Daming pirates

While the cement kiln was still busy, Seawolf's steelmaking issue was finally put on the agenda. Now they have stored a large amount of raw and wrought iron, which is taken by various factories.

, cast or made into bells, artillery, and muskets.

Other things are fine, but muskets are very problematic when using wrought iron as raw material.

As we all know, wrought iron has low hardness and is relatively soft. When they used to make muskets, they were just fine. But now that they have started producing Wolf fang rifles, they have encountered serious problems.

Because wrought iron is too soft, even if it is repeatedly struck, the hardness of the inner wall of the barrel is still not enough. Although it is easier to draw the rifling, the drawn rifling is not wear-resistant.

The result of this is that it seriously affects the quality of the Wolf Fang rifle, especially the life of the barrel, which is much shorter than that of a smoothbore rifle.

The muskets produced by Sea Wolf can withstand the firing of two to three hundred, or even five or six hundred bullets, but the barrel of the Wolf Fang rifle often only has a lifespan of a hundred or even dozens of bullets.

Because the minie bullet is in the barrel, it will stick to the wall of the barrel and be embedded in the rifling, so that it can rotate when it comes out of the barrel and play an airtight role, so it will cause a lot of wear and tear on the rifling in the barrel.

However, for barrels produced using wrought iron as raw material, the drawn rifling cannot withstand too many firings, and the rifling will become shallower and shallower, so that after firing dozens of bullets in a new gun, the rifling will become worn out.

If it is too serious, the accuracy of the gun will be greatly reduced, and the range and power will also be significantly reduced.

In this regard, Yu Xiaotian could only ask the gun manufacturer to mass-produce barrels to replace the barrels with worn rifling. As a result, the output of the Wolf Fang rifle was greatly affected, and one Wolf Fang rifle was often produced.

Three spare barrels are required. Although the recovered barrels can be rifled and used again, that's all. If they are worn out for the second time, they can only be remanufactured.

This is an unimaginable waste of manpower and material resources. There was even a situation where after a fierce battle, most of the barrels of a company's Wolf Fang rifles were worn away, and the spare barrels needed to be replaced as a whole.

This would be completely unacceptable in the context of a large-scale and high-intensity war. The side effect of this is of course that the overall replacement speed of rifled rifles is greatly delayed, so that after a year, the Sea Wolf is still unable to use the Wolf

The Wolf Fang rifle replaced all the original South Japanese-style rifles, which greatly limited the number of equipment for the Wolf Fang rifle.

Yu Xiaotian really couldn't bear this and could only find a way to solve this problem. If he wanted to solve this problem, he had to get steel. Even low carbon steel was much stronger than the current use of wrought iron.

, at least it can double the life of the barrel.

If you want to obtain steel, there were some methods in ancient times. For example, the Chinese people first invented the method of frying steel and pouring steel to obtain steel. In addition, relying on manpower to refine it, you can also obtain some steel with quite good texture, which can be made.

Produce very exquisite swords.

However, these methods are not realistic when used to mass-produce barrels and guns, because the steel obtained by these methods consumes too much manpower. Even if Seawolf has grown into a behemoth, it is impossible to rely on these.

Method to obtain a large amount of steel to produce gun barrels.

Therefore, in order to solve this problem, Yu Xiaotian must find a way to mass-produce steel. If he wants to obtain a large amount of steel, he must change the steel-making method and adopt a more modern steel-making method.

However, the modern steel-making methods are basically converter steel-making, and some are relatively old open-hearth steel-making methods. Yu Xiaotian scratched his head and couldn't figure out a way to build such a steel-making furnace.

After all, he did not major in metal smelting. If he wanted to build a modern open-hearth furnace or converter for steel-making using only some steel-making techniques in his memory, it would be impossible for him to do so based on his ability.

So he could only settle for the next best thing and choose the simplest and most practical method at present. For this reason, he has been thinking about this issue for the past two years.

After thinking about it for a long time, he finally chose an indigenous method, which was to use the simplest earthen blast furnace to make steel.

There was an irrational period in China's modern history, when steel was smelted all over the country. During this special period, a large number of earthen blast furnaces sprung up all over China, and iron smelters were everywhere.

.

The structure of the earthen blast furnace is very simple. It is built with local materials. Various pig iron products are recycled, smashed and put into the earthen blast furnace for smelting, and finally made into steel.

However, this is not only very wasteful, but also seriously interferes with normal production and life, and even affects economic development. It also damages the natural environment to an outrageous degree.

Originally, Yu Xiaotian did not want to use this method, because in addition to causing serious waste and causing great damage to the environment, the steel produced by earthen blast furnaces has a very high scrap rate. In many places, earthen blast furnaces can only produce some scrap iron slag.

, in the end nothing can be obtained. Even if some floor steel is produced, the quality may not meet the requirements. It contains many harmful elements, making the steel quality low.

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

Smelting crucible steel requires a crucible. This crucible cannot be an ordinary crucible. A graphite crucible must be used. However, Yu Xiaotian has not found graphite on the market so far, let alone mass-produced graphite crucibles. Without graphite

The crucible can only smelt iron and melt it into molten iron, but it cannot play the role of carburizing iron and refining it into steel.

Therefore, even if he uses the simplest crucible steel-making method, he currently cannot use it. He can only use this method after finding graphite.

Moreover, when steel is made using the crucible steelmaking method, it can only produce pots of molten steel. The output is very low, and it is not easy to meet demand in small-scale production.

After much deliberation, Yu Xiaotian really couldn't think of a better way. He cursed in his mind that he would have chosen the metal smelting major if he had known this would happen. At least now he could build a small steel-making furnace, but this

There is no regret medicine in the world. Since he can't get an open-hearth steel-making furnace for the time being, he can only use the most primitive earthen blast furnace to make steel.

Even if things like earth-blast furnaces are wasteful and polluting, he can only do this at present. 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, while the reservoir was being built, several earthen blast furnaces of different shapes were built not far from the reservoir.

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

Nowadays, Yu Xiaotian has no idea whether it is possible to use earthen blast furnaces. The reason why he built so many earthen blast furnaces of different styles is not because he has enough to eat, but because he intends to use these batches of earthen blast furnaces.

An earthen blast furnace was used to conduct steelmaking experiments.

The construction of an earthen blast furnace is not very troublesome. Basically, it does not require much steel. The entire blast furnace is made of clay and is lined with refractory bricks made from clay. This thing is definitely not durable, but for Xiaotian at present

For him, whether it is durable or not is not an issue he has to consider.

The key is that he must find a way to first find a furnace type that can produce steel, and use these experimental earthen blast furnaces to test which type of earthen blast furnace can be used.

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

The development of industry involves a lot of things. Just the way they used to make gold fingers, forge cannons, produce soap, and make glass cannot support a systematic industry.

But what he is doing now is gradually improving his industrial structure and gradually establishing a relatively systematic industry.

The principle of steelmaking is actually very simple. It is to use a blast furnace to decarbonize pig iron, remove excess carbon elements in the pig iron, and finally turn it into steel.

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

As for other raw materials, they are mainly coke and some limestone. Yu Xiaotian has no shortage of these things at present. Some of them can be solved locally. Even those that cannot be solved locally can also be transported in from outside.

As for pig iron and wrought iron, he currently does not plan to smelt it himself, because there are many iron yards and iron mines in Guangdong and Fujian not far from Tamsui City, which can produce wrought iron.

Now after Yu Xiaotian fought this battle, he had completely broken all the previous restrictions on him by the government. He could easily purchase enough raw and wrought iron from the land, although the cost was slightly higher.

But for the current Sea Wolf Group, they can still afford such costs.

Therefore, if iron ore is purchased from land and then transported to fresh water by ship for iron-making, in addition to occupying a large amount of transportation capacity, a lot of coal or charcoal will also need to be transported, which will put pressure on Sea Wolf's transportation capacity.

It's very big and not very cost-effective.

If charcoal is still used for ironmaking, it will also cause great damage to the natural environment around fresh water, and a large amount of forests will need to be cut down for charcoal burning.

Although coal can also be used to make iron, the coal from most coal mines in China basically has a relatively high sulfur content, and the pig iron produced also has a high sulfur content, so in southern China, charcoal is still mostly used.

To make iron, the quality of the pig iron made in this way is much better than the iron made from coal in the north.

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

Based on these factors, Yu Xiaotian did not consider making iron by himself, but directly used the pig iron that was available on hand to make steel.

(These chapters are considered technical articles, so I don’t dare to write more, and I haven’t written them in detail, so please bear with me! Also, who still has monthly tickets? The monthly ticket list has disappeared! I fainted, and my chrysanthemums have been in severe pain these days.

!)