Luo Zhixue walked into the factory, and he could feel the heat wave coming from inside even before he entered.

Because there is an iron-making furnace in this factory.

This stove is not too big, but the overall structure looks simpler than the previous iron stoves in Sanshui Village.

There is a huge bellows in front of the iron stove, and a mule is constantly turning to drive the internal structure of the bellows to blow air into the iron stove.

The iron stove is burning red, and the high temperature makes the whole factory warm, and it doesn't look like winter at all.

Not far from the iron stove, there is a water hammer. Two strong men in single clothes hold a piece of red iron with iron pliers and place it on an iron stand. There is a hammer above it that is constantly pulling up.

It falls again and continues to hammer the iron into different shapes.

After a while, the entire iron block turned into a flat shape, and the appearance was no longer red. I saw two craftsmen lifting the iron block and putting it back into the furnace for burning. At the same time, they took out a piece of burning iron from the furnace.

The red iron block continues to be forged.

Luo Zhixue watched from behind and did not go too far to disturb the work of these craftsmen. After watching for a while, he nodded slightly: "Okay."

Blacksmith Song also picked up the conversation at this time and said: "It all depends on the general's guidance. Without the general's guidance, we would not have been able to come up with such a useful water hammer. With this water hammer, it will be easier for us to build weapons and armor."

Much more."

"Use this water hammer to do the initial beating first, and then we will do the fine beating later. This can save a lot of effort."

There is an extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive process in making all kinds of iron products, which is repeated forging. For example, if a knife is transformed from an iron block into a knife, I don't know how many forging steps it takes.

Before, most of this had to be done by manpower, which was extremely time-consuming. Moreover, this kind of forging was very demanding on the craftsmen, and the force must be even.

If it is replaced by a water hammer, it will be simple, because the forging force of the water hammer is directly constant, and the position where the hammer falls is also unchanged, so there is no need for skilled craftsmen to forge it, just let two people after simple training

An apprentice can forge it with a water hammer, and the quality of the forged result is not much worse than that of a skilled veteran craftsman.

In this way, the valuable time of skilled craftsmen can be saved, allowing them to specialize in more delicate processes that cannot be replaced by water hammers and apprentices.

Luo Zhixue naturally knew this, and this was why he had vigorously promoted the construction of water hammers in the past, in order to liberate productivity and increase the output of weapons workshops.

Now it seems that this water hammer has perfectly met my expectations.

Looking at this water hammer, Luo Zhixue thought for a while and said: "The role of water hammer is huge. The workshop will build another water hammer in the future to further increase the workshop's production capacity."

With that said, Luo Zhixue glanced at everyone again, and then said: "The success of water hammer also means that water power can be used in more ways. In addition to forging, can it also be used for polishing? Right?

Can it be used to push the bellows instead of the mule? Can it also be used to drill holes?"

Blacksmith Song bowed and said: "The general is well-informed and can think of many things at once. I admire him a lot!"

Luo Zhixue waved his hand gently: "I just said a few points casually, which can be considered as an introduction. You can think more about it later and see if our water tanker can do these things. In addition to these, can we do other things and how to do it?

!"

"Don't be afraid of others laughing, don't be afraid of failure. If you have any good ideas, you can give it a try later. If it works out well, we won't lose anything if it doesn't work out!"

Blacksmith Song immediately said: "I will think more about it in the future and try to get these things done as soon as possible."

Luo Zhixue nodded slightly and said no more. Instead, he left the factory and walked into another factory. Blacksmith Song immediately stepped forward and introduced: "This is where we make repair knives and spears.

”

Luo Zhixue looked inside, and there were four or five people busy here. These people directly reprocessed the rough parts made by water hammer on the side instead of starting from scratch.

This is the direct impact of water hammer.

Luo Zhixue took a closer look and realized that they were making sabers, which were intended to be used by the cavalry to replace their existing knives.

The saber used by the cavalry sentry is different from the one-handed waist knife of ordinary infantry. Even though it looks similar, the actual difference is quite big.

The swords used by the cavalry usually have thicker backs and are heavier. The main reason is that the impact force is very strong when the cavalry attacks. If the swords used by the cavalry are too thin, they will easily break during combat.

At the same time, the thicker saber back can also increase the lethality of the saber when the cavalry attacks.

After the cavalry outposts continued to expand, the original specialized sabers were no longer enough. Many old thieves who joined later still used ordinary waist knives. At most, they were just high-quality steel knives. According to the second Matsuyama

Judging from the feedback from the cavalry after the attack during the battle, even if it is a steel sword, the traditional one-handed waist sword is still unusable, so building a batch of at least dozens of specialized sabers has become one of the recent tasks.

Luo Zhixue also participated in the creation of the new saber, and put forward some opinions for the craftsmen to refer to. In the end, the craftsmen based their work on the existing sabers and also combined some of the opinions put forward by Luo Zhixue. Of course, it is actually more important.

It was based on the opinions of the cavalry themselves.

In the end, they made some minor adjustments to the sabers they originally used, and then built a new saber. To Luo Zhixue, this saber looked almost the same as the sabers of modern cavalry in his images.

At this time, the two cavalry generals behind Luo Zhixue, Wang Xiazi and Anyongduo, also came forward. Each took a newly made saber and tried it. Wang Xiazi showed a satisfied look and said: "This sword is good.

It’s more comfortable than the saber we used before!”

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What Wang Xiazi said is not because he just tried it a few times now. In fact, before the large-scale production of this new saber started, there were already samples for the cavalry to test. Wang Xiazi tested it himself.

When riding a horse to charge, the new saber is more lethal and easier to use.

Luo Zhixue also picked up one himself, which was heavier than the one-handed steel waist knife he currently wore on his waist.

Luo Zhixue wears a one-handed waist sword made of hundreds of steel-refined steel every day. This kind of sword made of hundreds of steel-refined steel is basically a high-quality sword, and ordinary soldiers and even low-level officers cannot afford it.

In today's Baoxiang camp, there are not many swords made of hundreds of steel, only five or six in total. Luo Zhi learned one for himself, and the remaining few were given to several infantry sentries.

For personal protection.

Speaking of the waist knife on Luo Zhixue’s waist, this knife also has a history.

On the day of the mutiny, Li Tonglin beheaded a thousand households, and seized this fine steel waist knife from the thousand households, and then used it as his own saber. Later, Li Tonglin seized a saber made of the same fine steel and used it instead.

He bought a stainless steel saber and gave it to his confidant Sun Chengli.

However, Sun Lili rarely wore this kind of one-handed waist sword on weekdays. He preferred to carry his own saber directly, so after Sun Lili came to power, he simply gave this saber to Luo Zhixue for use as a saber.

From then on, this sword went through several owners, and finally became Luo Zhixue's sword.

Compared with the one-handed waist knife that he is accustomed to using, the saber in his hand is a bit heavy for Luo Zhixue.

After a brief try, he put it down, said a few words casually and asked the craftsmen to continue working, and then continued to inspect other factories.

The entire weapons workshop is actually quite large, with about a dozen workshops of various sizes, as well as a dozen warehouses, garrisons and other defense facilities.

When Luo Zhixue moved the weapons workshop, he classified the interior of the weapons workshop without being too detailed. He just divided it into multiple branches according to different uses.

A sword and spear factory and an armor factory, two factories focusing on cold weapons, were set up, and an artillery factory and a musket factory, two factories focusing on firearms, were set up.

There are also arrow factories, ammunition factories, iron smelting factories, machinery factories, etc.

The main purpose of this classification is to allow craftsmen to specialize in one of the tasks to improve learning and work efficiency.

Instead of doing everything and learning everything as before, the efficiency is very low.

After Luo Zhixue looked at the swords and spears, he went next door to look at the armor. There was nothing interesting about this one. It was made of iron sheets and then strung together to be used as cloth armor. There are two types of cloth armor they produce now, one is

These are ordinary items intended for ordinary soldiers.

There is also a high-end product for important melee units, such as front-row spearmen and cavalry. The difference between the two lies in the amount of iron armor lining.

The iron sheets of this thing are stacked in multiple layers. Well, to put it bluntly, it's just armor, but it's covered with a layer of cloth and looks like cloth armor...

Baoxiangying's cloth-faced armor is a large basket, and with a layer of cloth, anything can be put in it...

The iron sheets used to make armor here are still processed by water hammer. These craftsmen are now only doing finishing processing, which shows the huge role of water hammer.

At the same time, because of the successful application of water hammer, Luo Zhixue was also thinking about how to make plate armor.

But before making plate armor, he had to solve the problem of materials first.

To make plate armor, you must have steel materials. This thing cannot be made directly from iron materials.

It would be meaningless to directly use iron to make plate armor. The armor is too thick for soldiers to wear. The armor can be worn by soldiers, but it is too thin to even block arrows.

In the past more than a thousand years, no one has used iron to make large-area armor similar to plate armor, but it is basically unreliable, and they are only cheap products for ordinary soldiers.

Plate armor, first of all, must be made of steel.

You have steel first, and then you can discuss processing with hydraulic equipment. This order cannot be reversed. If you reverse it, it will be iron plate armor of little use... The defensive power of this thing is not as good as what Baoxiang Camp builds now.

What about the normal version of the cloth armor equipped?

Luo Zhixue also tried to figure out steelmaking before, but he couldn't do it for a while. Later, he was busy fighting against the Ming army's invasion, so he left the steelmaking behind.

Now Luo Zhixue is already thinking about it. He has to study this steelmaking issue later and try to find a way to mass produce steel.

Well, the key point lies in the word mass production.

If you just make some casually, you can just make steel directly, and the steel you get will be very good...

But the small amount of steel produced in this way is of little significance to Luo Zhixue.

He is not a small European aristocrat. When fighting, he needs to bring a few knights and go into battle in person dressed like a can of meat. What he wants is a large amount of steel and steel plate armor that can be used to equip ordinary soldiers on a large scale.
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