In the Southern Song Dynasty, I competed with Mongolia for the world

Chapter 161
Zhao Yurui's imports of wood from Koryo, Japan basically require hardwood, which can not only build ships, but also burn charcoal.

Usually requires a tree of more than [-] centimeters.

For a large tree that is more than [-] centimeters in length and [-] to [-] meters long, two trees make up a cubic meter. Depending on the tree species, one tree weighs about seven or eight hundred catties.

So last year, Jeju Island imported 200 million catties, or about [-] roots.

Most of the source of wood is Koryo, which is surrounded by mountains, and the Dongjiang area in the late Ming Dynasty was rich in large trees.

Zhao Yurui said, "No. [-] charcoal is still not enough. To increase production, I will buy more wood for you."

Starting this year, he will ask Korea and Japan to export more timber, and even increase the purchase price.

At least [-] large trees are imported from Japan and Korea every year.

"It's the king."

Burning charcoal here does not require much manpower. After cutting, it can be stuffed and burnt. They take turns to take care of it. The most manpower used by the Firearms Bureau is to make gunpowder.

Zhao and Rui continued to walk forward, heading southeast along the foot of the mountain.

More caves were dug here. Thousands of people were invested in digging caves here in the early stage. Later, people who immigrated to the island, each household selected a strong man, who dug for more than two months.

In digging holes, they also used a new type of gunpowder and used a small amount of small-area explosions to dig out a huge basement from the foot of the mountain.

This basement is used to temporarily store gunpowder. Now 500 people continue to dig in it every day, slowly digging down, digging bigger and bigger. The gravel dug out is used as a roadbed to lay on the ground to prevent moisture.

Outside, a factory building and sheds were built with wood and stone structures, all lined up along the foot of the mountain, which is more spectacular.

When Zhao Yurui arrived, they found that there were many people here, most of them were women and teenagers over ten years old.

The person in charge of the scene was Zhao Xiaozhu, a firearms craftsman, and Xu Gu, a boy from the palace, appeared.

Zhao Xiaozhu was originally a gunsmith in the Dinghai Navy, and his family moved to Jeju Island. Zhao Yurui promised to help his son get a military officer this year, who would be in charge of the island's defense without fighting. Zhao Xiaozhu was very happy and would do his best to help here.

Zhao and Rui developed new gunpowder here, completely abandoning the Southern Song Dynasty.

In the Southern Song Dynasty, there were all kinds of gunpowder, all kinds of blind ginseng, everything was put in gunpowder, and the power was greatly reduced.

Zhao Yurui used the formula of black powder, which is easy to remember. There are "one nitrate, two sulfur and three charcoal" on the Internet, that is, one catty (16 taels in ancient times) of nitrate, two taels of sulfur, and three taels of charcoal.That is about 76% nitrate, 9.8% sulfur, and 14.2% charcoal.

In the same period of the Southern Song Dynasty, Jin Guo, etc., the gunpowder formula was about 48.66 nitrate, 17.03 sulfur, and 17.03 charcoal, accounting for 82.72 in total, and then other things were added, and gunpowder that was not used in artillery, the proportion would be even lower.

When Zhao Yurui said that one nitrate, two sulphur, and three charcoals, Zhao Xiaozhu still didn't believe it. It wasn't until after the experiment that he found out that it was so powerful that he was convinced.

Before they make charcoal, they will shade the wood for a few days. After the charcoal is fired, wait for it to cool down, and then transport it here, and the women and teenagers will start to grind it.

There is a small grinding disc here, which is divided into four areas. The first three areas are grinding nitric acid, sulfur grinding, and charcoal grinding.

This step can be done by young people, women and old people.

Then just stay away from here, to two hundred steps away.

Here are mainly women and adults, or children aged thirteen or fourteen.

Then carry out a simple frying, this step is more dangerous, if the frying is too strong, it will cause accidents.

Mix the three substances according to the proportion of black powder, and fry them a little bit. They are done by controlling the size of the fire and counting.

One person controls the size of the fire, and the other counts on the side, and stops immediately when the count reaches a certain number, regardless of whether it is fried or not.

If the gunpowder is not well-fried, it is almost powerful, but if it is over-fried, big things will happen.

The last step is to add [-]% of water again, use small amounts several times, and knead while adding water until the gunpowder has the texture of thick clay. At this time, you can use a sieve to sift it into countless small particles, and then put Dry on paper.

In the end, the big killer, granular gunpowder, was formed.

At this time, all countries used powdered gunpowder, even in the late Ming Dynasty.

Powder gunpowder will be squeezed together when it is stressed, and when it is ignited, it cannot burn completely due to lack of oxygen, which reduces the power of gunpowder. Therefore, the power of firecrackers in the late Ming Dynasty was insufficient and could not shoot far.

Moreover, when powder gunpowder is stored and transported, it is easy to be damp.

Granular gunpowder is easy to transport, not easy to be affected by moisture, has a uniform burning rate, no matter how tight it is packed, there will be gaps, which is convenient for oxygen combustion in the air, and maximizes the power of gunpowder. Under the same power, the consumption of granular gunpowder is only less than half of that of powder gunpowder. .

Granular gunpowder is definitely a cross-generational invention at this time. Zhao Yurui requires that each barrel produced must be numbered and stored in a cave, and the amount used must be recorded every time it is used.

The fence and walls on the site were built into two entrances and exits, one for entering and one for exiting. When workers go home and leave, they must be searched. They cannot take away granules of gunpowder. Once found, they will be executed.

So every day when we get off work, everyone has to check with each other to see if they accidentally drop gunpowder in their clothes or shoes.

Jeju now produces [-] catties of charcoal every month, but there is no similar nitrate.

At this time, the imports of nitrate were mainly from Fuguang and Japan, as well as the toilets on their own island, and there was a small amount in Korea.

Fuguang is too far away. I went back and forth several times last year, and only bought more than 50 catties.

Although Japan is close, the output is also limited, and the Southern Song Dynasty government also focused on acquisitions, so they purchased more than 100 million catties last year, which made the Southern Song Dynasty court a lot less.

25 catties of charcoal require [-] catties of nitrate.

Therefore, Jeju Island does not have enough nitrate now, but has a lot of charcoal and sulfur.

"My lord, do you want to go to the warehouse to have a look?"

Zhao and Rui were taken to the Shidong warehouse at this time.

The floor of the warehouse is first paved with wooden boards, then a layer of gravel, then a layer of charcoal, then a layer of fine sand, then a layer of gravel, then a layer of charcoal, and then a layer of gravel.

In this way, the moisture on the ground will be isolated a lot. At the same time, a waterproof ditch is made outside to prevent rainwater from entering the hole when it rains.

Granular gunpowder is placed in barrels one by one.

Each barrel has a number, and the net weight of each barrel is [-] catties. There is a handle on the side of the barrel, and two people can easily lift it.

There is also oiled paper wrapped in the barrel, and a small amount of cotton cloth is filled around it to prevent the shock caused by the impact.

There are words such as "handle with care" on the barrel, and a white bone is drawn as a warning.

"Now we produce [-] catties of granular gunpowder every month. What affects our production is either manpower or nitrate."

Xu Gu reported to Zhao Yurui that they had enough manpower, but not enough nitrate.

In the Southern Song Dynasty, like sulfur, nitrate was also considered a controlled material. The important production areas were all under the control of the government, and the amount of nitrate flowing to the market was still relatively small, and the main import places were Nanyang, including Jiaozhi, Champa, Chenla and other places.

Zhao Yurui didn't care after hearing this, because Dashi and Persia and other places will also be shipped in the future, and the production can be increased at that time.

His main purpose of coming today is to see how the workers are living and how their mental state is. From his experience, if there is oppression and exploitation on the island, it will definitely affect his major affairs and even the stability of the island.

Fortunately, along the way, you can see that the islanders live and work in peace and contentment. Whether they are craftsmen or family members, whether they are women, old people or young people, they are in good spirits.

After leaving the cave warehouse, he randomly asked some teenagers and women who were working, how their food was and how tired they were from work.

Everyone didn't know Zhao Yurui, but they knew that this was the biggest storekeeper Yan in Jeju Island, and they all said it was good.

Here, Zhao Yurui provided food and drink, and they didn't need them to farm, and the children could still read and write. This kind of life was quite good in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Except for builders and some craftsmen who mainly do physical activities, things like burning charcoal and making gunpowder are relatively easy, and the common people are quite satisfied with the current state.

But Zhao Yurui found that many people's clothes were rather old, so there was nothing he could do. He hadn't built his own garment factory on the island, only a garment factory, which mainly made military armor.

Fortunately, the weather in Jeju Island is good, so there is no need to be afraid of being frozen.

Zhao and Rui get a lot of cloth from Koryo every year, so they plan to keep tens of thousands of pieces this year to make a batch of new clothes for the islanders. To do it, although it takes some money, but after forming a supply chain, you can win over a group of important merchants.

These clothes are sold on the island, and part of the wages paid can be recycled.

Zhao Yurui paid a lot of wages on the island, and also provided food and drink. Regardless of the cost, the people will have more and more money.

Usually, when a person has too much money to use up, he will come up with all kinds of weird ideas.

Therefore, for the sake of stability and recycling of copper coins, Zhao Yurui opened shops in many places on the island.

The shops mainly sell commodities such as snow sugar, tea, silk forging, and low-grade spices that ordinary people can’t touch and consume, but the prices on the island are much lower than those in the Southern Song Dynasty, which can effectively recover the excess money in the hands of the common people. .

Soon the people on the island will find that if they live like ordinary people, they will live a prosperous life on the island, but if they want to enjoy high-end goods, they have to work hard and earn rewards.

On the first day of going to the island, Zhao and Rui saw a lot of places. In the evening, they invited Wei Jinsi, Chen Xiaodao, Liu Xin, Yan Ying and a group of people in charge. They had a meal together and gave Wei Jinsi a task. This year and next two years, the island The person in charge who was born in the Wei Palace had to try to get a young lady first, try to marry from his own relatives first, and then choose the family members of important craftsmen on the island to marry.

After Zhao Yurui woke up the next day, they started running around the island non-stop.

In the morning, I was still at the Artisan Bureau, and I watched the cannon first.

The lost-wax method used here is full-body casting. According to Zhao Yurui's requirements, iron cannons, copper cannons and steel cannons were made.

Copper cannons are forged directly from raw copper shipped from Japan, which is more durable than iron cannons, but a bit more expensive.

Among them, there are three types of iron cannons and five kinds of cannons, which are 350-jin heavy cannons, 1.2 meters long, twenty in circumference, eleven in inner diameter, and about twelve times in diameter.

Because they are all cast through the whole body, the inner wall does not need to be as thick as the artillery of the Ming Dynasty, which reduces the overall weight of the artillery, but does not reduce the durability.

(End of this chapter)