Li Tianyang didn't know that the two pirate free zones he established were all remembered, but even if he knew, he might not care about it at this time, but would be happy to see it happen.

Since the continuous supply of iron ore from the Changhua Shilu Mine in Qiongzhou was transported to Bengang, Li Tianyang no longer took Yan Siqi and others seriously.

Li Tianyang's ambitions at this time were even greater, and he focused more attention and focus on the Japanese Samoto Bo, the daimyo of the Japanese Kingdom who blocked his pace of going north.

The production volume of Bengang Ironworks is creating a new high every day, from the beginning of 200 catties of iron per day, to the current output of more than 1,000 catties, and then back to the blast furnace (no way, Li Tianyang has always thought that this open-hearth furnace is called a blast furnace in later generations, who let him see shallow), smelting about 1,000 catties of steel.

At this rate of production, it will not be long before the steel output of the Bengang Ironworks will be able to produce the steel needed for steel casting artillery every day.

And the finished steel produced these days is also more than 20,000 catties, which is enough for the raw material needs of the newly built foundry in Bengang for a long time.

However, the production process of this steel is still not mature enough, after all, there is no process that is accurate to each step in later generations, and many times the workers in the ironmaking plant who control the blast furnace will always pour out the iron liquid prematurely to cool, but find that the impurities in it have not been completely burned off, and it cannot meet the standard of steel, and the furnace material has to be returned to the furnace to be refined again.

They also have no way to control the impurity content in high-temperature iron liquid, which is not completely solved by their existing technology, so they need skilled skilled workers to control it themselves, which takes time to slowly cultivate.

The progress of the cannon foundry is also slow, although the craftsman Zuofang has transferred the cannon casting master who has cooperated with Chengcai for a long time, but it still takes a long time to run in if you want to really mass-produce a cast steel cannon.

Pressing clay molds, segmented casting cannons, polishing the inner chamber of the barrel, etc., which step is a high-precision technology for the workers and masters of this era, so even if the cannon casting master has followed the talented people to create more than a dozen qualified cannons, he still does not dare to guarantee that he is skilled.

Not to mention that the cannon casting master has to hand over this cannon casting technology to apprentices and other experienced masters, which is even more delayed, and the cannons cast in the first few months are basically not a few that have passed the inspection, and almost all of them are flawed.

This cannon is no different from other commodities, and the slightest flaw could kill the gunners who operate and use it, or even the rest of the team.

Therefore, in the matter of casting cannons, Li Tianyang gave a death order, and there was no room for sloppiness, and even on the issue of the last step of checking, Li Tianyang set the strictest standards and refined the responsibility to the person.

The so-called responsibility refinement, to put it bluntly, he is also inspired by the ordnance of this era, plus the reference from later generations, each cannon has a number, which represents that the cannon is cast by those people, and which inspector is qualified, as long as the cannon has an accident due to non-operational reasons, it is the problem of these personnel.

With this responsibility refinement system, the masters and workers of the cannon foundry did not dare to be sloppy at all, and strived to do the work in their hands more and more finely, so that their craftsmanship became more and more perfect.

And the inspector did not dare to be careless, and carefully observed every flaw on the cannon, for fear that there would be problems with the cannon he was responsible for during the test firing or actual use, and finally blamed himself.

At the beginning of the establishment of the cannon foundry, Li Tianyang gave an instruction that made all the employees in the cannon factory ecstatic: if a qualified cannon is manufactured, the master workers and inspectors who cast the cannon can equally share the reward given by Li Tianyang for this cannon - three hundred silver dollars!

Three hundred silver dollars, if you put it in the inland of the Ming Dynasty, it can be worth more than three hundred and thirty or forty taels of silver, even if the relevant personnel who make this cannon are divided, each person can at least share a few silver dollars, then there is no problem.

There was a money offensive to open the way, and the workers of the cannon foundry worked hard for the steel cannon casting.

The assembly-line production mode has been clearly confirmed in the workshops of the Bengang team over the years, which is indeed a powerful technology that saves productivity costs and can also improve the product qualification rate.

The workers and masters of the cannon foundry also inherited this production technology, whether it was die-casting clay molds, or segmented casting cannon barrels, or even the wooden gun carriages for placing artillery, they were discussed and discussed by Li Tianyang and Chen during the buffer period, and divided a set of effective assembly lines.

The benefits of this are self-evident, in each process, as long as the workers concentrate on making the process in their own hands, the time for practice makes perfect is faster, and the pass rate of the sub-produced semi-finished products will naturally increase.

But even so, more than two months have passed, and the cannon foundry has only produced eight steel cannons that meet the specifications, which is still a huge gap from the number of cannons that Li Tianyang expected to be deployed on the Hongtang team and the city walls such as chicken coop and Bengang.

Of course, with the improvement of the craftsmanship of the workers in the cannon foundry, a steady stream of steel was delivered in the follow-up, and the production speed of steel cast artillery was also slowly increasing.

Moreover, even if the artillery is manufactured at the current speed, no one in the Asian region of this era can compare with the Bengang team, and the production and equipment of high-power artillery are in place!

It was with such rapid development that Li Tianyang shifted his target to the Wa kingdom of Satsuma, east of the Ryukyu Kingdom. After all, this Satsuma is a sharp sword hanging over the heads of the Bengang team, and no one knows when they will fight again, which is not good for the Ryukyu Shangfeng King.

Only by cleaning up this Satsuma can Li Tianyang and them liberate the Hongtang Division, otherwise it is not a long-term solution to put the Hongtang Division in the Ryukyu Kingdom to prevent the other party.

Wu Daofu's Ryukyu Sailors have now been rebuilt again, and with the sailors who survived the previous actual battle as backbones, this time the sailors he trained finally have the appearance of an army.

However, it was still a little insufficient to let his army, which numbered only about 3,000 sailors, take charge of the Ryukyu Kingdom to prevent the invasion of the Satsuma and Tibetan people.

(End of chapter)