Zhu Youjian said indifferently: "The military * must ensure quality, and new technologies can be used to reduce costs, but they cannot reduce costs by reducing the quality of raw materials."

Inferior quality on the battlefield * will only make our army lose trust in the weapons in the opponent's hands, which will lead to the defeat of the war. Every time we lose on the battlefield, we lose tens of thousands of dollars.

For each batch of production* to carry out a thorough inspection, and make a record, if there is a problem, to find out the cause, and to hold accountable.

The problem of insufficient saltpeter can be purchased at a price in the market, and the method of how to boil nitrate can be disseminated, and we can buy it at any other cost, and it is not necessary to do everything ourselves.

In addition, it ordered all localities to look for natural saltpeter mines and prepare to set up factories nearby to share the production pressure of the capital* workshops.

Beijing does not produce saltpeter, sulfur, or charcoal, and the cost in Beijing is definitely high. Moreover, there is a large population in the capital, and there are always some security risks.

You send someone to build a * branch factory in a suitable place near Tianjin, which is close to the sea and can buy sulfur from Japan, and there are many saline-alkali lands in the local area, and it is convenient to boil nitrate..."

Zhu Youzhen and Sun Yuanhua chatted while walking, and soon came to the ordnance factory outside the Xuanwu Gate and on the edge of the Liuli Factory.

The residents in this area are basically craftsmen and their families under the management of the Ministry of Industry, and there were only a few small factories here in the past, such as the glaze factory and the brick and tile factory.

When the ordnance factory was moved from the inner city to here, various ironworks were also moved here, and it became prosperous for a while.

A small part of these ironworks are government-run, and most of them are privately owned. Before the establishment of the ordnance factory, they lived by subcontracting the ordnance superintendent.

After deducting the weapons, armor, and firearms required by the Ministry of War, the iron materials and wages allocated to them, the stewards took out three transactions to these private blacksmiths to complete the tasks assigned by the Ministry of War.

In this way, there are naturally many drawbacks. Since Chongzhen inspected it a year ago, he repelled most of the incompetent officials of the Ministry of Industry, and promoted a group of capable craftsmen and officials from the bottom.

In addition, after Chongzhen synthesized the weapons and firearms making workshops under the original name of the Ministry of Industry into an ordnance factory, and assigned them to the name of the Governor's Office of the Five Armies, the atmosphere of the entire factory finally improved a lot.

The ordnance factory covers an area of nearly 60 acres, and the reason why such a large place is encircled is because Sun Yuanhua wants to leave a piece of land for the cannon foundry.

And unlike the * workshop, the ordnance factory does not need to store the finished products separately, and most of the finished products will be stored in the weapons warehouse in the factory. In addition, there are many places where raw materials such as charcoal, pig iron, wrought iron, and leather for armor are used to make weapons.

When you enter the area of the ordnance factory, you can see a small river that divides the factory in two from northwest to southeast. Below the creek is the armory factory and various raw material warehouses, and across the bridge is the firearms factory.

For the creation of weapons and armor, Zhu Youzhen only has the right to watch, after all, in later generations, these things are sold as handicrafts, not any combat weapons, and he really can't put forward any suggestions for improvement.

After the rules and regulations were reformulated, a group of incompetent officials were dismissed, and craftsmen were treated separately according to skill levels, the more than 2,700 craftsmen in the weapons and armor factories suddenly became proactive.

Various beneficial techniques were revived by the craftsmen, such as quenching techniques, steel clamping methods, and so on. The finished product created by the craftsmen was demonstrated in front of Chongzhen, and it was obvious that the quality was much higher than that of the weapons in the arsenal in the past.

"Sure enough, letting workers have enough to eat is the only way to improve labor efficiency." Zhu Youzhen held a waist knife and watched carefully.

This is the Qi family knife designed by the famous anti-Japanese general Qi Jiguang, the blade is about 70 cm long, the handle is slightly curved, and there is a beautiful pattern like flowing water.

Zhu Youzhen held the handle of the knife tightly with both hands, then held his breath, raised the knife over his head, and slashed it from right to left against a wrist-thick wooden stake erected in front of him.

An upward oblique oval suddenly appeared on the stake, Zhu Youzhen looked at the knife in his hand, and found that the blade did not have a gap or curl problem, and he finally handed the knife to Wu Huai who was standing on the side.

"It's really good, as long as the weapons made by the weapon production are of this standard, then I don't have any requirements for you."

Cai Cheng, the director of the Weapons Factory, saw that the emperor was in such a good mood, and immediately replied cautiously: "Back to Your Majesty, as long as the Guanye Iron Yard can provide qualified pig iron, then we can basically create weapons of similar quality as this knife." ”

Zhu Youzhen immediately frowned and asked, "Is there any problem with the pig iron provided by the Guanye Iron Yard?" ”

"In order to reduce costs, the Guanye Iron Works added coal to the charcoal, so the pig iron smelted was brittle and difficult to temper, and even if it was made into a knife, it was easy to break." Cai Cheng immediately complained to the emperor.

"It's too high a sulphur content." Zhu Youzhen couldn't help blurting out.

"Did Your Majesty say sulfur?" Sun Yuanhua hesitated, and then asked the emperor for advice.

Zhu Youzhen looked up at the confused looks of the officials around him, and naturally knew that they didn't know anything about this issue.

Although many mineral and plant properties have been discovered in this era, the understanding of elemental elements is still in a state of chaos.

For example, people know the physical properties of pig iron, wrought iron, and steel, but they do not analyze the chemical composition, and what kind of chemical composition causes these differences in physical properties.

Therefore, the role of small elements such as phosphorus, sulfur, and silicon contained in iron is even more unknown.

It is obviously an impossible task to explain these simple chemical changes with the mouth alone, and the changes in the physical properties of the object caused.

However, most of the officials and craftsmen standing in front of him were not interested in this knowledge, they just wanted to solve the problems they encountered in their work. This is simpler for Chongzhen.

Zhu Youzhen thought for a while and said, "Director Sun, you go and tell the chief officer of the government-run iron smelting yard that the iron supplied to the ordnance factory is not allowed to use coal for smelting.

In addition, let them pick out the best coals, and then see if they can burn the coals in the same way as charcoal.

In addition, when they smelt pig iron, they add limestone, soda ash, broken glass, and dolomite to test whether they can improve the performance of pig iron.

As for the ordnance factory, you will first test the pig iron, and if you can't do it, you will melt it into rails and place it in the yard for transportation. ”

Sun Yuanhua subconsciously repeated: "Railroad tracks? ”

Zhu Youzhen looked at the surrounding environment, asked people to get a piece of charcoal, and then drew it on the bluestone slab on the road, and then explained the basic concept of the railway track with Sun Yuanhua and others.

Sun Yuanhua understood as soon as he heard that the principle of the railroad track was not difficult, but the idea of laying the railroad track on the ground as a road was obviously a bit beyond their cognition.

Although the price of pig iron is only one-sixth of the price of steel, it also costs six cents of silver for one catty. If you want to cast a meter-long I-shaped rail, you need at least 20 catties of pig iron.

One hundred meters of two rails, that is, 4,000 catties, worth 24 taels of silver, plus sleepers, gravel and other auxiliary materials and labor, the cost of a hundred meters of railway is 32 taels.

The price is obviously a bit staggering, but fortunately it is used in the ordnance factory, if it is connected to the coal mine and iron factory in Xishan Mentougou outside the city. With a distance of nearly 70 miles, the cost will reach more than 30,000 taels of silver.

What's more, the iron used in the entire railway is as high as more than 1.4 million catties, and the blast furnace used by the Beizhili Guanying Iron Works does not produce 540 catties of iron in a day and night, and produces more than 1.6 million catties of iron a year. This occupies almost all of the output of the official iron works in Beizhili.

Sun Yuanhua's mental arithmetic ability is too strong, and he immediately thought of these nonsensical things. He quickly shook his head, pushing this nonsense out of his head.

Even if the emperor loses again, he will not spread the silver on the ground in vain, what if the people steal it, he comforted himself.

Zhu Youzhen didn't know what the ordnance director next to him was thinking. For him, the construction of railways must be carried out, and the canal channel north of the Yellow River can only be navigated for a few months a year.

In order to maintain the water level of the Grand Canal and ensure that the north-south traffic artery of the Ming Dynasty is constantly cut off, the people near the canal cannot take water from the canal for irrigation in the event of drought. In the rainy season, in order to ensure that the canal does not break the embankment, the low-lying area near the canal becomes a flood distribution area.

It can be said that the people on both sides of the canal love and hate the Grand Canal, and they can benefit from the canal shipping, but they also suffer a lot of losses because of the canal.

It was not that there were no officials in the court who recognized the disadvantages of the Grand Canal, but compared to the riskier sea transportation and the unbearably high land transportation, the Grand Canal was still a helpless choice for Ming officials.

Although it is not yet possible to build a steam engine, even the simplest animal power railway, such as the horse-drawn railway, can greatly reduce the cost of land transportation, and railway construction is obviously more convenient than digging canals.

However, before that, it was clear that it was necessary to make a section of railway on an experimental basis to verify and improve the process of making and laying railroad tracks and making transportation vehicles on the railway.

There was plenty of space in the ordnance factory for the construction of a short stretch of improvised railway, and the transportation of various raw materials and finished products also made it possible for this section of the railway to be inspected a sufficient number of times.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen did not hesitate to put forward the idea of building a simple railway to Sun Yuanhua.

After dropping the charcoal in his hand, Zhu Youzhen took the handkerchief handed to him by Wang Chengen, wiped his hands carefully and said: "I have already seen the weapons manufacturing institute, and like the * workshop, the meritorious personnel are rewarded. Check it out now and make firearms at the Ordnance Factory. ”