jiabao said that Yang Rui had no idea, he only held a piece of dark cyan pig iron and asked, "This is Haimo Tai pig iron?" So how is our pig iron refined? ”

"This is Swedish pig iron," Xu Jiabao said, and then pointed to the lead-colored pig iron in another lattice and said: "This is Haimo pig iron, which has more iron than Swedish pig iron, and it is because Haimo pig iron is used more in earlier gun steelmaking; This is Hubei No. 1 pig iron," Xu Jiabao pointed to the pig iron from Hanyang, shook his head and said: "The phosphorus content is more than 14 parts per 10,000; This is Ma'anshan pig iron, containing seven to eight parts per 10,000 phosphorus," and finally he took out a piece of pig iron, which was also dark blue, and said: "This is Huoqiu pig iron, and we make it with charcoal." The phosphorus content is 2.5 parts per 10,000 and the sulfur content is 1.5 parts per 10,000. ”

"Charcoal refining?" Yang Rui was a little surprised, isn't this charcoal ironmaking the technology of Foshan in the Ming Dynasty. At that time, it seems that the cannons were made of Foshan pig iron.

"Yes. There are iron ores with low phosphorus and sulfur content in Liaodong, and there are also coal mines with less phosphorus and sulfur content, but there are no such coal mines in Huainan, so now ironmaking is made of charcoal. Xu Jiabao said.

"Oh. Where is there a coal and iron ore with low phosphorus and sulfur content outside the Guanwai? Yang Rui asked.

"Coal mines with low phosphorus and sulfur content are more common, but there are no ones in Huainan. However, iron ore with low phosphorus and sulfur content is rare. This can only be made in heaven and beyond the reach of manpower. Those iron ores with high phosphorus and sulfur content, even if they take a lot of effort. Like Ma'anshan, the phosphorus content is only reduced to 8 parts per 10,000 at most, and iron ore with low phosphorus and sulfur content can control the phosphorus-sulfur ratio below 5 parts per 10,000 without paying attention during metallurgy. We have explored all the known iron ores outside the Guan, but only Miaoergou in Benxi Lake is an iron ore with low phosphorus and sulfur content. It did. That mine is going to be watched. I can't take it away from the Japanese.

But you must know that if there is more phosphorus in the steel, it will be cold and brittle, and if it contains more sulfur, it will be hot and brittle. Pig iron containing less than 3 parts per 10,000 phosphorus and less than 2 parts per 10,000 sulfur must be used to refine artillery, and the navy is most afraid of cold and brittle steel plates in winter, and the requirements for phosphorus in steel are even higher, and they must be less than 2 parts per 10,000. If the revolution succeeded, it was impossible for China not to build warships on its own. There is a low-phosphorus and low-sulfur coal mine next to Miaoergou, and the two match. Then it can be mass-produced. You must know that the manganis iron used to build ships costs 160 taels per ton, Siñig iron costs 80 taels per ton, and Haimo Tai pig iron costs 46 taels per ton. Xu Jiabao said very solemnly.

He has been in the northeast for a long time, in order to test the artillery steel, the situation of the coal and iron ore over there is clear, and in the first few months of the transfer to the Guannei, he used the iron ore in Miaoergou to test several furnaces of qualified pig iron, because he remembered the Miaoergou iron mine in Benxi Lake, and emphasized that he made several reports on the purchase of Miaoergou iron mine, but Yang Rui did not tell him the true situation because of confidentiality. In fact, Benxi Lake, Anshan and Fushun are all within the scope of the enclosure of the Fuxing Association, but they are demarcated in the name of Zhang Rong's family, and these places have all registered mining companies with the Ministry of Agriculture and Industry and Commerce, and started a small amount of mining, because the Fuxing Association has not invested vigorously, and the scene is not big.

"Don't worry, Brother Xianting." Yang Rui said, "It's been optimistic over there for a long time." Only now we have to use money everywhere, and let it go in Liaodong first, and when the revolution is successful, then we must see a big iron mine in Benxi, and even more so, we must mine the Fushun coal mine. ”

Hearing that Miaoergou was in his own hands, and Yang Rui said it himself, Xu Jiabao put his mind at ease, unlike Yang Rui who cared about finished products, he only cared about raw materials and skills, and these two were indispensable for practicing steel and making good cannons. In fact, many skills are ready-made, such as the current imitation of the Krupp cannon, the colleagues of the Jiangnan Bureau have been studying it for several years, and they will take it, but the raw materials are not achieved overnight, and if there is no one, you can only buy foreigners, and once the stock is out of stock, nothing can be made.

Yang Rui finally left after dark in the military factory, and when they parted, several people talked about the hydraulic press, Xu Jiabao meant that if there was no hydraulic press, it would only be possible to build a Krupp 75mm field gun at most, and it would be impossible to build a 1o5 or 155mm gun. Yang Rui thought that the elevation angle of the gun carriage had been opened from 15 degrees to 38 degrees, that is to say, when the two armies faced each other, in the face of the Manchu Qing Dynasty's 75mm Krupp field artillery, under the large elevation angle of their own side, the artillery range was completely suppressed by the opponent, but the Manchu Qing also trained the Janissaries in two or three towns, and each town was equipped with eighteen 15omm Krupp howitzers, so I don't know how much the firing range was?

"It turned out to be true, Brother Xianting said that it is indeed a thing, if you can train the iron of Miaoergou, then there should be a lot of money to be made." On the way back, Du Yaquan thought about the Miaoergou Iron Mine, and even wanted to put the Tonghua Iron Plant, which had been expanded and under construction, in the Benxi Lake area.

Interrupted by Du Yaquan's train of thought, Yang Rui had no choice but to think about the howitzer first, and said: "Ma'anshan is because it is in the Guannei and the cost of the iron factory is low, so it is raised to build it, although it is with its own money, but once the money is needed, the stock can still be realized on the exchange, and if it is fast, you can go to the bank to mortgage." The expansion of the Tonghua Iron Works is in its own sphere of influence, and if it is also moved out of Tonghua and placed in Benxi Lake like Ma'anshan, then once something happens, the iron plant will not be guaranteed. Don't think about it, then all the foreign iron and steel will be driven out by us! ”

The price of pig iron in the Chinese market was before the opening of the factory in Ma'anshan. It has always been maintained at about 27 taels per ton, which is the price after the use of Pingxiang coke in Hanyang Iron Works, and the more expensive Kaiping coke in Hanyang. The price of pig iron in the market was thirty-two taels per ton, and when there was no Hanyang in front of it, the iron price was forty or fifty taels per ton. It can be said that foreigners sell iron based on the cost of China's own iron production, but this law has been completely changed after the iron production in Ma'anshan, and the iron price in Ma'anshan is one or two lower than the iron price in Europe, including ocean freight. If it is shipped to China and then paid a tariff of 5 percent, the cost of foreign iron is only more than 23 taels.

The cost of Ma'anshan is sixteen taels, and this does not include the profits of the coal mine. It can be said that he has an overwhelming advantage, but just to take care of Hanyang, a pig teammate, Du Yaquan can't let go of the price and sell it at all. After all, Hanyang and Maanshan belong to the same company, even if they are not the same company. Yang Rui and Sheng Xuanhuai will not accept Ma'anshan's low-price sale of pig iron. Yang Rui took into account that Hanyang is a Chinese company no matter what. invested 20 million taels, and the money could not be wasted; And Sheng Xuanhuai has turned Hanyang into his own industry, once Ma'anshan is open to sale at a low price, then Sheng Xuanhuai will face bankruptcy.

For this reason, Sheng Xuanhuai and Yu Huizu discussed several times, and the entire Coal and Iron Works and Mines Co., Ltd. made some adjustments, first of all, the old iron plant in Hanyang was no longer expanded, and the additional iron plant with an annual output of 50,000 tons was placed in Daye. to reduce transportation costs, and the new plant uses coking coal. It is no longer used for eleven taels of Pingxiang coke, but instead of nine taels of Huainan coke, plus the stewards of the entire Hanyang have gone to Ma'anshan for rotation training to reduce material waste and management costs, and the average cost of the new and old factories in Hanyang can be reduced to 21 taels in the short term, and to 18 taels in the long term. It's just that in this adjustment process, the price of Ma'anshan in China should take care of Hanyang, and it can only be set at 23 taels per ton, which makes foreign iron have room to survive.

Du Yaquan was in charge of Maanshan, assisted in the management of Hanyang, and remotely controlled the expansion of the iron factory, and was already the steel king of the whole Asia, if it were not for the protection of Japan's Yawata Steel, it would have gone bankrupt and closed down long ago. Before the opening of the Panama Canal, all the steel mills in the United States were in the east, and the steel from the east cost $10 per ton to be transported to the west by guò trains, so the eastern steel was only sold to Europe and not to the west, while the western market was always occupied by the British. Seven and a half dollars is still ten dollars less than the freight rate of ten dollars for rail transportation to the west. On the Asian side, because the American pine has been exported to the Middle East, the freighter comes back empty, and in order to bring the goods back, the shipowner gives a freight rate of only three dollars per ton, plus four dollars in tariffs, only seven dollars. This seems to be 50 cents less than the British, but the freight rate is often fluctuating, and the steel price is slightly more expensive than the British, making the Maanshan and British steel market in the western North American market very fierce.

Feeling that he had thrown Du Yaquan into a Colosseum bigger than Tonghua, Yang Rui only smiled: "Brother Qiu Fan is a lion, wherever you run is your territory." In the past, it was like this in Liaodong, but now in Kannai, the whole of Asia and half of the Americas will be occupied by you. ”

"Don't forget that I'm a chicken, and I don't occupy a side with a lion." Du Yaquan was very self-deprecating, only patted the snow on his body, and said: "I kind of know that there can only be two ways to make money from this steel, one is that you make ordinary steel, how cheap and how to save money, and you also need to have a fleet, which can be transported to all parts of the world and is not more expensive than others; Another is to make those special steels, like that Haimo pig iron, more than 40 21 tons, which is more than rail steel, and more expensive Swedish pig iron...... Both of these rely on quality to win, and it doesn't matter how high the freight cost is. ”

Seeing him express his feelings, Yang Rui asked, "Then you want to make that?" Is it cheap ordinary steel, which can't be cheaper, or is it outrageously expensive special steel? ”

"I want to build the latter kind, but I can't make it if I want to. Didn't Brother Xianting say, this cannon steel, one is in raw materials, and the other is in skills, we do not have an advantage over others in raw materials, and skills are also behind others, so it can only start from the ordinary. But it turned out, didn't the Americans have been building that canal, and once the canal is opened, our steel will be driven back by the Americans, and we have nearly half a million tons of iron at that time. 150,000 tons of steel, such a large amount, can China and Nanyang sell it all? "At the helm of such a huge steel company. Du Yaquan is often walking on thin ice, for fear that changes in the outside world will make the already balanced production and marketing market unbalanced.

"No, it won't." Yang Rui shook his head and said. He didn't know when the Panama Canal would be built, but when it was completed, it was estimated that World War I would almost begin. At that time, because of the unlimited submarine warfare of the Germans, the price of steel in the world was doubling rapidly, although Yang Rui did not know that the price of pig iron would be sold at a sky-high price of 260 silver dollars a ton, but he thought that it was still possible to double or triple the price of iron. His plan was to borrow money to build an iron plant after Xinhai to produce one million tons of iron. The industrial scale of one million tons of steel. After the war, he sold steel and cargo ships, and made a lot of money from foreigners; If the price of iron fell sharply at the end of World War I, then the construction of railways in the country began. Whether borrowing money or raising funds on its own, we will invest at least 150 million taels a year to build 5,000 kilometers of heavy-rail railways and pave shuanggui. Sleepers also do not use wood. With reinforced concrete sleepers, 150 tons of steel are consumed per kilometer, and 750,000 tons of steel are consumed annually, in addition to shipbuilding......

As soon as Du Yaquan asked about steel, Yang Rui suddenly digressed, and his thoughts only ran out of the clouds, Du Yaquan was also familiar with him, and he didn't speak when he saw him like this. After only staying for a while, Yang Rui said: "Submarines are still extremely important. ”

It's about steel. When answering the submarine, Du Yaquan smiled: "Actually, what does this steel have to do with submarines?" ”

Yang Rui only thought that if the Germans could sink more cargo ships from the Entente countries, then the price of steel ships would be even higher, but how could Germany sink more ships? Wolf pack tactics? At first, Yang Rui also thought so, but this required the Germans to pay attention to submarines and install radio ...... in submarines

It's hard to explain his thoughts, Yang Rui had no choice but to say: "There must be a road before the car reaches the mountain." When the Panama Canal was opened and the domestic iron factories were almost integrated, if the cost of the old Hanyang factory was still high, it would be closed. In fact, it doesn't matter, at that time, the steel production was huge, and the high cost of 60,000 tons of iron could not raise the cost of the entire company much. It is not difficult to occupy Asia with local advantages, and after the China exhibition, the demand for steel is still not small. ”

Yang Rui thought about it, and only prevaricated Du Yaquan with a few thoughtless words, and when he returned to his residence outside Bagong Mountain, he asked Chen Guangshou to transfer the information of the German submarine to see how the progress was going over there.

It has been more than a year since he intervened in the submarine project, which can be said to be the first project with such a huge investment but no profit, and in order to deal with the German Admiralty, Yang Rui's knowledge of British ships was also wiped out by the German consul. It took so much effort, but the situation in the early stage was not optimistic. The submarine named U-1 was only more than 200 tons, equipped with two 400-horsepower kerosene engines instead of the diesel engines that Yang Rui expected, and the submarine itself was also extremely poor in performance, with poor wave resistance and could not sail far. Xu Huafeng also came to report halfway to ask to stop the cooperation with the Germans and return to Shanghai to study on his own. However, after several telegrams, he was persuaded by Yang Rui, and finally stayed in Germany to fiddle with the submarine that was only more than 200 tons.

"Sir, some time ago Mr. Hua Feng sent a telegram that he got the second German submarine, which was still a real ship, two kerosene engines, a displacement of three hundred and forty tons, a kerosene engine of six hundred horsepower, thirteen on the water and nine under the water...... In general, it is better than the previous ship, including the surface navigation of the waves, but the cruising range is still too short, only 600 nautical miles. Chen Guangshou turned out the previous telegram and made a report to Yang Rui again.

"Or kerosene motive?!" Yang Rui is a little dissatisfied, the problem of miniaturization of diesel engines, the Germans are still trying to find ways to improve, it seems that they are not so good.

For 30 years after the next 30 years, diesel engines were installed on ships rather than trucks, and the reason for this was that the fuel injection pumps were not miniaturized. The diesel engine is compression-ignition, so as to inject fuel into the cylinder as thin as possible, which is equipped with a gas tank, the compressed air in the gas tank is used to inject diesel into the cylinder, in order to obtain enough air pressure to make the fuel completely atomized, then the diesel engine is equipped with a large enough gas tank. This is not a problem for a huge gas tank for a boat, but for tractors, cars, and submarines with a displacement of only two or three hundred tons, the large tank is very troublesome. In the history of later generations, it was not until the twenties that the German Bosch understood the mechanical oil pump, which made the diesel engine truly miniaturized, so that it was installed on the car, and the German submarine was also sure of the diesel engine technology, and only then did the large displacement U-19 press the diesel engine.

The problem of the oil pump is not a big problem for Yang Rui, who sells fruits, and the wax spraying system used by the fruit factory to wax apples and citrus is a complete copy of the diesel engine oil pump, which has two versions, one is the same mechanical oil pump as Bosch, and the other is the fuel injection pump of the air compressor and gas tank, and he has dismantled and washed both oil pumps. Of course, he did this because the fruit wax in the wax pump was frozen in the winter and delayed the delivery of the city, and the threat of the city procurement on the phone made him extremely familiar with these two things. After drawing a sketch of the two types of oil pumps, the actual chamber of the internal combustion engine was built, but now it is only a simple air compressor gas tank type.

"Did Mr. Hua Feng say anything else? Didn't we sell gas tank pumps to the Germans? When will they be able to fit on submarines. Yang Rui asked after being proud, he felt that he should pay good attention to some German submarines, if more submarines could be built, maybe the First World War would be fought for a longer time.

"Mr. Hua Feng said that the Germans are now giving us the U-2 to use, so it is estimated that they have already released the U-3, and if you want to see the diesel engine installed on the submarine, I am afraid you will have to wait until the U-7 and U-8." Chen Guangshou said.

"What about the battery? What's changed and hasn't? Yang Rui asked. The lead-acid battery is also the bottleneck of the submarine, although it has been identified very early, but from the photos sent by Xu Huafeng, this thing is still extremely simple, and the grid is not made of plastic but wood, and the efficiency guess is also extremely low.

"The battery has improved after we provided the technology, but the effect is still not ideal, and the problem of releasing hydrogen during charging and discharging cannot be solved." Chen Guangshou said.

"Hmm. There is no way to solve this. Yang Rui shook his head. Batteries containing dilute sulfuric acid release a large amount of hydrogen during charging, and once this hydrogen reaches a certain concentration in the air, it will explode. The inherent explosion hazard of this lead-acid battery is to make the Tianzi brand that has sprung up in the world battery market helpless. For the hydrogen emitted from the battery, Yang Rui can only hope that the hydrogen storage alloy brought in the sentence in the high school chemistry textbook can be developed, and the rest is just waiting for the researchers to open their brains.

"Didn't Mr. Hua Feng get some news from the Germans, such as how big the submarines they are building now? Did the Germans pay more attention to submarines? And the German named Dönitz, did you find it? Yang Rui asked, he really wanted the wolf pack tactics to be realized in a battle, but he didn't know if it was realistic.

"Sir, Mr. Hua Feng said that there is no such person in the navy. In addition, he said that although the Germans opened two submarines for us to study, they were still very wary of us. The reason why they got the U-2 so quickly now should be that they saw that we helped them solve the problem of downsizing diesel engine jet tanks. He only knows now that the German U-3 boat should be built, and it seems that the Germans have finalized the submarine, guessing that they are already building this kind of submarine in batches on a large scale, and it is estimated that it will not be long before we can get the U-3 boat. Chen Guangshou said: "Mr. Hua Feng also said that as long as the steel problem can be solved, we can build this kind of submarine now." ”

"Is it the steel used to build submarines, or the steel used to build large diesel engines?" Yang Rui heard steel again, and couldn't help laughing, today, from cannon building to shipbuilding, and now to building submarines and diesel engines, it is still steel.

"Both!" Chen Guangshou replied to Xu Huafeng's original words in the telegram.

"Alright. I know! You go out. Yang Rui said, he only felt that after thinking about steel for a long time, he didn't want to go around it anymore.

"This way, sir...... Here's not so good news. Chen Guangshou said, as soon as he said it badly, Yang Rui glared at him, and he didn't have to ask, so he said: "I don't know where the news came out, now there is a rumor outside that there is a former Ming sect in the Revival Association, and the revolution is to oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty." (To be continued......)

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