Shen Daotai was actually willing to generously hire his clan uncle to go out of the mountain to do things, which was definitely an unexpected joy for Song Mingde.

Therefore, in the middle of the inspection work that day and when he had a lunch break, he hurriedly repaired a book, asked Shen Shuren to look at it, and immediately dragged the messenger to his hometown in Nanchang.

From Wuchang Daye to Nanchang, the Yangtze River waterway is also more than 400 miles, and after entering Poyang Lake, it has to be transferred to the land route, and the normal post station has to run for four or five days.

Considering that Song Yingxing is old and fifty-seven, he will be hesitant about the future, and he also needs to prepare to move before leaving, and he will have to go against the trend on the return trip, so it will be at least half a month later to arrive in Daye.

In the past half a month, Shen Shuren will not waste it, just discuss the layout of mining and metallurgy with his nephew first, and then think about the improvement of machinery and process when Song Yingxing arrives.

There is a sequence of hearing the Tao, and there is a specialization in the art industry.

Song Yingxing is not omniscient, and science and engineering technology is also divided into many detailed categories, and its strengths lie in mechanical structure and agricultural technology.

And metallurgy, mining, geological materials, Song Yingxing has nothing to do, which can be seen from the content of "Tiangong Kaiwu", Shen Shuren of course has to use the other party's strengths.

……

After Song Mingde sent the letter home, he continued to accompany Shen Shuren to inspect Daye Iron Mine in the afternoon of the same day.

On the first day, Shen Shuren was also quite tired, and he ran thirty miles on horseback along the way, so he didn't arrange any investigation links with too difficult environments, so he took a look at the overall situation.

What Song Mingde talked to him about was also some general and general information.

While visiting the iron mine, Shen Shuren also had an understanding of the metallurgical industry data of Daming and the data of Daye Iron Mine.

The Ming Dynasty has few official statistics on steel production, but Song Mingde is interested in this industry, and he has also collected historical materials, according to him, the annual steel output at the peak of the Ming Dynasty can also have one or two million catties.

Ming Jin is about 600 grams, divided into 16 taels, 37 grams per tael. Therefore, the data that Song Mingde said is about 10,000 tons per year. In addition, there are tens of thousands of tons of raw and wrought iron.

Of course, this figure should be in the heyday of the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and now it is the last year of Chongzhen, and the damage to the productivity of all walks of life is very serious, so the country's steel output should be equivalent to seven or eight thousand tons, and thirty or forty thousand tons of raw wrought iron.

This figure still includes the occupied areas, and the provinces that the Ming government can control, add up to an estimated 6,000 tons of steel.

Shen Shuren, combined with Joseph Needham's "History of Chinese Science and Technology" and other historical materials that he had read in his previous life, felt that this figure should also be reliable.

The metallurgical industry technology of the Ming Dynasty did not make much progress compared with the Southern Song Dynasty, and basically the technological progress stagnated by the middle of the Ming Dynasty.

At the peak of the Northern Song Dynasty at the end of history, the country's steel output approached 4,000 tons, and 20,000 tons of wrought iron. The scientific and technological progress of the Southern Song Dynasty is quite obvious compared with that of the Northern Song Dynasty, but it is a pity that half of the country has been lost, the resources and scale have shrunk, and although the yield has increased, the total output has never exceeded the peak of the Northern Song Dynasty.

After the Ming Dynasty, although the technology did not improve much compared with the Southern Song Dynasty, the whole territory of the Han Dynasty was restored, the territory resources were larger, and the total production capacity was doubled compared with the Southern Song Dynasty.

6,000 tons of steel and 30,000 tons of iron, this is the current production capacity that the Ming occupation area can have.

According to Song Mingde's statistics of the previous year, the Daye iron mine can produce about 1,200 tons of steel and 6,700 tons of raw wrought iron.

It accounts for the vast majority of the steel output in the entire Huguang region, and also accounts for one-third of the southern region and nearly one-fifth of the national production capacity.

In the three major districts of Sichuan, Chu and Wu south of the Yangtze River, the production capacity of Daye Iron Mountain has surpassed the full production capacity of Wudi, and is only lower than the full production capacity of Sichuan (there are many mountainous areas in Sichuan, and there are many ancient mining exploration and mining. There are fewer minerals in the plain farming area)

"With an annual output of two million catties of steel and 10 million catties of raw wrought iron, such a treasure land has been held in Zuo Liangyu's hands for two years, and he has not trained the world's strong army, he is really blind.

According to an average of five catties of iron to build a blade, these ten million catties of iron are used to fight weapons, and two million knives and guns are made. ”

After Shen Shuren learned about the production capacity, he couldn't help but sigh, what a fortune this is. I knew that I could have so much money without him for additional farming and expansion, and if it was handed over to him in the past two years, I would have been able to take off a long time ago.

Of course, the account must not be calculated like this, and Shen Shuren will roughly talk casually.

Song Mingde was more serious, and also explained from the side: "To build weapons, you can't use ordinary raw wrought iron, this 10 million catties of iron, that is, to create farm tools, tools, and iron pots for the people."

The Huguang area is vast, the Jianghan Plain is fertile, and there are more than 10 million people in a province. Each person spends an average of one pound of iron every year to build farm tools, and this ten million catties will be spent.

Two million catties of steel is the material for making knives and guns and other heavy weapons, and there will be losses in the process of building.

There is also armor that consumes a lot of steel, and a piece is dozens of pounds. Heavy weapons also consume a lot, and hundreds of thousands of heavy weapons can spend all these steels.

During the two years that Zuo Liangyu was in Wuchang, the imperial court's control over the local area was stronger than it is now. Although Zuo Liangyu is like a warlord, his interference in local civil affairs is not as good as that of your lord. It would be nice if he could deceive and intercept a small half of steel from the hands of the imperial court for his use. ”

I have to say that Song Mingde's words, the last few sentences are actually very emotionally inintelligent, at first glance, he deals with science and engineering every day, and he is ridiculous in terms of human feelings and sophistication - he said that Zuo Liangyu's control of the local economy is not enough to be like a finger, which does not clearly show that Shen Shuren's current "warlord" attribute is actually not weaker than Zuo Liangyu at all.

After Shen Shuren listened, he was silent, and pondered for a while, and now it seems that 10 million catties of iron per year can meet the needs of daily people's livelihood. To increase production in the future, we should focus on high-end, high-quality steel, rather than blindly increasing the quantity of low-quality raw wrought iron.

Unless there is any demand for large-scale construction, construction and development in the future, then there will be a large amount of new demand for raw wrought iron.

For example, Shen Shuren had read Zhang Guowei's "Notes on Water Conservancy in Wuzhong", which was the former household servant in Nanjing and has now gone to Beijing to be the household servant.

A large number of stone mining, logging, river repair, wetland renovation and fish pond poldering will have huge iron wear and tear. This part of wear and tear can be regarded as the largest cost in government projects, second only to artificial rations.

If Shen Shuren can expand the production of raw wrought iron here in the future, meet the needs of his own other engineering construction, and raise iron tools by himself, then he can reduce the expenditure of government projects by at least one-third.

……

After thinking about all these and figuring them out, Shen Shuren has a rough idea of how to build the steel industry: the increase in production of raw wrought iron should be based on the needs of his own project, and then increase the amount a little more to benefit the people's livelihood.

In the case of resource priority, after ensuring that this layer is reached, the remaining metallurgical mining construction resources will be inclined to high-end steel.

The first day of inspection ended after clarifying these outlines. The tired Shen Shuren went back to rest for the night first, and then continued the next day.

In the evening, Liu Minsheng, the county governor of Daye who followed him to inspect, originally wanted to pat himself on the back and invite him back to the city to live in the county government or post house, so that he could be entertained.

But Shen Shuren was troublesome, and he had to ride a horse for sixty miles more when he came and went, wasting time, so he insisted on living in the iron mine and in the courtyard of the mine manager.

Liu Minsheng was helpless, the Daotai adults were so approachable, close to the people and friendly, and it was not easy for him to return to the city alone as a county governor, so a group of attachés had to live in the mine.

The perception of Shen Shuren in everyone's hearts has also changed a little subtly, and they realized that this Dao Tai from a huge rich background can really endure hardships.

Early the next morning, Shen Shuren, who had nourished his spirits, burned and drank pickled porridge with the same standard of dead noodles as ordinary miners, and finally went down to the mine for the first time under the leadership of Song Mingde.

Originally, many local officials in Wuchang also cared about the production of Iron Mountain, but there were still almost no people who went to the mine in person.

Shen Shuren also specially wore a pair of thick hemp rope straw sandals to prevent slipping when climbing, and Song Mingde was the same as him. The other accompanying officials and officials were still wearing official boots, and they didn't look like they were working.

After roughly climbing and inspecting the mine, Shen Shuren soon realized that there are indeed not many mines that need mine operations in this era-

Daye Iron Mountain can be mined from the Three Kingdoms period, it can be seen that the iron ore layer is relatively shallow, and a considerable part of the place is open-air, which can be directly excavated. It is only a few points of particularly good-grade rich ore layers, which have been dug intensively for thousands of years, and gradually formed deep pits and even ore holes.

There were no technical standards for mine operations in the Ming Dynasty, and the reinforcement of the roof of the cave was simply supported by cutting down a few trees, and no one could calculate the stress point of the structure.

Shen Shuren took a general look, but he didn't dare to go deeper, if the collapse was buried alive, it would not be worth it.

After coming out of the hole, he just asked casually: "How many such digging and mining points are there in Daye?" Will it collapse and die? ”

Song Mingde: "There are only five or six places in total, and last year there were two holes that collapsed once, and each time seven or eight people were buried to more than a dozen. ”

When Shen Shuren heard this, his temples couldn't help jumping: "This is too dangerous, there are so many rich mining areas here, and it's not easy to dig in the open air."

Occasionally, if the iron layer overlaps with the rock layer, it is a big deal to use an iron drill hole to bury gunpowder blasting, remove the rock layer as a whole, and then dig the iron layer below. Don't add new mines in the future, and try to open as much as possible. ”

Song Mingde was stunned for a moment, and also praised: "My lord is benevolent, I want to think of what my predecessors have never thought of...... It's also a shame to say that Xia Guan only studied how to be able to prospect for minerals, and he never thought about how to dig out the stone from the body of the hard worker, but he only felt that these hard workers were too far away from us scholars, and they always had their own way. ”

Shen Shuren didn't make it difficult for him, he knew that the scholars of the Ming Dynasty could pay attention to how to improve the process and production capacity, which was already very good, and he was considered to be the first percent of the scholars who cared about industrial practicality.

However, they will not think about production safety, whether workers will die, and the improvement and optimization of these safety technologies, which is a limitation of history.

Only the workers themselves are responsible for their own lives, but unfortunately this kind of hard labor often does not know a word, does not know a word, does not know how to plan, does not think about the long term, and works day by day. Therefore, the accumulated problems, in the eyes of Shen Shuren, are all very strange.

Before he could figure out how to increase this production capacity, Shen Shuren had to think about how to reduce the number of workers who died every year.

"The road to this pit is not good, so I will find a way to make a gentle slope in a circle, coiling around the pit and spinning upwards. The current hard workers are all digging ore and climbing out of the pit directly, right?

After making a smooth and gentle slope, you can use a wheelbarrow, and you can get on a donkey and mule cart on a smoother section, which is not less labor-saving than carrying a burden? How I look at this place is not pleasing to the eye, there are too many things that can be changed. ”