?At the side of the water wheel, three craftsmen were swinging on their own, while Yuwen Wen stood by and watched them "play". There were many devices next to the water wheel, and there were only Zhang Yu in the whole yard except for the four of them.

Yuwen Wen came out of the military weapon surveillance by the Santai River and came to his own workshop by the river. There were many "black technologies" here, so there were many guards and were heavily guarded. Except for him bringing Zhang Yu in, other entourages were waiting in the reception room outside the high wall.

The yard where they are now is a special workshop. The technology here is very simple, but it cannot be circulated because it is a hydraulic thread extraction that appeared in the fifteenth century in the original historical trajectory.

As the name suggests, silk drawing, is to pull something into "silk". Yuwen Wen, based on his predecessors' experience, evolved the silk drawing process into "one step" in this era and directly evolved to hydraulic silk drawing. This yard is a silk drawing workshop.

To make iron wire, you must first have a wire drawing board. The wire drawing board is made of high-quality iron material, and a series of holes with diminishing diameter are made on it. The power of wire drawing is to use hydraulic power. The water wheel drives the crank. A rope is tied to the crank, and the end of the rope is a pair of pliers clamped with a clamp.

The blacksmith sat on a swing of appropriate height so that he could use pliers to pinch the wire pulled out of the wire pulling board. When the crank lengthened the wire, he could retreat again. Of course, low-strength metals such as gold, silver and copper do not need to be used to pull wires in such a troublesome way.

At this moment, the craftsman is sitting on the swing. The swing moves with the crank, and the crank is driven by the waterwheel. If the rope is loose and the swing moves forward, he moves the pliers forward. When the rope is tight, he clamps the wire with pliers.

In this way, wires with uniform diameters were pulled out and sent to the military weapon supervisor for craftsmen to craft ring lock armor. From iron extraction to ring lock armor, the only thing that was done in Yuwen Wen's workshop.

Hydraulic wire drawing, this technology has been developed by Yuwen Wen for nearly a thousand years in advance. In fact, the principle is nothing special. A skilled craftsman can see it at a glance. However, based on the concerns of technological diffusion, Yuwen Wen decided to try his best to control it in his hands.

The next thing you do with iron wire is easy to deal with. Wrap the iron wire around the round stick and then cut it from the middle to get many iron rings.

Knock the iron ring flat, flatten the interface, knock two holes with a punch, put a small piece of iron wire and rivet flat, and it becomes an iron ring that is not easy to be stretched open. Then repeat this process continuously.

There are many ways to spell iron rings. One iron ring penetrates two iron rings, and then one wears three to one wear six. The common one wears four. Of course, there are other ways to spell these basic units together to become chain cloth, and finally weave them into clothes and become ring lock armor.

Because it is a newly emerged armor style, the craftsmen are still improving the production process of bad lock armor. Taking splicing chain cloth as an example, it was initially necessary for two people to work for fifteen days to spell out a chain cloth that is seven feet long and four and a half feet wide. Now it has been shortened to ten days, and it will take even shorter if you are skilled in your skills.

Seeing the craftsman pulling out the wire, Yuwen Wen felt a little moved, and he recalled his experience back then.

The key to making ring lock armor/chain mail is iron rings, and the source of the iron ring is iron wire, so how to make iron wire has become the core issue, and the problem of making iron wire has become the root of a war of words in later generations.

Ring lock armor/chain mail appeared very early in Europe and was widely equipped during the Crusades. Typical crusad soldiers, both infantry and cavalry, wore chain mail, with a burqa painted with crosses and a long sword. This is a familiar image of the crusaders in film and television and animation works.

The Crusaders conquered the holy land of Jerusalem several times, around the Song Dynasty in the Central Plains. At that time, the Song army still equipped the armor that has been passed down from ancient times, that is, the armor leaves were worn with leather ropes, which looked like a mahjong mat. Of course, there was no gap between the armor leaves.

Then someone asked the question: Why can European troops equip chain mail in batches, but the Central Plains army did not see such armor extensively equipped?

The key to chain mail is to make iron rings, and the iron rings are made of wire rings. The chain mail seems to be missing in the army. I think it is impossible to make iron wire. You must know that Europe has already existed since the beginning of the AD.

Even if you can’t make a piece of iron wire, Zhongyuan Technology is indeed not good!

Any online forum can immediately stir up waves as long as this is said. Both sides of the debate immediately start a war of words. The great gods from all sides keep quoting the scriptures, and various parameters swept across the world like a storm.

Yuwen Wen remembered that he was like an ant, forced to watch two elephants fight on the spot, hiding less than a centimeter away, trembling. He was not an expert in the relevant field, and he didn't know which side was right and which side was wrong, but after countless "on-the-scenes", he finally figured out some things.

The Central Plains did not have a large-scale army like in Europe during the same period, but this does not mean that there was no ring lock armor/chain mail. The earliest place where ring lock armor appeared in historical materials was the Three Kingdoms period.

Cao Zhi, who wrote the "Fu of the Goddess of Luo River", wrote in his "The Table of Giving the Armor of the Ministers of the Latest Emperor": "The Latest Emperor gave the Armor of the Ministers, Black Light and Ming Light each, one ring lock armor, and one horse armor. This is the time to promote peace. If there is no trouble in the military, I would like to take care of them all."

This is the earliest written record of Mingguang Armor and Ring Lock Armor. Of course, this refers to the written record that later generations can find. From this, we can see that Ring Lock Armor had appeared at least during the Three Kingdoms period.

In the Tang Dynasty, ring lock armor was one of the thirteen types of armor, so it is a biased statement that the Central Plains cannot make ring lock armor, or if there is no equipment.

Of course, the topic is not over yet, and some people still question whether there is a ring lock armor but "no large-scale equipment". Is it impossible to make suitable wires, so there is no way to mass-produce them?

Can we make iron wire? The answers have been given to the golden-wire jade clothes, silver-wire jade clothes, and copper-wire jade clothes from the Han Dynasty. Of course, some people say that gold, silver and copper are very soft, and the difficulty of making is incomparable to iron wire.

This debate concerns the efficiency of the production process, that is, the level of the so-called Central Plains wire drawing process. Anyway, everyone has their own opinions. If one side believes that there is no large-scale equipment, it means that the wire drawing process is poor, resulting in the inability to "make up the quantity". The other side believes that the protection of the ring lock armor is not as good as that of the wire drawing armor, so there is naturally no need for large-scale equipment.

Through the debate between the two sides, Yu Wenwen learned some knowledge: the ability of ring lock armor/chain mail to defend against bows and arrows is worse than that of Zhajia, of course, there is something else that is made by exquisite work.

Therefore, ring lock armor/chain mail is not an invincible armor, but because of its advantages, Yu Wen Wen decided to make it. In the first place, the ring lock armor can be used as an inner armor, and because of the silk drawing process of making ring lock armor, it can also be used as a way to other things.

With the "iron wire", it is much more convenient to make nails, and even the efficiency of making iron needles has increased. In the Xisai Mountains and Water War, the hooked rope used by Zhou Jun to wrap around Chen Jun's water wheels. This is how the wire inside was made.

"Master Lang, should we equip the Hulin Army with this ring lock armor?" Zhang Yu asked. It was the first time he saw the wire pulling out, so he felt it was amazing. Seeing that the military weapon surveillance was exploring the making of the ring lock armor, he had questions.

"No, it's worthy of melee vanguards as inner armor." Yuwen Wen replied. The armor is still mainly made of zigzag armor. Even if it can only be made into mahjong-sized armor, as long as it is carefully made, the defense will be good. As for the dazzling plate armor, let's talk about it when the metallurgy level reaches its level.

Metallurgy is a problem, and yield is another problem. When digging river sand, it depends on manpower when choosing iron. The iron sand that can be screened every day is not much higher. The iron that can be trained must be used as arrowheads, and then consider the rest.

"Master Lang, what should I do if this ring lock armor is embroidered?" Zhang Yu asked again. He had been a navy soldier and knew that it was heavy in Jiangnan and often raining. The armor leaves of the tube sleeve armor were easy to rust, but the armor leaves could be erased frequently. He couldn't figure out what to do if the ring lock armor was.

"Just wash with sand." Yuwen Wen answered straightforwardly, regardless of whether Zhang Yu understood it or not, and turned around and walked out the door, "Let's go and see another thing."

......

In the yard next door, Yuwen Wen was watching Lin Youdi directing craftsmen to replace the water wheel. To be precise, it was the core component of the water wheel - the bearing. Of course, this is just a common iron shaft and iron bearing shell.

However, it is not easy to replace it. It is a high-tech product - roller bearing, that is, roller bearing, or the scientific name "cylindrical roller bearing". It has less resistance than the original bearing, and the water wheel is easier to rotate.

That is to make the rotation efficiency higher, the wear speed slows down, making the water wheel more durable. The water wheels and wheels use sliding bearings to reduce friction by reducing contact surfaces. Although it is useful, it is not as good as roller bearings.

The most powerful one is naturally ball bearings, but today's technology cannot be made. Whether it is processing accuracy or steel ball production, it is not done by Yuwen Wen's black workshop, so he settled on the second best to make roller bearings.

As a result, it took more than a year to get it out, and it was barely available, and now it is installed for trial operation.

"Master Lang, what... Bearings are just used to turn water wheels?" Zhang Yu asked. He had seen craftsmen working hard to get this bearing. It was a waste of money to use only on water wheels or water wheels.

"Of course not. You can use anything you can transfer in the future." Yuwen Wen was in a good mood. Although it was just a trial run, it was at least useful. He spent money to maintain the black workshop and was naturally happy to see some dawn.

"Can it be used on a carriage?" Zhang Yu began to think of related uses. The first thing he thought of was the common carriage. The wheels of the carriage naturally had to rotate, but he thought it was a waste of this.

These are all made of fine iron. Two carriages are required for a two-wheeled carriage, and five four-wheeled carriages are required for a four-wheeled carriage, because the extra one is for the steering wheel.

"It's not just a carriage, but also a windmill, and there are many places." Yuwen Wen said. He asked craftsmen to spend all their time making bearings, so naturally they would not be limited to the powerful "trial-made" model, but also the "mass-production model" used for miscellaneous soldiers.

When Zhang Yu mentioned carriages, there were naturally four-wheeled carriages. This was something Yuwen Wen's "invented" and was pushed to the Western Regions' foreign merchants as usual. After the four-wheeled carriages appeared, the number of early stages began to increase, but the growth rate slowed down when it reached a certain level.

Yuwen Wen made statistics on this issue, and the reason is very simple: the failure rate is high and the poor cannot afford it.

There are three places where a two-wheeled carriage is prone to failure: two wheels and one axle. As long as there is any problem in these three places, the carriage must be stopped and repaired. Other minor problems can be slowed down. There are no problems that cannot be avoided when these three faults are caused.

This problem arises. For a four-wheeled carriage, there are seven places where failure is prone to failure: four wheels, two axles, and one steering wheel. The reason is the same as above, and if there is a problem, it must be repaired.

The four-wheeled carriage is indeed powerful on the official road with good road conditions. The load-bearing capacity is increased and the horses are not that burdened. However, when it comes to rural roads with poor road conditions, it will be ruined. If there is a problem with the seven fault points, it must be repaired.

If the load-bearing capacity increases, the load-bearing of wheels and axles increases. If you walk on a bumpy dirt road, it will make it worse. Therefore, the failure rate of four-wheeled carriages is much higher than that of two-wheeled carriages.

To solve this problem, the four-wheeled carriages must use sufficient materials, especially the movable parts such as sliding bearings, which will lead to higher cost and poor rural dirt road conditions, which limits the promotion of four-wheeled carriages.

Therefore, after a period of time, the popularity of four-wheeled carriages began to cool down. In the eyes of the world, those who use four-wheeled carriages are "city-can play", which can be used by rich people, but ordinary people still use two-wheeled carriages to make a profit.

Yuwen Wen also had an insight into this issue: it is the same as buying a car in later generations, which can be afforded but cannot be used.

Just by buying a car, it’s okay to be able to afford it, and the oil price is high. As a result, the car breaks down from time to time and breaks down as soon as it fails. After repairing it at the 4S store, the starting price is more than 10,000 yuan.

I'll buy a new car after breaking it a few times!

The boat of friendship is overturned as soon as possible, and Yuwen Wen has to find a way to prevent the boat from overturning. Of course, the solution is also very simple: improve the level of metallurgy and make durable metal parts.

It is difficult to make it easy, just like the principle of an atomic bomb is very simple, and it is not easy to make it. So Yuwen Wen found another money-burning project, which reminded him of another topic of verbalism in later generations.

There have been four-wheeled carriages in Europe for a long time, but there have never been one in the Central Plains. It turns out that technology is behind!

Any online forum, as long as this statement comes out, it will be a bloody storm, and the ring lock armor/chain mail are old topics, and the relevant debates have also learned some relevant knowledge.

Of course, there are four-wheeled carriages in the Central Plains. Not to mention that there are graphics in "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", there are countless other examples, but if it is emphasized that it must be European, that is, the four-wheeled carriage with front-wheel steering, there is no, but this has nothing to do with the "really backward technology" of the Central Plains.

In modern times, Western powers used cannons to open the country and introduced four-wheeled carriages. As a result, cities and villages in various places still used two-wheeled carriages. In addition to the later high-end real estate projects, they used four-wheeled carriages to pick up and drop off customers to improve their quality, and the use of four-wheeled carriages was not much wider.

It is a common argument for which one is right and who is wrong, but it is real to increase the load on four-wheeled carriages. Although water transportation in the south of the Yangtze River is convenient, it is also important to have multiple logistics means. Yuwen Wen naturally needs to find ways to improve his metallurgical capacity and make appropriate components to solve the problem of high failure rate of four-wheeled carriages.
Chapter completed!