While Liu Bei and the Zhuge brothers were discussing the follow-up strategic roadmap, Yuan Tan's envoy Xin Bi was being led by Xiang Lang, the commander of Exian County, to visit the construction of all walks of life in Jiangxia County in the past few days.

There are not only the latest advances in the military industry, but also the results of farming in civilian production technology.

This can also be regarded as a muscle display of Yuan Tan's camp, so that Xin Bi can be praised after he goes back, accelerate Yuan Tan's dependence on Liu Bei, and finally make him unable to extricate himself.

Zhuge Liang's development of Daye Tieshan's mineral deposits was in the second half of the fourth year of Jian'an and after Liu Beijun eliminated Huang Zu.

At that time, Zhuge Liang built a blast furnace using refractory materials and a new type of blast in Daye, which was at least twice as high as the original furnace of the Han Dynasty, and the smelting temperature and iron production rate were also greatly improved. In the same year, a steel-filling steelmaking workshop was built in Daye, realizing the whole industrial chain from pig iron to steel.

Now, two years have passed since this incident. In the past two years, although Zhuge Liang himself has become less and less concerned about iron ore and smelting, the development here has still maintained a very high speed, which can be said to be changing with each passing day.

The scale of iron ore mining is getting bigger and bigger, and the income is used to expand reproduction, Zhuge Liang soon found that the original mining method is too heavy, and as the pit is dug wider and deeper, and the operating area is getting larger and larger, the ore transportation in the mining area is congested and chaotic.

Zhuge Liang also had to occasionally complain about this matter in a private letter with his brother, and Zhuge Jin did not hesitate to occasionally give him tips to solve specific problems. In this way, iron ore and iron factories slowly and orderly expanded and developed in the run-in.

Today's Daye iron ore mine and smelting workshop has nearly doubled in size compared with the end of the previous year.

At that time, Exian County was able to produce about 400 tons of steel irrigation and more than 3,000 tons of pig iron per year. Now this number has grown to an annual output of more than 700 tons of steel filling and more than 8,000 tons of pig iron.

If you don't have any concept of this number, you can compare it to the original Han Dynasty's national steel output of more than 1,000 tons per year, and more than 10,000 tons of pig iron.

Until the Tang Dynasty, the annual output of steel in the country was barely close to 2,000 tons, and the output of pig iron did not increase much compared with the Han Dynasty (historically, after the Tang Dynasty irrigation method, more pig iron could be turned into steel, but the ironmaking technology itself did not make significant progress, so the proportion of steel and iron production became higher)

The Northern Song Dynasty reached about 3,500 tons, and the pig iron reached more than 20,000 tons, close to 30,000.

Now Cao Cao and Yuan Shao's territory, the steel that can be smelted by the steel frying method every year adds up to about eight or nine hundred tons. According to simple estimates, on average, there are 13 states in the Han Dynasty, with 100 tons of steel and 800 to 1,000 tons of iron per year in each state.

In fact, it is natural that the big states such as Hebei, Henan, and Si are much higher than the average, with 300 tons and 200 tons. In a small state like Youhe, there may be less than thirty or fifty tons, and they all have to be purchased from the mainland.

In the era of the stability of the imperial court, Sili's steel production was very high, accounting for forty percent of the country, because there were imperial arsenals and official military industrial institutions there. However, after Dong Zhuo's rebellion, these production capacities gradually dispersed to the Kanto Prefecture with the exile of craftsmen.

……

Early this morning, after a long journey, Xin Bi came to the Iron Mountain in Exian County.

The roads in the mining area are not smooth, there is no way to take a car, and it is not convenient to climb the mountain on horseback, and Xin Bi complained a little in his heart at first, thinking that Xiang Lang was snubbing himself.

But looking at Xiang Lang himself, walking like a fly, Xin Bi gave birth to a competitive heart, and felt that he was not too old and should not disgrace his mission, so he gritted his teeth and followed.

When I came to the top of the mine, I suddenly saw that in the huge pit in front of me, thousands of miners were struggling to dig and transport the ore, loading the stones into sturdy iron-framed wooden carts, and then sliding all the way down the mountain along a strange slide rail on the hillside, and transporting them to the sorting pits along the river and water at the foot of the mountain for crushing and primary selection.

This hot scene immediately shocked Simbi.

Xin Bi is not a nerd who does not know the grains, he has followed the Yuan family for many years, and has also seen many aspects of military production, Yuan Tan also knows that he has more mixed knowledge and is not easy to be deceived, so he has always let him be a messenger, which further allows him to travel all over the world and be well-informed.

But Xin Bi had never seen iron ore mined like this before, and he looked at the minecarts that transported the ore to the concentrator yard by the river down the mountain, and he couldn't help but ask curiously:

"Can these trucks actually slide down the hillside on their own, and are they not afraid that the cars will be destroyed and the goods will be overturned? Why can't we ride this kind of car when we go up the mountain? ”

Xiang Lang replied proudly: "Look carefully at the bottom of those cars, there are two cast iron slides, which can jam the direction of the minecart sliding. Moreover, the slope of the ramp down the mountain is very uniform, which has also been rigorously experimented by Zhuge Fujun.

Where the natural slope is too steep, the miners will be able to raise the soil in advance and reduce the slope. If the natural slope is too gentle, some of the dirt slopes will be dug up, and finally repeated trials and triumphs will make the minecart slide down the hill as fast and slow as it can go, and it will not crash at the bottom of the mountain.

However, if this thing is used to sit on people, it will be more dangerous after all. Therefore, around the slide, except for the people who drive the oxen and pull the empty car up the mountain, no idle people are allowed to approach. ”

The convenience of transporting ore is conducive to large-scale scheduling of production, such as pulling ore to the river at the foot of the mountain and special concentrators.

Crushing with a hydraulic hammer, and then using a hydraulic drum to achieve an effect similar to that of a modern ball mill, allowing the ore to roll and collide on its own for further crushing, and finally it can also be washed by buoyancy to remove more light impurities.

If transporting ore is inherently cumbersome and difficult, many links can be saved according to traditional production methods.

For example, if you build a furnace close to the ore production area and smelt it on the spot, it will make do with it, and the efficiency will be low.

Even if the technology used is the same, the refinement of industrial production links and the refinement of social division of labor will itself bring about an increase in efficiency.

At this moment, Xin Bi is in the Exian Iron Mine, and the most intuitive impact he sees is the division of labor and refinement of Liu Beijun's military production links.

Even if he couldn't see what the mechanical structure and principle of the hydraulic beneficiation workshops at the foot of the mountain were, just looking at this division of labor and management, it was enough to see that Zhuge Liang's remediation and production were absolutely efficient.

Another thing that shocked him was: Is Liu Beijun's inferior cast iron already rich to this extent? In the mining area, you can also directly use cast iron to lay a slide rail for transporting ore?

This kind of track is as thick as a child's arm, and it has to be paved with two, and one zhang should need more than 100 catties of pig iron, even if it is only paved for a few miles, there are more than 100,000 catties of cast iron.

If Yuan Shao is there, wouldn't it be good to use these hundreds of thousands of catties of cast iron to cast tens of thousands of hoes and shovels, or hundreds of thousands of cast iron arrow clusters?

Just after looking at the pomp and circumstance of mining and smelting steel, Xin Bi knew that Liu Bei's military strength was far stronger than he imagined before he came, and the idea of "returning to obedience" in his heart became more and more shaken.

"Although Liu Bei is only in two states, he has no worries after all, and he has always occupied the position of righteousness, and he has maintained it very well. If he can do much better than Cao Cao in governing the place and accumulating food in the whole army, Cao Cao may not be able to rob the ...... in this world."

Simbi was secretly worried in his heart.

In the final analysis, an important reason why he voted for Cao Cao so simply was that he felt that Cao Cao was stable. In this life, he came to Liu Bei and always swayed from side to side, also because Liu Bei's territory was small.

Now in Wuhui, I saw Zhuge Jin repairing the canal to control the water and rectify the polder, showing Liu Beijun's potential to increase grain production and persuade farmers to produce.

When I arrived in Jiangxia, I saw the military preparation ability under the auspices of Zhuge Liang.

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Simbi's speculative bones have finally softened.

……

While Simbi's attitude gradually softened, Xiang Lang's "tour guide business" had just begun.

After leaving the mine and the concentrator workshop, Xiang Langxuan immediately took Simbi to the steel mill and the forging factory.

There, Simbi glimpsed a glimpse of a tall new blast furnace. The size of the furnace and the scene of the tapping alone gave him a great shock. But Simbi could only see the changes in size and scale, and could not see the slightest technical principle behind it.

"Is there such a tall melting pot in the world? Can hundreds of catties of molten pig iron flow out every hour? Why can't the furnaces in Ruoyang and other places make so big and produce molten iron so efficiently? Although Simbi knew that he was unlikely to get an answer, he couldn't help but ask.

Xiang Lang really had nothing to say, from beginning to end, he just let him watch the excitement: "I don't know, Zhuge Fujun has his own magical skills, although I have a slight fate and have heard about it twice, I have no choice but to learn shallowly, and I can only understand a little bit of skin."

It seems that if the furnace has been used for a long time, it is easy to clog the slag, causing the furnace to be scrapped. Larger furnaces, although efficient in producing iron, are much more expensive, and if they can't solve the problem that the furnace will have to be dismantled and rebuilt after a long time, they are reluctant to build too large out of compromise.

As for how Zhuge Fujun ensured that the new furnace would not be blocked by slag and cause it to be demolished and rebuilt, I don't understand. ”

This is very official, and Xin Bi can't question it, but the bad guy also told you about the technical difficulties, so that you can lose convincingly, but he didn't mention the solution.

After looking at the iron-making furnace area, when you arrive at the forging area, the steel-filling process will definitely not be shown to Xinbi, but after the steel is made, the link of forging iron armor can be greatly visited.

There, Simbi saw a new weapon in experimental form, a huge curved piece of armor that could barely be about the size of a human torso.

You can even see the shape of the nail piece in the shape of a vest, leaving room to stretch your shoulders and waist.

"This piece of steel armor is directly hung on the body, replacing the armor on the chest, abdomen and back?" After looking at it, Simbi asked tentatively.

"Mr. George has good eyesight, and he is indeed a substitute for the chest, abdomen, waist and back armor. However, this thing is still being tested and cannot be mass-produced, so I heard that the aid ordnance given to Yuan Qingzhou by the lord does not include this thing.

My Jingzhou is rich in steel, and now I can provide enough armor for the army. In another year or two, even this one-piece steel armor can be gradually replaced. It's just that the whole piece of steel armor is inconvenient to move after all, and it can't be used for the whole body, so it can only protect the chest, so it should be magnified two or three times the heart goggles. ”

In the past two years, Zhuge Liang also consulted with Zhuge Jin about the follow-up development of the armor military industry, and with the affluence of steel filling materials in Liu Bei's camp, Zhuge Liang also thought about making better armor, such as better barrel sleeve armor than today's Liangdang armor, increasing steel protection in other parts except the torso, and protecting the shoulders and arms.

Historically, the barrel sleeve armor was also improved by Zhuge Liang, so this is not considered open.

However, Zhuge Jin felt that instead of rushing to make the sleeve armor, it was better to further optimize the previous Liangdang armor, turn the chest and abdomen into a whole breastplate, reduce the difficulty of processing, and improve the defense. At the same time, the large area of the chest, abdomen and back does not need to consider the inconvenience of the activity party.

Anyway, Zhuge Jin didn't expect ordinary soldiers to rely on steel armor to protect their whole bodies, as long as they focused on protection. Protecting limbs with steel is the treatment only available to generals and middle and high-level officers, and it is not possible to continue to count on the old-fashioned fish scale armor, and it takes a little more man-hours and material loss for each nail leaf.

For the elite soldiers who are responsible for attacking the fortifications, they can only rely on thick cloth or leather to ensure the protection of their limbs. Hence the test specimen that Simbi sees today.

Xin Bi couldn't help but be a little disappointed when he heard that this thing was still being tested, and that it might not be able to equip the troops within a year or two, let alone reinforce Yuan Tan.

But he soon realized that this was mostly a test of Liu Bei's obedience to Yuan Tan. Only then did he rush to show off the good things that had just been in the experimental stage, and whet people's appetites.

Moreover, Yuan Tan lacks a steel industry, and there is no production process for efficient processing and steel filling, even if he tells him the concept, he can't imitate it, and he doesn't have this industrial capacity.

With Yuan Tan's own steel production, with this material, it is more practical to make more old-fashioned Liangdang armor than anything else.

Simbi also ended the visit to the arsenal with envy.

In the follow-up, there were also some demonstrations of mass production of guns and arrow shafts with "pencil sharpeners", as well as the process display of the blade of the one-piece halberd, Xin Bi was also amazed when he saw it, but the impact was not as great as it was at the beginning, and he was used to it.

Among them, it is also worth mentioning the new style of halberd - the original halberd of the Han Dynasty, most of them are the spearhead of a spear, plus a cross-bladed branch, the spearhead is directly inserted into the anchor rod, and then a groove is made at the top of the pole to insert the horizontal blade into it and fix it.

In this way, it can not only peck horizontally with a hook, but also stab and assassinate directly, which is a qualified halberd. (Note: It's not on the picture, you can see the picture directly in Baidu Encyclopedia, it's very common)

The "Fang Tian Painting Halberd" used by Lu Bu in Romance is actually a very recent and very niche halberd.

The halberds used by the soldiers are simple "spear + ge" mode, including the "halberd guards" guarded by Yuan Shao's side, which are also used in this way. Therefore, the combat effectiveness of the halberd is definitely higher than that of the spearman, after all, the halberd has the killing effect of the spear, and the halberd also has an extra function of sweeping and pecking with white. The disadvantage is that it is expensive, and it uses more steel, so it cannot be equipped in large quantities.

Of course, in the iron halberds of the Han Dynasty, there were some well-made ones, and they would try to make the spearhead longer, add an iron handle to the back, and then extend it to connect with the horizontal blade branch, that is, to forge the "spearhead" and "Getou" into a combined part.

Such a steel halberd head is also occasionally unearthed in later generations, but the processing cost is higher, and it is often used by senior officers or generals, such as Dian Wei's double iron halberd.

Yuan Shao's "halberd guards" must not be able to use them, and ordinary soldiers still use the spearhead and head split style.

But today, under the leadership of Xiang Lang, what Xin Bi inspected the arsenal saw was a batch of "spear and ge" halberd heads.

The length of this halberd is at least two feet, the front one foot is the part of the spearhead blade, and the back is more than a foot is a flat iron rod, and the side of the iron rod sticks out of a blade horizontal branch.

Simbi estimated that the weight of the steel material consumed by this material would be two to three times that of the split type, but the increase was also very significant.

First, the blade length of the spear head is longer, and the assassination effect is better.

Second, the durability is also greatly improved, so that the horizontal branches will not fall directly when stabbed, and the horizontal branches of this halberd can also be cut back and forth, not limited to the tip of the blade, when stabbing forward, the outer blade of the horizontal branch can also cut the enemy.

In the final analysis, "let the soldiers also use an integrated forged halberd head like Dian Wei", there are no shortcomings in terms of combat effectiveness, the only disadvantage is that it is expensive and uses a lot of materials.

But this can't be blamed on weapons, but also on Yuan Tanqiang.

Liu Bei can afford it.

If Yuan Tan hugs Uncle Liu's thighs well, he can also take a batch to try first. In the future, if you don't hold your thighs well, then cut off the supply.

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