While the cement kiln was still busy tossing, the problem of Seawolf's steelmaking was finally put on the agenda, and now they had a large amount of raw wrought iron, which was taken by various factories to cast or make into bells, cannons, and muskets.

Everything else is fine, but when muskets are produced from wrought iron, they are very problematic.

Wrought iron is known to be less hard and softer, and when they used to make smoothbore guns, they could make do with it, but now they have encountered serious problems when they start producing wolf-tooth rifles.

Because wrought iron is too soft, even if it is repeatedly beaten, the hardness of the inner wall of the chamber is still not enough, although it will be easier to draw rifling, but the rifling drawn is not wear-resistant.

As a result, it has seriously affected the quality of the wolf's tooth rifle, especially the life of the barrel, which is much shorter than the barrel life of the smoothbore gun.

The smoothbore guns produced by the Seawolf can withstand two or three hundred, or even five or six hundred guns, but the barrel of the wolf's tooth rifle often only has a lifespan of 100 or even dozens of guns.

Because the Minne bullet will be close to the wall of the chamber and embedded in the rifling, so that it can rotate when it is discharged, and play the role of air tightness, so the rifling in the chamber is greatly worn.

The barrel produced by using wrought iron as raw material can not withstand too much firing at all, and the rifling will become shallower and shallower, so that after the new gun fires dozens of bullets, the rifling is too seriously worn, which reduces the accuracy of the gun, and the range and power are also greatly reduced.

In this regard, Yu Xiaotian could only let the gun be mass-produced over there to replace the barrel that had been rifled, and the result was that it greatly affected the production of wolf tooth rifles.

This is unimaginable for the waste of manpower and material resources, and there has even been a fierce battle, most of the barrels of a company's wolf's tooth rifles have been worn bald, and the spare barrels need to be replaced as a whole.

If this is in the case of a large-scale and high-intensity war, it is fundamentally unacceptable, and the side effect is of course that the speed of the overall replacement of rifled rifles has been greatly delayed, so that after a year, the sea wolf is still unable to replace all the original South Japanese rifles with wolf tooth rifles, which greatly limits the number of equipment of wolf tooth rifles.

Yu Xiaotian really can't bear this, he can only find a way to solve this problem, if he wants to solve this problem, he must make steel, even if it is low carbon steel, it is much stronger than the current use of wrought iron, at least it can double the life of the barrel.

If you want to get steel, there are some ways in ancient times, such as the first invention of the Chinese steel frying method and steel filling method can also obtain steel, in addition to relying on manpower to hammer and temper, you can also get some steel with quite good texture, you can create a very delicate sword.

However, if these methods are used to produce gun barrels and guns in large quantities, it is not realistic, because the steel obtained by these methods is too large for manpower consumption, and even if the sea wolf has grown into a behemoth now, it is impossible to rely on these methods to obtain a large amount of steel to produce gun barrels.

Therefore, if you want to solve this problem, Yu Xiaotian must find a way to mass-produce steel, and if you want to obtain a large amount of steel, you must change the steelmaking method and adopt a more modern steelmaking method.

However, the modern steelmaking method is basically converter steelmaking, and some are relatively old open-hearth steelmaking methods.

Because he did not study metal smelting after all, it was impossible to build an open-hearth or converter for modern steelmaking based on some of the techniques he remembered about steelmaking.

So he could only settle for the next best thing and choose the simplest and most practical method at present, for which he has been pondering this problem for the past two years.

After thinking about it for a long time, he finally chose the soil method, which was to use the simplest earth blast furnace for steelmaking.

In China's modern history, there has been an irrational period, the whole country is smelting steel, in this special period, all parts of China are like mushrooms after a rain, a large number of earthen blast furnaces have appeared, everywhere are smashing pots and selling iron for large-scale steelmaking.

The structure of the earthen blast furnace is very simple, it is built from local materials, and various pig iron products are recycled, smashed into the earthen blast furnace for smelting, and finally smelted into steel.

However, this is very wasteful, not to mention that it seriously interferes with normal production and life, and even affects economic development, and the damage to the natural environment is even more heinous.

Originally, Yu Xiaotian didn't want to use this method, because in addition to the serious waste of the soil blast furnace, the damage to the environment, the production of steel, the scrap rate is extremely high, many places of the earth blast furnace can only smelt some scrap iron slag, to the most after the end of nothing, even if the production of some strip steel, not necessarily the quality can meet the requirements, which contains many harmful elements, so that the quality of the steel is low.

He had previously considered using crucible steel to produce high-carbon steel, but this also encountered a big problem that he could not effectively solve for the time being.

Smelting crucible steel needs a crucible, this crucible cannot be an ordinary crucible, graphite crucible must be used, but graphite is such a thing, Yu Xiaotian has not found it in the market at present, let alone a large number of graphite crucibles, without graphite crucibles, he can only make iron, melt iron into molten iron, and cannot play the role of carburizing iron into steel.

Therefore, even if it is the simplest crucible steelmaking method, he can't use it at present, and he can only use this method after finding graphite.

Moreover, when the crucible steelmaking method is used to make steel, it can only produce one pot of molten steel, and the output is very low, and it is not easy to meet the needs of small-scale production.

In the end, after thinking about it, Yu Xiaotian really couldn't think of a better way, and secretly scolded in his heart that he knew that Lu Dao had today, he went to choose the metal smelting major back then, at least now he can build a small steelmaking furnace, but there is no regret medicine in this world, since he can't get a steelmaking furnace for the time being, then he can only use the most primitive earth blast furnace to make steel.

Even if the earth blast furnace is a waste and polluting, he can only do this at present, and the quality of the steel produced is not good enough, and he has no better way.

So after some preparations, in March of the seventh year of the Apocalypse, at the same time as the reservoir was being built, not far from the reservoir, there were several earthen blast furnaces of different shapes.

The output of these earth blast furnaces can only produce two or three tons of steel at most per day, and it is not even as good as the earth blast furnaces of a certain era, but after all, it is still a start.

The reason why so many earth blast furnaces of different styles are built is not that he is idle and full, but that he plans to use this batch of soil blast furnaces to conduct steelmaking tests.

The construction of the earth blast furnace is not very troublesome, basically it does not need to use much steel, the entire blast furnace is made of clay, and the lining is also some refractory bricks fired from clay, this thing is definitely not durable, but at present, for Xiaotian, whether it is durable or not is not a problem for him to consider.

The key is that he has to find a way to find a furnace type that can produce steel, and through these experimental earthen blast furnaces, he can test which kind of earthen blast furnace can be used so-so.

As for whether the produced steel can be used to make guns, for the time being, he has not considered this issue, as long as the molten steel is smelted first, then it can be regarded as a successful first step.

The development of industry involves a lot of things, just by the past, he opened gold fingers, cast cannons to make guns, produce soap, and burn glass, but it cannot support a systematic industry.

But what he is doing now is gradually improving his industrial structure, and gradually establishing a relatively systematic set of industries.

The principle of steelmaking is actually very simple, that is, by using a blast furnace, the pig iron is decarburized, and the excess carbon elements in the pig iron are removed, and finally it becomes steel.

In terms of raw materials, it is not very complicated, the main raw materials for steelmaking in later generations are mostly scrap steel, but at present, Yu Xiaotian can only use ready-made pig iron and wrought iron.

As for other raw materials, the main ones are coke and some limestone and the like, these things are not lacking in Xiaotian at present, and some can be solved on the spot, even if they can't be solved on the spot, they can also be transported in from outside.

At present, he does not plan to smelt pig iron by himself, because Guangdong and Fujian, which are not too far from Tamsui City, have many iron yards and iron mines, which can produce raw and wrought iron.

Now that Yu Xiaotian has fought this battle, the previous restrictions imposed on him by the government have been completely broken by him, and he can easily buy enough raw wrought iron from land, although the cost is slightly higher, but for the current Seawolf Group, such a cost can still be borne by them.

Therefore, at present, if you purchase iron ore from land and then use ships to transport it to fresh water to make iron, in addition to occupying a lot of capacity, you also need to transport a lot of coal or charcoal, which is very stressful for the capacity of the sea wolf, and it is not very cost-effective.

If charcoal is used to make iron, it will also cause great damage to the natural environment around the freshwater, and a large amount of forest will need to be cut down to burn charcoal.

Although coal can also be used to make iron, the sulfur content of most coal mines in China is basically relatively high, and the sulfur content of pig iron is also very high, so in southern China, charcoal is still used to make iron, so the quality of pig iron is much better than that of iron made from coal in the north.

Therefore, in terms of casting cannons and producing weapons, the Ming Dynasty has always had a saying that the iron in the south is better than that in the north, and that is because they do not know that the sulfur content of the iron smelted from coal in the north of the road is too high.

Considering these factors, Yu Xiaotian did not consider the matter of making iron by himself, but directly used the pig iron that he could buy at hand to make steel.

(These chapters are considered technical texts, I don't dare to write more, and I don't write in detail, so let's cover it!) In addition, shout, who still has a monthly pass! The monthly pass list is gone! Fainted, chrysanthemums have been in severe pain these days! ）