After listening to Liu Hou's words, Guan Gong said embarrassedly: "This is also a reason." Over the years, His Majesty has used troops year after year, and countless military rations have been consumed, although countless military rations have been transferred through Jingzhou, but in order to ensure His Majesty's use of troops in the north, the second uncle and I dare not intercept more food. Therefore, Jingzhou's food is a little tight. ”

Liu Hou understood, last time Guan Gong intercepted a large amount of ammunition and fought fiercely with Eastern Wu~, so that Liu Hou's Northern Expeditionary troops had to suspend the offensive because of the lack of ammunition and rested in place for a long time.

Later, Liu Hou sent a letter to criticize him once, and this arrogant old angry young man finally learned to be obedient and did not dare to intercept the materials on the front line at will, which led to a shortage of grain and grass in Jingzhou, a transit place for grain and grass. Liu Hou also felt a little embarrassed when he heard his words, as if he was quite ashamed of this general who was guarding one side, not to mention that he was still his second uncle and father-in-law.

Guan Gong didn't know what Liu Hou was thinking, and continued: "Although the source of wood is tense, it can still be solved reluctantly after all. However, after the wood is harvested, it cannot be used immediately, it must be dried in the sun for three years, and then soaked in tung oil for three months to half a year before it can be used, especially as the keel of the large root wood, it has to be processed for a long time before it can be used.

Therefore, the cycle of building a ship is often several years, and the time we have decided to expand the naval army is not very long, and there is not much wood available for accumulation, which is the main reason why we do not build many ships at present.

In fact, there is another reason, that is, tung oil, now the world is not too peaceful, most people are still not full, almost all the people are mainly planting food, where there are people to plant, squeeze tung oil. However, shipbuilding requires a large amount of tung oil, and the second uncle and I almost bought up the tung oil of the entire Han Dynasty, and also bought some from Wei and Wu at a high price, but the tung oil is still not enough. ”

"Second uncle has worked hard." Liu Houdao. After Guan Gong's explanation, he completely understood Guan Gong's hardship, not that he didn't want to build more warships, but because of the real conditions, he couldn't build more. First, there is a lack of craftsmen, and there is a lack of available materials, and it is difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice.

In this era, there was no large-scale drying equipment, and the drying of wood could only rely on air drying and sun drying, which doomed a ship to a very long production cycle and outrageously long. It takes more than three years just to wait for the wood to be treated, who can stand it?

What's more, there is still the problem of tung oil to be solved, and it seems that we have to think of other alternative materials. In the eyes of people in this era, shipbuilding can only be made of lightweight materials such as wood and bamboo, but in the eyes of Liu Hou, a later generation, there are many materials that can be used to make ships.

On the contrary, wood is the material he is least optimistic about, first of all, this material is not hard enough, it is okay as a civilian ship, but it is enough to choke on a warship, especially in ancient water warfare, there is a trick to use the angle to break and knock over the enemy ship.

This way of fighting determines that the stronger the ship, the better, and if the ship made of wood is hit by the collision angle, it will definitely be seriously damaged, so it is necessary to replace it with harder materials.

The second is the problem of fire prevention, the wood itself is flammable, and if it is soaked in tung oil, it is simply a torch that ignites a little bit. This is also the reason why fire is often used in water warfare, didn't Zhou Yu burn Cao Cao's powerful naval army with a single fire?

Again, building a ship from wood is very difficult to manufacture and requires a lot of highly skilled craftsmen. Carpentry work is not something anyone can do, especially in shipbuilding, where every seam must be tightly sealed, otherwise it will be waiting for water to leak, which requires a very high level of skill.

And it just so happens that there is a shortage of shipbuilders in Jingzhou, which also greatly restricts the production speed of warships. In addition, it is not only difficult to manufacture with wood, but it is also very troublesome to repair after damage, and sometimes because of the damage in a small area, a large area has to be dismantled for repair, and then reinstalled after repair.

And warships are used for war, and damage is simply commonplace, so those craftsmen are busy just repairing ships, where is there much time left for building new ships.

The point is, the pre-processing cycle of timber is so long that even if you order a large amount of timber to be harvested now, it will have to wait more than three years before large-scale shipbuilding can begin, and it is estimated that it will take five years to expand the fleet to a sizeable size.

Five years? In five years, he may have destroyed the state of Wu and unified the world. Thinking of this, Liu Hou couldn't help but smile bitterly, he had knowledge that surpassed this era for nearly two thousand years, could it be that he would have to wait five more years to destroy a half-beaten Dongwu? Absolutely not, better alternatives had to be figured out.

Liu Hou's first thought was steel, weren't all warships in later generations made of steel? This thing is hard and not afraid of fire, and if it is combined with firearms, it is simply invincible in the world. If there was a steel gunboat, Liu Hou felt that he could immediately drive to Jianye to bombard the Dongwu Palace.

Liu Hou fantasized about the refreshing feeling of one day driving a steel battleship and smashing all the large and small wooden ships of Eastern Wu, and he couldn't help but show a smile on his face.

"Your Majesty, Your Majesty." With Guan Gong's scream, Liu Hou woke up in shock, only to realize that he was distracted. He wiped the non-existent saliva from the corner of his mouth and asked, "What's wrong?" ”

Guan Gongdao: "Your Majesty, the second uncle and Kong Ming were talking just now, and I want to ask Your Majesty to transfer a construction corps over and harvest a large number of trees as wood for shipbuilding." As for the problem of too long drying time of wood, Kong Ming also thought of a solution. Guan Gong obviously knew that his son-in-law, the emperor, was distracted, and hurriedly explained what they had just discussed.

"Oh? What's the solution? Liu Hou asked cooperatively.

"Kong Ming suggested building a large kiln, a kiln similar to that of firing ceramics, in which the wood was put and the wood was dried over a fire." Justice.

"Oh? I didn't expect Cheng to know about shipbuilding. Liu Houdao.

"A little bit of understanding, a little understanding." Zhuge Liang shook his trademark goose feather fan and said modestly.

"It's just that in this way, this brick kiln, oh, no, it is a wood kiln is estimated to be very large." Liu Houdao.

"Yes, some wood is very huge, especially the wood used to make keels, and it may even exceed dozens of zhang long, but the advantage is that this kind of kiln can be reused after it is built, so even if the amount of work is not small, it is not impossible." Guan Gong said excitedly, obviously, happy that Zhuge Liang had helped him solve a problem.

However, Liu Hou was not happy at all, he continued: "And this heat is not easy to master. The temperature should not be too high or too low, and because the kiln is very large and the wood is also very large, the place where the fire is lit must not be concentrated in one point, and many points in the kiln must be fired.

If the temperature in different places is not the same, and the heating of different parts of the wood is different, it is easy to cause the deformation of the wood, so even if you want to build such a kiln, it is not easy to use, and it may take many tests and explorations to use it well. ”