Daming pirates

After Lin Yiyang thought for a while, he shook his head and said: "I'm afraid Xiong Wencan doesn't have too many ideas about the military power. Although the court and the government will be wary of the Lord's control of the army, they also know that these soldiers are the Lord's.

Even if they want to take over the lord's military power, they have to weigh whether they can control these soldiers! And if they do this, will the lord agree or not?

Because the lord's foundation is on the sea, if the government presses hard for this, the lord will probably lead his army and leave. Then won't they just shoot themselves in the foot?

So if Xiong Futai was not a stupid person, he would not do this. Maybe he would find a way to help the lord and expand his military strength! Now for Xiong Futai, recruiting the lord and stabilizing the lord

, is more important than the big things, the student thinks that he doesn’t dare to do this!”

Yu Xiaotian nodded: "That's right. Xiong Wencan is not a fool. He should be able to think of the pros and cons! So what about the rest of the status of Tamsui City and other places? What does Mr. Lin think?"

After Lin Yiyang heard this, he laughed: "Haha! Taiyuan Island has not been under the jurisdiction of the Ming Dynasty since ancient times. Otherwise, Nanfutai probably would not have agreed to let the red-haired people leave Penghu and retreat to the great officials! Xiong Wencan wants to

What we want is peace along the coast of Fujian, not expansion of territory, so as long as the lord doesn’t agree, who dares to forcibly accept Taiwan Yuan Island as a territory under the jurisdiction of the Ming Dynasty?

Even if he makes this request, whether he agrees or not is up to the master! He has no choice if he doesn't agree, but if he agrees, it will probably be a great gift!

Even if the lord agrees and the imperial court appoints officials to come here, what will happen? It’s just a little more tax paid to the imperial court every year! Whose right is this place?”

Yu Xiaotian's face relaxed slightly at this time, and he also laughed. At this time, there was a burst of laughter in Yu Xiaotian's outer study room.

After Yu Xiaotian finalized this matter, the next step was to wait. As the earthen blast furnaces were built one after another, coke began to be fired from the coke ovens, and then batches were transported to the earthen blast furnaces.

This area is just waiting for the blast furnace to be opened.

Yu Xiaotian also had no idea about the construction of these earthen blast furnaces. He only provided some general guidance to his subordinates, and the rest of the work needed to be solved by the craftsmen themselves.

There are indeed a lot of iron-making craftsmen among the Sea Wolves, because there are iron yards in Fujian and Guangdong, and there are more than a hundred large and small iron yards in total. There is always some iron in these iron yards.

The ironworks closed down due to poor management, and the craftsmen in the ironworks naturally lost their way to make a living as the ironworks where they originally made a living closed down.

So over the years, Yu Xiaotian has been arranging people to secretly search for craftsmen from such closed iron yards, and he has found no less than fifty iron-making craftsmen.

There are many clever people among these craftsmen, and some of them even master the skills of frying steel and pouring steel. In the past two years, after they were recruited to the Sea Wolf banner, they have not been idle and have been arranged to work.

Work is carried out in a small iron yard, and most of the people work temporarily in artillery or gunsmithing.

Outside Tamsui City, Sea Wolf built a small iron-making furnace, allowing these craftsmen to make a small amount of iron to keep their craftsmanship from being wasted. In addition, they also used a small amount of steel-frying or steel-filling methods.

Produce some small quantities of steel for use in gun production.

Therefore, among these people, there are many experienced iron-making craftsmen, who provided some valuable suggestions for Yu Xiaotian's plan to build an earthen blast furnace this time.

Although few of these craftsmen are literate, they have accumulated a lot of effective iron-making experience through oral transmission from generation to generation.

When they learned that Yu Xiaotian was going to build a steel-making furnace, these craftsmen were very curious at first. They had heard of the steel-frying method and the steel-filling method, but they heard that Yu Xiaotian was going to use this kind of furnace to make steel.

But they didn't believe in the molten steel, because these craftsmen also knew very well that steel was much more difficult to melt than pig iron, and the furnace temperature was simply not high enough to melt the molten steel.

But now everyone in Sea Wolf has a blind trust in Xiaotian, and no one dares to say that it will definitely not work. They can only wait and see whether it will work out.

After Yu Xiaotian proposed the concept of earth blast furnace, these craftsmen were very involved and put forward some ideas based on their experience.

In addition, Xiaotian has some methods that can increase the furnace temperature, such as heating the air in front of the furnace, which can effectively increase the furnace temperature. There are no methods at this time, so the construction of the earthen blast furnace has not become an insurmountable difficulty.

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In just two or three months, earthen blast furnaces of different shapes were built one after another. In addition, the craftsmen also used wood and wrought iron to create a batch of fans according to the design drawings provided by Yu Xiaotian.

The leaf-style blower replaced the bellows used in the original iron furnaces or the horse or water drains used for animal power.

Propeller-type fan blades were still an absolute novelty in this era. In the past, iron furnace blowers used bellows made of leather and wood. They relied on either manpower, animal power, or even water power to drive the bellows to reciprocate.

Iron furnace blast.

However, after adopting the blade-type animal-powered blower, this large and stupid-looking blower can effectively improve the efficiency of blowing the soil blast furnace. After all, this blade-type blower can provide uninterrupted wind power.

As the blades rotate, air will be continuously blown into the furnace, and the air volume delivered is much larger than that of the old bellows.

If the previous kind of bellows is used to blast such an earthen blast furnace, even though these earthen blast furnaces are very small, they are much larger than those small iron furnaces. Several tons or even more than ten tons of material can be fed at a time, which requires several large-scale blast furnaces.

Horse drains or water drains can meet the needs.

However, after replacing this impeller-type blower, an earth-blast furnace only needs two or three such blowers to meet the needs of the earth-blast furnace.

At first, the craftsmen did not quite believe that this weird-looking blower could blow out wind. However, after the first impeller-type blower was built, once tested, the tuyere began to blow out strong winds, which immediately shut down these skeptical people.

On the mouth.

With their knowledge, they certainly couldn't figure out why such a few blades could produce such a strong wind force when rotated, but the facts showed everything, Yu Xiaotian's method was indeed effective.

It's a pity that they haven't made bearings yet. The friction of the blades of this type of blower is relatively high when rotating, the concentricity is not very good, the vibration is great, and the wear is severe. It requires constant maintenance to ensure operation.

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Therefore, they had to provide two extra blowers for each earthen blast furnace as backup to avoid problems during use, resulting in insufficient furnace temperature.

But Yu Xiaotian is not worried about this now. Bearings are actually not difficult to produce. As long as he can make high-carbon steel in the next step, he can make bearings. As long as the bearings are produced, there will be a big impact here.

Promote the development of machinery.

Next, he will continue to invent gears. As long as these problems are solved, then some modern machine tools can be gradually developed.

As long as the first batch of working machines are developed and manufactured, Seawolf will be able to mass-produce various special-purpose machine tools in the future. If it continues to develop, not to mention electricity, at least it will not take too long before a steam engine can be developed.

, in this case, it can play a strong role in promoting the development of Sea Wolf's industrial technology.

The construction speed of the earthen blast furnace is quite fast. After all, this kind of thing is made by local methods. It does not have high technological content and the materials used are easy to solve. It only took a little trouble to solve the problem with the refractory bricks, but it was still solved in the end.

solved this problem.

As the earthen blast furnaces were built one after another, under the "guidance" of Yu Xiaotian, the craftsmen began to bake the furnace. After the baking lasted for two days, they began to feed materials into the furnace, and batches of raw materials were put into the furnace.

After that, the blower started running at full speed, blowing a large amount of air into the furnace through the preheating furnace.

The earth-blast furnace group immediately began to emit billowing smoke, and the feed port at the top began to spit out flames as the blower ran at full speed.

Yu Xiaotian clicked his lips, feeling a little pity. When steel is being made in the furnace, many useful by-products should be produced, such as gas, sulfur and other substances. Unfortunately, with the level of technology he has mastered, there is no way to do it.

Effective recycling is required, so it can only be discharged to pollute the atmosphere.

Fortunately, we haven't reached the industrial revolution yet, and the pollution he has caused will not have a big impact on the entire environment for the time being. However, if it continues at this rate, it will not take more than a few decades, and it is estimated that the weather in this area will not be as bad as

It is no longer as blue as before, and the water will not be as clear as before.

This is probably a process that humans must endure in the development of industrialization. Let’s slowly solve it step by step in the future!

Several earthen blast furnaces started operating at the same time. This scene was quite spectacular. In order to speed up the transportation of various materials, Yu Xiaotian even built a wooden track around the earthen blast furnaces to transport various raw materials. This

A wooden track was built directly to a special dock by the Tamsui River. After various raw materials are transported here by ship, they can be unloaded and loaded onto rail cars immediately.

Each trolley can carry hundreds of kilograms of raw materials. Although these simple wooden rail cars are very crude and do not use bearings, they are still much more powerful than human-driven chicken carts or animal-powered ox carts.

When driving on wooden tracks, these rail cars can be connected in a series and pulled by several oxen. The weight of materials transported at one time is many times more than that of ordinary oxcarts. This also surprises many people. Children have to

Kong ran over to watch the fun.

Yu Xiaotian himself felt very pleased when he saw such a scene. This is the prototype of industry! Just like a little chick, as long as it is nourished well, sooner or later, a large industrial area will appear here.

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