Yang Fan was called by Zhao Hao in a letter, saying that he would let him see with his own eyes how much the Ming Dynasty's shipbuilding technology has lagged behind.

It is not easy to make Yang Fan admit this. After all, he was the Longjiang Factory who produced Zheng He's treasure ship. Therefore, he came even though he knew it was a provocation.

Yesterday, the Oriental Beauty, which was as huge as a castle but as artwork, calmed him down as soon as he entered the shipyard. At the level of a shipbuilding expert, he could see at a glance how difficult this ship was to build. When the Oriental Beauty was docked in the pond, he couldn't wait to visit and study it all day.

In the end, Yang Fan had to admit that the shipbuilding technology of the Ming Dynasty, which was proud of the world, is now far behind the Thais. How could this make the proud Ming Dynasty craftsmen feel?

Therefore, when he met Zhao Hao, his former arrogance unique to technical talents was gone and he was listless. It seemed that he still couldn't accept the Ming Dynasty's shipbuilding technology, which was no longer the world's number one.

There is no way. After being the Supreme Kingdom of the Celestial Empire for a long time, I want to be the first in everything, and occasionally I feel uncomfortable if I have the second one.

"This is called sailing against the current, if you don't advance, you will retreat. We stop moving forward for 150 years, and it is normal to be caught up and surpassed by others." Zhao Hao patted Yang Fan on the shoulder. What he wanted was this effect. "This is a good thing. If you don't recognize the gap, how can you catch up?"

"Yes." Yang Fan focused heavily.

"Let's go and have a look." Zhao Hao patted Ma Hu again, and walked into the shipyard surrounded by everyone.

~~

The shipyard factory covers an area of ​​more than 600 mu and belongs to the first-level security unit of the group. A whole security brigade is responsible for its security work.

After the Danluo Security District was independent from Jiangnan Security Company, Zhao Hao reorganized the security company in accordance with the principle of "focusing on the outside and neglecting the inside", and changed from the original vertical management model to flat management. There was no special commander, but only sent corresponding security teams to specific company factory areas according to the needs of the group.

The first-level security unit sends a security brigade with 500 people; the second-level security unit sends a security squadron with 100 people; and the third-level security unit sends a security squadron with 20 people. The security teams are not affiliated with each other, and the company is directly responsible for daily training and logistics support.

This will obviously weaken the combat effectiveness of the security team and make them truly become security guards. However, Mr. Zhao must use this method to clearly state that he is absolutely obscene to the group, so as not to have any thoughts they should not have in the future.

The entire factory area covers a very wide area, and the quantitative management that Mr. Zhao has always advocated is implemented in the factory, and everything seems to be well organized.

The first thing they entered was the huge wood storage yard. In the era of wooden sailing, wood naturally played the protagonist.

There is a separate dock in the wood storage yard. Next to the trestle, a fleet of logs transporting logs are unloading. Popeye crane lifts the logs that have only been trimmed and loads them on a flatbed ox cart.

There are also rails on the ground, and the wheels slide on the tracks, allowing a cow to easily pull up a whole truck of logs and send them into the wood storage yard not far away.

This section of railway tracks is exactly one kilometer long and is made of familiar iron. The railway that Mr. Zhao promised to build for Lao Xier is just this kind of thing. But first, Lao Xier offended him, and second, Wuhu has not had that large production capacity, so he can only let Lao Xier wait.

Zhao Hao took a "cow-pulling train" with interest and entered the wood storage yard. He saw that there were neatly placed various woods, including fir, elm, camphor, locust, cypress... There were more than a dozen kinds of wood, and most of the wood storage yards were piled up.

"I'm afraid there are tens of thousands of them?" Zhao Hao climbed to the observation deck and overlooked the entire wood storage yard.

"All kinds of woods are added up, almost 23,000 pieces." Ma Hu replied hurriedly.

“How many kinds?”

"Eighteen kinds." Ma Hu explained: "The masts of a thousand-material sea boat are made of straight fir, and camphor wood and locust wood are used for beams and beams. The shallow boards are not limited to any wood; elm and betel wood are used for rudder poles; thick wood and locust wood are used for door-closing sticks; fir and cypress are used for oars..."

"Will the performance of the ship be affected by so many different woods over time?" Zhao Hao asked strangely.

"It will affect it. If only two or three kinds of wood can be used, of course it would be great." Ma Hu smiled bitterly and said, "But there is no way to do it. Jiangnan produces very little wood. The wood we built in ships was purchased from Huguang, Sichuan, and even Yunnan, Guizhou and Fujian. The cost is amazing. We can only use whatever we can and cannot pick on food."

"Don't worry, this problem can be solved in the next New Year." Zhao Hao smiled. According to the Oita Treaty, the Japanese Lao Wang has organized manpower to start logging to repay debts.

"That's great!" Mahu smiled suddenly. Since last year, Jiangnan Group has been purchasing wood for shipbuilding, which has directly led to the increase in the price of wood and the profits of shipbuilding have plummeted. He did not dare to raise prices with Gangmaster Chen, who bought his ship, which put a lot of pressure on him.

"What else is there to be shortage? I'll solve it for you." Zhao Hao asked while walking down the lookout.

"There is a shortage of iron." Ma Hu said again: "A thousand-material sea boat requires three anchors, plus nails and hooks of various sizes, a total of 5,000 kilograms of cooked iron is required. However, in Wuhu, only 20,000 kilograms can be transported a month, which means that after the ship is built, it has to wait for the anchor to be put into the water."

"Our Longjiang factory is also short of iron. Forty thousand kilograms of iron a month are not enough." Yang Fan quickly took the opportunity to say.

"Solve it, and I will definitely solve it for you next year." Zhao Hao agreed, but he didn't have the confidence before. Because not only the shipyard was short of iron, the group companies and even the Danluo Island were short of iron!

In fact, the steel factory in Wuhu has already opened enough iron smelting furnaces. But I didn’t expect that a Jiangnan Group would be even more scrapped than Hu Zongxian’s anti-Japanese war. 70% of the steel from Wang Yu’s side supplied the Jiangnan Group, which was not enough...

It can only allow Wuhu to continue to expand its production capacity next year, but the group's demand is also increasing day by day. I am afraid that the 01 Institute will not be able to make a breakthrough in one day, and the situation of iron shortage everywhere will not be changed in one day.

~~

After leaving the yard, everyone came to a drying kiln surrounded by a high firewall. The wood in the yard was sawed and split into separate wood and transported here for drying.

If it is drying naturally, the wood will take at least one or two years or even two or three years to use. Zhao Hao couldn't wait that long, so at Yang Fan's suggestion, he spent a huge amount of money to build this huge drying kiln.

The entire drying kiln consists of two parts: the boiler room and the drying kiln. The huge human bellows continuously send the hot air in the boiler room into the drying kiln through pipes, continuously heating the air inside.

In the drying kiln, the roughly processed wood is stacked on the rack, and after preheating, drying, and processing in the middle, it can usually be released from the kiln in about one month. In fact, the wood produced in later generations is also drying quickly in this way. As long as the temperature and humidity are grasped, it will not be much worse than the traditional shade drying for many years.

The kiln is hot and stuffy, and there are old carpenters wearing single clothes taking care of them with apprentices. Their job is mainly to control the humidity in the kiln. When the moisture that is baked makes the kiln wet to a certain extent, open the windows to ventilate.

This is an experience work. At present, no more than ten people can master this humidity in Jiangnan. Of course, it is mainly because ordinary carpenters do not cook and use baking wood to speed up drying. This is so expensive.

Ma Hu told Zhao Hao that the biggest problem with the drying kiln at present is that the capacity is limited, and the drying amount is less than one-fifth of the wood required by the shipyard, so it can only dry the ship materials in key parts. In order to hurry up, the boards of the decks and cabins, such as the secondary parts, are roasted on the fire and used directly...

"Then continue to expand the drying kiln!" Mr. Zhao waved his hand and said proudly: "Isn't it enough to create five such ones?"

He paused and said, "Five ones are not enough, just make ten of them first! If you don't have enough money, please report it. I'll ask President Jiang to give you a special approval!"

"Hey, yes." Ma Hu nodded quickly and responded with sweat.

Yang Fan and others were also sweating, one was hot, the other was scared. They thought how much does it cost? Did Mr. Zhao dig up a silver mountain overseas?

~~

After leaving the yard of the drying kiln, it suddenly became clear outside. On both sides of a wide and straight cement road, there were wooden workshops, iron workshops, oyster shell workshops, tent workshops, cable workshops, cable workshops, and paint workshops... A tall factory building made of bamboo reinforced concrete plates is enough to withstand the strongest typhoons.

The workshop is in an orderly manner, which shows that it is not careless, and it is indeed very strict in management.

Zhao Hao praised Ma Hu for his words, and he did a good job and could remember his achievements. He was so happy that he couldn't stop talking about his words.

He did a good job. In just over a year, he transformed the sand boat yard, which could only produce 400 sand boats, into a Jiangnan Shipyard, which could produce 1,000-foot Dafu ships. He also had to combine the original ship yard with the two craftsmen hired by Jinling to make them obey the rules and regulations. The hardships he had to do was naturally imagined.

Then everyone put on masks and entered the wooden workshop. Sawdust flew everywhere inside, and the carpenters and workers were processing the wood.

In this era, whether in the East or the West, ship shape design was mostly made by shipbuilders relying on their own experience and word-of-mouthed creations and French on-site stakes. There was no precise data and drawings, but the ship was basically the same. The trick was to use molds to standardize production.

For example, Jiangnan Factory currently mainly manufactures sea ships with thousands of materials. Experienced shipbuilders will first use lightweight boards such as pine wood to create a sample ship and then dismantle it, and number each component to be used as a formal production mold.

The workshop director divided the carpenters into several groups, each group only needed to be responsible for the reproduction and production of part of the mold, which greatly simplified the work of the carpenters and made the production proficient and efficient.

Moreover, if there is a mold, it is easy to check whether the processed wood is qualified and strictly quantitatively managed, so that the waste rate can be controlled below one percent. In the meantime, the waste rate of European shipyards exceeded one tenth!
Chapter completed!