Chapter 374: Scare
Fatih visited and inspected many places in Weissenburg and its surroundings. He thought he was resistant to many new things and would not make a fuss anymore, until he came to ironmaking. Factory, standing in front of the ten-meter-high iron-making furnace.
Little Louis and others were so surprised that they were speechless. Their mouths were open so much that they could stuff a goose egg into them.
Frederick stood aside and looked at the guests triumphantly. He deliberately arranged the place for the first meeting here to achieve this effect.
The iron-making furnace used here at the beginning was the five-meter-high simple short blast furnace in his memory of "Homemade Iron Making". With the efforts of Alfred, the director of the smelting plant, the furnace slowly improved. He became taller and fatter, and his output also increased.
Little Louis winked at Armand, who immediately went over to ask Frederick.
Arman pointed to the metal "hat" as tall as a person on the top of the blast furnace and asked Frederick: "What is that hat used for?"
Everyone has seen ordinary iron-making furnaces. , like an upside-down bucket with a hole in it. It was the first time I saw someone wearing a big hat.
Frederick said nonchalantly: "That is the air supply preheater, which heats the air."
The air supply preheating belongs to his role in the smelting industry after he came to this world. The first "invention" was made. Thinking about the time when I, a little kid, went to the blacksmith shop to have someone improve the air supply pipe of the stove while my father was away at war, and no one was paying attention to it. If I hadn't been lying on the ground rolling around and no one was paying attention, it would be quite... A bit sad.
This small improvement could increase the furnace temperature, but he didn't make it public, so others never knew about it.
There is nothing wrong with making it public now. Small stoves are inefficient. If you want to learn from big stoves, you should first solve the material problem.
The biggest problem in building such a large blast furnace is the materials. Because the volume of the furnace increases, the coke burned also increases, and the temperature rises. The silica-containing refractory bricks used in the inner wall are still not available after two years of experimentation. After the breakthrough, I copied "Original Methods to Make Refractory Materials" and developed it. This is one of the core technologies.
Frederick took everyone around the feeding table to the other side of the furnace. Here you can see a steam engine driving a blower to blow air into the furnace, and an air duct climbs from the furnace body to the top. Connect to the preheater, and at the same time, another air duct extends from the preheater and leads into a row of sharp-bottomed boxes on the shelf next to it
"That's the dust collector." Frederick said.
The smelting plant is located to the north of Weissenburg. When the north wind blows in winter, the smoke drifts into the city. Moreover, Frederick's castle is high on the top of the mountain. There is so much smoke that the maids want to cover the castle with big plastic bags. stand up.
Guests are not interested in environmental protection facilities and watch the blowers outside the iron fence.
Frederick immediately vaccinated them: "Some people used to reach out out of curiosity to touch, but they were caught in it and their entire palms were gone. Now they are working as janitors thanks to the employment policy for the disabled."
“In the factory, behind every rules and regulations and every safety measure are lessons learned in blood and even life.”
Someone really wanted to reach out and touch it, but was frightened and took half a step back. .
At this time, there was a rhythmic whistle sound not far away, and the area around a similar iron-making furnace nearby suddenly became busy.
Frederick often came to inspect and said to the guests: "That furnace is about to produce iron. Let's go and have a look."
This is what the guests were waiting for. When we come to the fireside area, which is specially designed for people to visit and study, there are two doctors on standby with first aid kits, just in case of an accident.
In front of the tap hole of the furnace, there is a pit for placing molten iron ladles, as well as rails for human-powered gantry cranes and small steam locomotives.
There is already a locomotive reversing all the way to deliver the car dedicated to the molten iron ladle to the furnace. The preheated molten ladle is surrounded by fixed brackets and insulation materials. Workers use a gantry crane to place it in front of the taphole. .
After everything was ready, the workers opened the taphole, and bright orange molten iron suddenly poured out and flowed into the molten iron ladle.
After this batch of molten iron is discharged, the taphole is closed and the molten iron packaging truck is transported away. The workers open the slag discharge port on the side and clean out the slag from the bottom of the furnace.
The hot slag is loaded into the heat-resistant mine cart. After the mine cart is filled, it slides forward along the sloped rail. At the end of the rail is a huge pool. After the slag is poured in, it will immediately Broken due to drastic temperature changes and other reasons.
The pool is made of cement, with a slope at the bottom. There is a shovel like an excavator at the bottom of the slope to pick up the crushed slag and prepare it to be sent to the cement factory.
At the iron-making furnace, the workers opened the upper feed inlet, and the belt sent the pellets mixed in proportion with concentrate powder, coke powder and lime powder into the furnace. The top of the furnace There is a device to distribute them evenly in the furnace. The guests could not take their eyes off this series of operations. As soon as the ingredients were added here, the furnace next to it started tapping iron again.
Fatih estimates that such a furnace can produce at least one ton of iron a day and night. Look at this furnace. This is just one of them. It is initially estimated that the entire Wesson state can produce about 100,000 tons a year. of steel.
Steel is fighting power. As long as Frederick wanted to, he could easily assemble the people of the entire territory into iron cans in one year.
Fatih sighed. If he could have 30,000 elite armored soldiers, there would be no warlords in the country.
Little Louis bit his lip subconsciously, it would be great if he also had so many iron-making furnaces.
It's just that the Kingdom of Gaul has developed agriculture and has iron ore, but it is short of coal, while the Rhine League is short of iron ore but not coal.
In the past, there were calls in the country to capture the coal-producing areas of the Rhine League. Now just look at the steel production in Wesenzhou. It would not be fun if someone was forced to use a national iron can.
For Frederick, the biggest difficulty restricting the development of the steel industry is the supply of iron ore. Now he is looking for iron ore everywhere and is looking crazy.
He also has his mind set on the Ghazi Empire and the Kingdom of Gaul, but let’s not mention it now until they find that their trade deficit is too large.
Fatih needed to arm himself the most now, so he said to Frederick on the spot: "I intend to purchase weapons and equipment for 10,000 people this year."
According to his standards, an elite soldier's chain mail, scale armor, and weapons together require a total of about 30 kilograms of steel. For 10,000 people, that is 300 tons.
It is not a problem for him to purchase so many things in places under his control in China. The problem is that it takes too long, but here it is much faster. It only takes a few days to purchase raw materials.
However, Frederick said with some embarrassment: "I plan to expand the army to 120,000 people this year, and the recruitment will begin in September. The Springfield Arsenal has a heavy task and cannot be spared."
Before Fatih could react, everyone in the Gallic Kingdom next to him took a deep breath. The Weisen Army was so capable of fighting with only 20,000 people. With 120,000 people and such a high steel production capacity, who else could stop it? them? !
Frederick brought these two groups here today just to show off his muscles. Naturally, he would not tell them that among the 120,000 people, they were only at the same level as the current army. The rest were the second-line city defense army and The equipment and training level of the border guards are much different, and the maintenance cost is naturally much lower.
Now it seems that the effect has been achieved. Not to mention that Fatih is far away, everyone in the Gallic Kingdom has just experienced a period of eye contact.
Under Frederick's prestige, many people would not find a problem for a while. The current Wesson Army has been trained for ten years. Expanding several times at once is tantamount to pouring a bottle of spirits into In a water tank, combat effectiveness will be severely affected, at least for a short period of time.
What is more important is the officers, especially senior officers. The lack of officers is the most fatal.
There is a difference between commanding 100 people and commanding 500 people. There is a bigger gap between commanding 10,000 people and commanding 100,000 people. The latter requires talent bonus. How can you command so many people within each country? They are all veterans on the battlefield, and the officers in Wesson's army are all terrifyingly young. None of the senior officers are over forty years old.
It can be seen from this that in a short period of time, the combat effectiveness of Wesson's army will be greatly reduced.
Frederick did not tell them that his army expansion plan was actually completed in several years.
This year 1034 is the second year of the second five-year plan of the territory from 1033 to 37. Due to a series of problems caused by the expansion of the territory, the original plan was almost cancelled.
The main tasks in the next few years of the Second Five-Year Plan are to rectify the new territory, clean it, build a complete administrative system, and get a thorough understanding of the economy, population, resources and other data, for the third period starting from 1038 Prepare for the five-year plan for large-scale development.
The related military expansion and reorganization and improvement of the administrative system will be gradually completed during the Second Five-Year Plan, and there is no rush.
But outsiders didn’t know it. As soon as the news spread, the neighbors were frightened, fearing that Frederick would slap his head and send the army to his door one day.
In just one sentence, Frederick created a good external environment and bought himself time to get through his period of weakness.
(End of this chapter)