Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 115 This paragraph should be cut out and cannot be included in the novel

After a simple weighing, more than ten tons of black iron sand were smelted into more than two thousand kilograms of inferior pig iron, more than two hundred kilograms of pure iron, and about one hundred and thirty to forty kilograms of jade steel, with a conversion rate of about 12%.

This is not the total loss. These more than 30 kilograms of pig iron cannot be used directly and need to be manually hammered into wrought iron. If it is used to make general civilian tools, there will be about a % loss. If you want to make armor, it will require at least five more hammerings, and then only three kilograms out of ten kilograms will be left usable.

Similarly, jade steel must be cold quenched before it can be used, and it must be separated into soft steel and hard steel, and there will also be a loss of several dozen kilograms.

If you calculate in this way, the iron and steel materials that can be used to make weapons and armor are only about one thousand pounds, which can barely make more than thirty sets of lamellar armor, or make more than twenty cannon barrels - the standard of iron materials required to make gun barrels is higher than that of ordinary armor. After hammering ten pounds of pig iron, only a little more than one pound will be left, which is not cost-effective. Pure iron is still needed.

At the same time, Tamangang cannot be used to forge gun barrels. It is a low-temperature block-smelted carbon steel with uneven distribution of carbon content and other components inside. The overall stability is very poor, and the forged gun barrels are prone to bursting. But it is steel after all, and its strength and hardness are very good, far superior to ordinary iron materials. It is a good material for making gun heads. In the future, spear heads will mainly rely on it, and can be used specifically to break armor.

So, overall, it is difficult to say whether this smelting was a success or a failure.

To say it was a failure, we had everything we needed, including the raw materials for making cannons, cold weapons, and armor, so it didn’t seem like a failure.

Let's say it was a success. After working hard for more than a month, they finally got more than a thousand kilograms of iron and steel, which could only make about thirty sets of armor and more than twenty cannons. How long will it take to arm the troops and make them have strong armor and powerful weapons?
Can you barely arm a few hundred people a year?
Yuanye felt a mixture of emotions for a moment, but he was a person who could accept reality very well, and in the end he decided that it was a success.

After all, a proper set of "contemporary armor" usually sells for about one hundred kan, and the current cannon is about the same price. It is estimated that it will take another ten or eight years for Nanman iron to start entering Japan in large quantities before the price drops. Therefore, his current monthly income can only buy a dozen sets of armor or a dozen cannons.

After more than a month of hard work, we have managed to collect enough iron materials for at least thirty sets of armor and twenty or so cannons. This has saved a lot of money and increased the speed of development.

At least it's a good start. When the territory becomes larger in the future, we can expand the scale by finding more rivers.

The output was not as good as expected, so he could only comfort himself in this way. Otherwise, for a sophomore majoring in chemical mechanics, it would be a bit too much of a stretch for him to engage in metallurgy. What's more, he had nothing here. There was no rich iron ore to mine in large quantities, no coal to use for coking to increase the furnace temperature, and there was no way he could build a second blast furnace to directly spray out molten iron to fry steel. To get to this point, he had really racked his brains and tried his best, and there was really no way he could do any better.

If you want to blame someone, you can only blame the place you traveled to. This unfortunate medieval Japan is really hard to describe!

He stood there looking at the iron materials, thought for a while, and forced himself to comfort himself. He felt that if he could return to the modern era in the future, and if he could write this bizarre and unfortunate experience into a novel, this paragraph would have to be cut out, or at least the data units should be changed. For example, it could be changed to "ten tons of black iron sand were used to smelt more than a thousand tons of pig iron", which would be in line with the style of an average time traveler.

This is the only way. Anyway, other time travelers never seem to worry about raw materials. This is ancient times. Their iron materials seem to have fallen from the sky. They can easily arm tens of thousands of troops. He can't lose to them too much.

He thought about it for a while, and then his mood eased a little. He ordered people to move the iron and steel materials to the warehouse and coat them with a mixture of wood ash and thin clay to prevent them from natural oxidation and further reduce the production.

As for how to turn these iron materials into tools, armor, and spear heads, it is not difficult. People are worthless these days, and most of them are priced the same as livestock. Whether we go to Atsuta Port or the castle town of Furuno Castle to buy or hire them, we can always find some blacksmiths. Then we can build a workshop and let them hammer out the iron.

Anyway, he doesn't require the armor to look very good, as long as he can knock out the armor plates and punch holes in them, and then string them together with leather ropes. Nowadays, many armor enthusiasts string them together when they have nothing to do at home. It is not a job that requires very high skills, and most women can do it.

He handed over these low-skilled jobs to Aman and Endo Chiyo, asking them to think of ways to find excellent blacksmiths to build a workshop. By the way, he also set up a new department and transferred the iron field and smelting matters there. When they collected enough black iron sand again, they would start smelting again.

Of course, next time he won't keep such a close eye on them and let the people who are following him this time do it on their own. At most he will come over to take a look and provide technical guidance for the first few times.

After finishing all these, he looked at the list of materials, crossed out the iron, and felt that the only thing he was short of was saltpeter. He just didn't know if those people were still alive after "Ship No. 1" had been gone for a month and a half...

…………

Fortunately, Yu Da and others lived well... Most people lived well, and did not sink into the ocean and become food for the fish.

Yuanye waited for another seven or eight days, and before he could send Aman to persuade another captain to come back and form the "Expedition Team No. 2", "Ship No. 1" finally returned to the simple dock in the small bay. After receiving the notification, Yuanye rushed to greet it and saw from a distance that "Ship No. 1" was in a very bad state - this medium-sized Guan ship was almost left with the hull, the "main arrow cabin" was half broken, and the hard sail was completely gone. It seemed that the group of people had paddled back.

Yu Da and others had already gotten off the boat and were sitting on the dock, drinking water desperately. Some people even started to vomit on the ground after drinking. It seemed that this was definitely not a wonderful trip, and there were not enough people. There were eleven people when they set out, but only eight came back.

Yuan Ye quickly asked his men to help get some more fresh water and food. When Yu Da saw him coming, he slowly stood up. He seemed to be darker and thinner, but he still stood very steadily. He slowly said to him: "Sir, the things are in the cabin, only part of them were lost. We only brought back about 300 stones."

"Thank you for your hard work." Yuanye quickly motioned for him to sit down and have a good rest. He did not rush to deal with the guano stone and cooked guano soil, but patiently asked what happened, "Did something happen on the way back?"

"Yes, we encountered a storm eight days ago and didn't avoid it completely." Yu Da spoke concisely. He didn't say anything nice like "It was all thanks to your great fortune that I was lucky enough to escape danger." He just said a dry sentence and that was it.

Yuan Ye naturally couldn't care less about these things with him. He asked about his physical condition and informed him of the situation of his wife and young children as soon as possible. He asked him to have a good rest for a while and not to worry about anything else. Then he was ready to care about other sailors. Yu Da reached out and held him, took out a roll of parchment from his arms and handed it to him, "This is a sea chart, sir."

Yuanye thanked him and took it to have a closer look. He found that the "leapfrog tactic" was very successful. Yu Da led this medium-sized offshore hard-sail sailboat forward in twists and turns, passing more than a dozen islands of various sizes before reaching the destination. Moreover, after digging up the guano stones and cooked guano soil, he did not rush to leave. He wandered around the area for two days and found three small islands in that sea area.

Seeing that he was reading the chart seriously, Yu Da pointed to the chart and said, "Fresh water can be found on this island, this island, and this island. If you want to go there, you can organize a fleet and set up supply points at these three places. In the future, you can make a round trip in about twenty days."

Yuanye nodded slightly. When Ship No. 1 set out, the road ahead was unknown, so they could only explore in twists and turns, and sometimes they had to turn around and go back, taking a lot of detours. Now with this nautical chart, some of the small islands can be skipped directly, saving a lot of time the next time they go.

He rolled up the chart and put it away, then asked him, "Are there enough rocks and soil like the ones I want on the island?"

"A lot, sir." Yu Da couldn't seem to understand how Yuan Ye knew that there would be such things on an island that no one had ever been to. However, at his age, his curiosity was almost gone. He had no intention of asking in detail. He just said hoarsely, "It's the same as you said, sir. The sea around the island is blue, and there are many birds on the island. As long as you drive away the birds, the ground will be full of stones and soil as you want."

Just enough is enough!

Yuanye was relieved. It seemed that Japan had dug it all up in two or three years in later generations. He was worried that the islands were too small and the bird shit was not enough to be useful. But now it seems that this is not the case - the entire country of Japan used up all the shit in two or three years in the 19th century. If he was the only one using it in the 16th century, and they were still using matchlock guns, it should not be excessive to use it for another 30 to 50 years.

The source of saltpeter is no longer a problem. This is definitely good news. We can fire guns and cannons at will in the future. We don't have to be like other daimyo and powerful families. Once the gunshot is heard, no matter whether the enemy is hit or not, the cost is already two or three hundred coins, which makes us feel heartbroken.

Well, in Owari at this stage, only third-generation rich men with profound family background like Oda Nobunaga dared to use cannons and had the courage to form a cannon unit. Otherwise, if it were an ordinary powerful family, they might have a heart attack if 300 cannons were fired at once, and they simply couldn't afford the money. After Owari, there was one more person who dared to command the cannons to fire at will, and he was the one!

Yuanye patted Yu Da's shoulder vigorously and said with a smile: "That's good. I will ask you to train more qualified captains and sailors in the future."

What this meant was that Yu Da could rest assured and stay in Wanjin to retire. He only needed to be a navigation teacher and he didn't have to risk his life anymore. He was worth the price. If he succeeded in one try, he could save Wanjin a lot of money.

Yu Da's expression relaxed slightly and he nodded silently, apparently understanding his good intentions.

Yuanye patted him on the shoulder again and asked someone to send him to see his wife and children, while he went to see the guano stones and cooked guano soil that had been moved down from the cabin.

Among them, guano is not very important for the time being. This thing is an excellent natural "fertilizer" that can greatly increase food production. However, the place where he is is not suitable for planting, and the "fertilizer" can only be saved for later use. The main function of these guano stones is to deceive people. It is enough to make some saltpeter to make it look good. The real thing to use for a large amount of saltpeter is the unmineralized mature guano soil, which is the shit that seabirds have excreted in the past ten or twenty years.

It's finally time to play poop!

(End of this chapter)