Asia's largest iron factory stands on the right bank of the Yangtze River, here and the location of Ma'anshan City in later generations, closer to the south, the scale of the iron plant is extremely large, the blast furnace is towering, the lights are brilliant, in the hazy moonlight, the whole plant area is like an ancient beast, entrenched in more than 80 kilometers away from Nanjing City. However, the governor of Liangjiang Duanfang was also very wary of the iron factory, and several battalions of Qing troops were stationed in Quarry Rock and Yuntai Mountain, which were not far from here, and they were even more afraid that the iron factory would make guns and cannons, and from time to time they would send people to the factory area to investigate, and there were not a few secret agents among the workers. It was the Governor's idea to use the money of the revolutionary party, but to prevent the revolutionary party from causing chaos, because after he heard that Du Yaquan was the general manager of the iron factory, he also specially rewarded Du Yaquan with a mansion in Jiangning City, so that he could settle his family in Jiangning City.

In the first few months of the iron ceremony, he also personally congratulated, while affirming the performance of the iron factory, he also made a speech on the unity of the Manchu and Han to promote production and build a new society in harmony, which aroused the praise of the gentry on the spot. After this time, those Hui merchants who had money to invest in the iron factory also urged Du Yaquan to make an excerpt, in addition to thanking the emperor and thanking the court, but also ensuring that the iron factory would strictly investigate the chaos of the party and would always contribute to the prosperity of our Qing Dynasty.

The Ma'anshan Iron Works did not mean to be the base camp of the revolution, and Yang Rui did not like the revolution in the iron works, and the blast furnaces and machines in the factory were all bought for nothing, and once a few shells came, it would be all over. The current arrangement near Ma'anshan is nothing more than an airship landing field. But that was in the southwest direction.

"Is there a problem with the airship?" Smelling the smell of bituminous coal in the iron factory, Yang Rui did not look at the iron factory, but looked at the mountains in the southwest. The Yanzhou base area has an endless supply of ammunition. He has always been worried that the Manchu Qing Dynasty will go around the Yanzhou base area to reconnoiter the traffic secret road, especially now that the base area has been expanded to Xuancheng, Xuancheng to Ma'anshan is more than 100 kilometers, plus the background of the Tianzi number, even if the airship flies higher now, Yang Rui is still worried that the landing site is difficult to keep secret, such a big thing. The moonlight is brighter, and you can still see it at night.

"Basically, there is no problem." Du Yaquan said, "Wherever we chose, there were no people, and we designated it as a mining area. The people inside also moved away, and at night a big thing flew up in the recess, and there were still not many people who could pay attention. In addition, we have also done surveillance for twenty or thirty miles near the mining area, and the boys and children of those families have either gone into factories or schools. Even if they find something. It can also be controlled. ”

Seeing that he was so confident, Yang Rui asked with a smile: "Aren't you afraid that there will be a few loyal and patriotic parties in it?" The gentry are not so easy to deal with. ”

"The gentry live in the city, but there is no gentry in the country. It's good for the people to scare them, as long as the monk and Taoist priest speak, then they also believe it, and the countryside people are like this. "On the revolutionary side, Du Yaquan is not worried about the secrecy of the airship, but about another incident." It was done. Most of the machines in the second factory have been shipped in. It's just that the hydraulic press is too big, and it's even more conspicuous. If you want to transport it to Huainan, it is still too conspicuous. ”

The second factory is the second military factory, and the address is in Bagong Mountain, near Huainan. The reason why the military factory is located there is not only secrecy, but also because the iron ore in Ma'anshan contains more sulfur and phosphorus, and the second military factory is to try to make artillery, and the requirements for desulfurization and phosphorus removal in the process of cannon steel smelting are relatively high, because the raw materials used in the military factory do not come from Ma'anshan, but from Huoqiu iron ore, which is magnetite instead of pyrite, and the content of sulfur and phosphorus is very small, and it can be used as the base material for making artillery after refining. It's just that the raw materials are solved, but the tools are not easy to solve, the steel billet of the cannon is to be continuously forged with a water press to make the steel more compact, so that the barrel is more tough, and the Jiangnan Bureau in Shanghai has a 2,000-ton hydraulic press, which is a necessary machine for making artillery.

"Too big, how big? Isn't there a small railway leading to it now? Yang Rui has no concept of a 2,000-ton hydraulic press, and remembers that there was a 10,000-ton hydraulic press after liberation, but it was just on the picture, and he didn't understand how big it was.

"Hey," Du Yaquan shook his head, Yang Rui had never been to the Jiangnan Bureau, and he didn't understand how big the house was, so he had to say: "The inside of the customs is not better than the outside of the customs, because it involves smuggling tobacco and salt, the river defense team and the customs are very tight." Once the hydraulic press is brought in and seen, everyone knows exactly what this thing can do and what we are going to do. Not to mention the hydraulic presses, those lathes were all shipped in batches, and it took two years to bring in in one after another in the name of building a railway and a steel mill. If it weren't for that, those machines wouldn't have been able to come in. ”

"Without a hydraulic press, wouldn't the barrel be built?" Yang Rui was a little lost at this time, could it be that his own soldiers were killed by mortars? The Manchus are now more and more cunning, after the destruction of the sixth town, the new troops all use 75mm mountain guns, as well as the 57 and 37 guns of the Hanyang factory, these artillery guns are not only more suitable for mountain combat accidents, but more importantly, they can prevent the revolutionary army from seizing, once the revolutionary army kills out of the mountains, then the Manchu field artillery can also restrain the mountain artillery of the revolutionary army. Now, even if Hangzhou won the victory and captured the field artillery of the sixth town, all the field artillery of the Fuxing Army added up to only more than seventy, which was only equivalent to the number of two towns of the new army, and except for forty or fifty mountain artillery, the rest were mortars.

"A 75mm caliber cannon can be forged with a 50-ton air hammer, and the Krupp mountain gun copied by the Jiangnan Bureau in Shanghai is forged with a 50-ton air hammer, and the cannon is still qualified. But the muzzle velocity of the field artillery is twice that of the mountain artillery, and the diameter of the double is also twenty-nine, which is not as high as the fourteen times the diameter of the mountain artillery. Dua Quan said.

Du Yaquan took Yang Rui and others on the ferry to Wuhu before dawn the next morning, and then took the train to Huainan through Hefei, the railway is more than 200 kilometers, only arrived in Huainan at night, after a day of rest, the group took a small train to the mountains again, and this is to the Bagong Mountain more than ten miles southwest of Huainan County. This was previously advertised by the iron factory as having a coal mine, and in the past two years, many foreign machines that have been repairing coal mines have been transported from outside. Several coal shafts have also been opened, but less than half a year after the start of construction, it is said that the coal here is not as good as in other places. The people who came withdrew, leaving only a large factory here, and there was little movement except for people watching the contents inside.

The journey of two hundred miles from Ma'anshan was very difficult in the wind and snow, and the small train mileage followed Yang Rui to run around this year, and his face was tanned a lot. She thought that she would go back to Shanghai for the New Year when she went to the iron factory, but she didn't want to go north. Looking at the non-stop snow outside, she only smiled and asked, "This is going to that sacred mountain again?" ”

"There is no sacred mountain. Go to a coal mine, an extremely important place. Yang Rui is extremely unhappy with the snowy night outside, last year's Spring Festival was spent in the United States, and this year he wants to spend it in Shanghai. The flavor of the year in this era is much heavier than that of later generations. It's just that now there are only twelve or three days before the New Year, and I really don't know if it will be on the road again. "I said a long time ago that you should go to Shanghai and wait for me, and following me is just running around, very human."

The man's blame seemed to Cheng Ying to be just a concern, she just leaned closer when she heard the words, Yang Rui was about to speak but heard someone shouting in front of her, saying that it was to Bagong Mountain, and it was a few miles to the Second Military Factory. After leaving some people with a low level of secrecy at the inn, the group drove lightly. Soon to get to the place.

For fear of arousing the surprise of the local people, the Second Military Factory selected many people from the Guan, not all of whom were overseas Chinese in Guangdong. As for Rong Jinhuai's Chinese, a lot of foreign languages ran out as soon as he spoke, and he didn't know much about the situation in China, so after several considerations, Yang Rui still appointed Xu Jiabao as the chief engineer of the second factory, and Rong Jinhuai became the chief engineer of the first factory. It's just that the Second Military Factory is much larger than the First Military Factory, and it involves the casting of breech guns, and the level is naturally one level higher than that outside the Guan.

"Brother Xianting, we met again." At the gate of the military factory, looking at Xu Jiabao with a long robe and long braids, Yang Rui felt very cordial. I've seen him three times, and each time it's a little different.

"It's done. Good! Please. Xu Jiabao also smiled kindly, from inside the customs to outside the customs, he was also busy. The revival society is getting bigger and bigger, and as a member of it, he is happy to watch.

In addition to being underground, the power of the military factory is no longer a steam engine, which is driven by a canopy pole, but directly uses electricity - a small dam was built in a small river to the west of the factory, and a hydroelectric generator was installed to continuously transmit electricity. But even so, the factory still needs to use some coal, which can only be brought in from the outside by guò small train, although the coal mine is not producing, but there are still people guarding the factory.

Xu Jiabao took Yang Rui down to the tunnel, and said as he walked: "This factory was really painstakingly built, if it weren't for those soldiers, I'm afraid it wouldn't have been built like this." ”

The people who were transferred from outside the customs to work were all soldiers of the Fuxing Army who had joined the association, and Yang Rui agreed very much when he heard this: "Yes." If you can't keep it absolutely secret, then you will have to be in big trouble. Have the people from the end side come to investigate? ”

"After investigating, he found the people from the Nanjing Gun Bureau to look at the entire iron factory and coal mine, and those people here also came to see it, but they saw that the boilers outside were not only small, but also bad, and they knew that this place could not do anything except dig coal, and they didn't understand that even if there was no steam engine, the motor could be used." Xu Jiabao said with some regret, some of those people who came to investigate were still his former colleagues, and now everyone is divided into two ways, which is very sighing.

"Yanzhou is fighting well, so let's investigate the source of the Munitions from the Manchu Dynasty, Brother Xianting, it's better to be careful here, secrecy is the first......" Even with a horse lamp, the tunnel was dim, but when Yang Rui was talking, he saw Xu Jiabao, who was leading the way, turn around, and there was a burst of light in front of him, and along with the light, there was also the mechanical sound that the factory should have, the sound of the copper plate of the bullet machine, and the forging sound that made the entire underground factory shake a little. Du Yaquan, who was also on the same side, listened to the voice and smiled at Yang Rui: "That is the air hammer that makes the cannon is forging the cannon body." ”

Because the Second Military Factory is placed underground, the machine is arranged very compactly. The forging workshop that Du Yaquan said was only in another hall, and Yang Rui didn't have much interest in ordinary guns and ammunition, so he went directly to the forging place. It's only a short turn along the passage. I saw a hall with a steel rod more than two meters long hanging from an iron chain under a tall crane. The steel rod was burned red and white by the gas furnace earlier, and was only placed on the forging table by a huge air hammer, and after each impact, the position of the steel rod was changed a little by the worker wearing protective clothing to prevent one place from being hammered twice, and once the steel rod was hammered from beginning to end, the iron chain was adjusted. The steel rod is then placed on the forging table at another angle to be hammered.

"That's a fifty-ton air hammer." Du Yaquan said, "The crane was also dismantled before it was brought in, and the hydraulic press was several times larger than this." That thing is dismantled, and those girders are also very eye-catching, and the train carriage can't be put down. ”

It was unusually warm, and there was a choking smell of soot in the workshop. Yang Rui looked at that scene and didn't move for a long time. He always wanted to make a cannon. But he also knew that this artillery was not so easy to fiddle with, that is, the Manchu Qing Dynasty only imitated the 75mm Krupp Mountain Cannon a few years ago, and although the Revival Society had money, but no one, let alone machine, it was still extremely difficult to build this thing, because the Liaodong Military Factory did not think about making breech artillery at all, only planned to build mortars, and only waited for the second military factory to start construction. Yang Rui estimated that there were a lot of talents in smelting, and the matter of manufacturing breech guns was raised. But even so. According to the articles on the Internet that do not know whether the cannon is right or wrong, it is said that the cannon steel will not be made in the Northeast Arsenal until 31 years, and once it is made, it will be the 918 Incident. He had heard a lot of this kind of nonsense, and now he saw the red steel rod constantly being hammered under the air hammer, which only made him a little stunned.

"We made it ourselves?" Yang Rui spoke for a long time, a little inexplicable, "Not imported?" ”

"Originally, we were going to use Haimo pig iron, but now we can achieve the quality of our own pig iron, so we use our own pig iron, and the scrap steel is also from our factory, which is to add nickel and some other auxiliary materials are bought." Du Yaquan didn't understand what Yang Rui meant, but Xu Jiabao understood, Yang Rui was concerned about the domestic production rate, usually this thing doesn't seem important, but once there is a war with foreign countries, it will be fatal. However, as soon as he said that the cannon steel could be made by himself, and only made Yang Rui breathe a sigh of relief, the next sentence raised Yang Rui's heart again.

"It was done. It's easy to make cannon steel, but it's hard to make springs! Xu Jiabao took Yang Rui to the next workshop again, walking on the road.

"Is it hard to make springs?!" After listening to this, Yang Rui thought of a book he had read before, saying how important the spring on the fuse of the cannonball was, but he didn't expect that he had also encountered this problem, and he was surprised: "Isn't this already solved in Liaodong?" Cannonballs over there......"

"Not really. I'm not talking about the springs used on the shells, I'm talking about the springs used in the retraction and retraction machines. When the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau in Shanghai copied the Krupp 12-pounder mountain cannon the year before last, the whole cannon could be made in any place, but the spring could not be made, and in the end it could only be bought from the United States. Then I wondered if I could make that spring too, so that we could make our own stuff up and down the whole cannon. Xu Jiabao said, his expression was very rigorous, just that this was a great event.

"Springs are so hard to make?" Yang Rui looked at him so seriously, and still asked. Then I was attracted by the things in the workshop, a two-meter-long dark red hollow barrel was clamped by a huge clamp, aimed at a slender barrel and put it in, the direction of the sleeve was from thin to thick, it was very convenient at the beginning, the more difficult it was to the bottom, but the two sections of the barrel were all gone, and the size was excellent, and the red-hot barrel was finally completely set on the small barrel. Yang Rui couldn't help asking: "Brother Xianting, is this self-tightening?" ”

"Yes. This is the self-tightening method, which used to be a set of hoops, one after another, and now it is a whole set. Once it cools down, then these two sections will be combined, in fact, it is the method of making a tube and retreating gun, after all, this kind of tube retreat cannon has a fast rate of fire and high bore pressure, so that it can ensure safety. Knowing that Yang Rui had never seen how to make a breech gun, Xu Jiabao didn't talk about springs, but only introduced the self-tightening method.

Seeing that the dark red cannon tube was turned to the side, Yang Rui came back to his senses and said, "Brother Xianting just said that springs are more difficult to make than cannon steel?" Where does this begin? ”

"Gun steel is nothing more than to remove sulfur and phosphorus, plus nickel, and then forging self-tightening, etc., which is not difficult to make, the key is that the cost is not as low as foreigners. And the spring, if you want to make it, the material is first, the steel can not be mixed with impurities, once there are sundries, then the spring will not be durable; Then the hardness of the spring is a problem, if the steel contains more carbon, the harder the steel, but there is too much carbon in the steel, then its quenchability is small, quenching can only be cooled with water, which is easy to crack, and when processing, the surface must not be damaged, and the fracture of the spring is basically in the broken place...... "Xu Jiabao looked dignified, and explained to Yang Rui the difficulty of the spring one by one.

He delved into it, and the more questions he said, the more he said, and the more and more words he spoke. Seeing him like this, Yang Rui had no choice but to smile and say, "Brother Xianting, this matter can't be solved in one or two clicks. If you want to study this spring, then you can study it, and I will try to get people to find a way to transport it with the funds and machinery needed. Although your side is remote, there is a railway, and even if the railway can't bring it in, the airship will help you bring it in. ”

Seeing that Yang Rui really attached importance to the spring, Xu Jiabao was relieved, he was afraid that Yang Rui would think that it was all over when he saw that the cannon had been caused. "Well, that's it, I'll give you a report when I get back."

At this time, everyone happened to walk to the assembly workshop, two guns had been installed and were being placed on one side, and the other one was being installed, which was completely a Krupp mountain gun, but the gun carriage had been changed a little.

"We have changed the Krupp Mountain gun, the main change is on the gun mount, the previous high and low firing range was only at 15 degrees, now it has been changed to 38 degrees, so that it can be more curved fire instead of digging pits on the spot." Xu Jiabao wanted to laugh when he talked about digging the pit Yang Rui, the original artillery was mostly aimed directly, and the high and low firing range was too short, but now the intermittent aim is curvy, so it is completely possible to increase the elevation angle to obtain a longer range. Xu Jiabao didn't notice Yang Rui's smile, and then introduced: "In addition to the change in the elevation angle, the barrel is longer than before, it used to be 14 times the diameter, and now it is 17 times the diameter, and the muzzle velocity of the shell has also increased from the original 280 meters to the current 300 meters, but the weight has also increased by more than 240 catties." In this way, the firing range was increased to 5,500 meters, which was only 500 meters short of the Krupp field artillery equipped by the new army. ”

Hearing that it was only 500 meters away from the field artillery, Yang Rui was not satisfied, but asked: "Brother Xianting, if the field artillery increases the elevation angle, will it also increase the range?" We only built the Krupp mountain cannon on our side, but the Krupp field cannon was not built, is there still any technical problem? ”

"If you can build mountain artillery, you can make field artillery, the reason why the Shanghai Jiangnan Bureau builds mountain artillery and does not build field artillery, or considering that the south is not better than the north, this place is densely covered with rivers, most of them are some rural dirt roads, the field artillery weighs more than 2,000 catties, and the transportation is extremely inconvenient during the march. And this mountain cannon, the old one is only 800 catties, and now the changed one, it is only a little more than 1,000 catties, and now it is designed to be separated, and it can be completely humped on a horse when the time comes, and people can reach where the horse can reach. Xu Jiabao said about the advantages of mountain artillery, and said: "Also, now the wild cannon is also trying to be made." The barrel of the field cannon that was just forged in the forge workshop is the second one, and the other one is being tried in the test gun. ”

Hearing that wild artillery can also be made, Yang Rui said with a smile, "So speaking of which, there are only springs left in the artillery that cannot be produced by themselves?" ”

"That's true, it's just the spring." Xu Jiabao nodded. "Now I've thought of two options, but both are a bit difficult. One of them is the electroslag method that you asked me to try before, but this method must be able to keep up with the cooling, otherwise the furnace will still burn out; Then there is the electric arc furnace, I read the briefing sent by Xian Feng that there are already people in Europe who are making steel with electric arc furnaces, and foreigners use this method to make alloy steel, and the springs imported from the United States are also made of alloys, although I don't fully know its composition, but I can only try to come step by step. ”

Xu Jiabao said electroslag method, in fact, Yang Rui from the later generations of electroslag remelting technology, this method appeared after World War II, if you can find an era, then the steel is completely the world's first, but the same as the top of the furnace to blow oxygen, this is also an unreliable thing, although Yang Rui relies on the information to know the composition of the slag, but the electroslag remelting must have a strong enough and effective cooling system, so that the steel at the bottom of the slag can be quickly cooled, otherwise, then wait for the furnace. (To be continued......)