Warring States Eagle

Masara was carefully checking the account books in the workshop of the Kobo Town in the mountains near Kishigake Mountain Castle, Matsuura County, Hizen Country, Kyushu.

In addition to the gold mines, silver mines, copper mines, tin mines, lead mines, and coal mines introduced earlier in the account book.This time, sulfur, china clay ore, and limestone ore were also added to the account book.

In terms of sulfur mines, high-quality sulfur mines were found on Tianshan Mountain in Matsuura County, Hizen Country, and Mount Aso in Aso County, Higo Country.Among them, there is only one sulfur mine in Hizen country, but three sulfur mines have been discovered in Mount Aso in Higo.

Sulfur is a good thing for the territory. First of all, it is an important raw material for the production of gunpowder in the Luo's family's weapon workshop, and secondly, it can also be used in the marching camp.As long as you sprinkle some sulfur around the camp (pay attention to the amount, so as not to be used by the enemy to burn the camp), you can avoid being harassed by snakes, insects, rats and ants at night.

Finally, it can also be mixed with other fertilizers as a fertilizer for crops.The excess sulfur can also be sold to Ming merchants and Nanmans to increase the income of the territory.

Now the four sulfur mines discovered have entered the mining stage. With the further exploration of the territory by the Cabinet, it is estimated that new sulfur deposits will be discovered in the Mount Aso area.

In terms of porcelain clay mines, with the help of several ceramic craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty, the Luo family has discovered a large number of porcelain clay mines near Imari Bay and Arita Village in Matsuura County, Hizen Country.In addition, porcelain clay mines were also discovered in the vicinity of Xiaolutian Village, Sarayama, Hita County, Bungo Country.

Ceramic utensils are quite popular in the Japanese country, especially ceramic utensils that use the ceramic production technology of the Ming Dynasty.Although there are only a few ceramic craftsmen from the Ming Dynasty in Luo's family, Zheng Liang still decided to do so after the autumn harvest this year.Build workshops one by one near the three china clay mines discovered above.Production of own ceramic ware belonging to the Roche family.These produced ceramic vessels.On the one hand, it is used for external sales, and on the other hand, it is used to supply the needs of its own territory.

In terms of limestone, a large-scale limestone deposit was found in Kukuzang Mountain, Kishidake Sanshiro Mountains in Hizen Country, Gaofeng Mountain in Chikugo Country, and Mount Aso in Higo Country.

In fact, although Wa country lacks minerals such as rich iron ore, it contains a large amount of raw materials for making cement, especially limestone, which can be found almost in the mountainous areas of the Luo family's territory.It's just that the mineral deposit that was finally selected as the mining site has the best quality and the largest reserves among the many limestone mines.

More importantly, the areas around these deposits have easy access to raw materials for cement production.Therefore, Luo's family has already established a cement production workshop in the local area.Just like the papermaking workshops, nearby these workshops spontaneously formed villages mainly composed of craftsmen, workers and their families in the workshops.While they provided cement raw materials for the marching avenues and buildings in the territory, they also provided impetus for the local economic development.

Of course, due to the lack of advanced equipment (it is impossible to exist in this era), the cement produced by these workshops is of inferior quality, but it can already fully meet the needs of the marching avenue.And when combined with local mud, it can also be used as a building material.It forms better than mud alone.

In general.At present, the Roche family owns one gold mine, four silver mines, four copper mines, one lead mine, one tin mine, four sulfur mines, one coal mine, three china clay mines, four limestone mines, and one papermaking mine workshops, a textile workshop, and four cement workshops.And three ceramic workshops that will start soon.

After learning about the current situation of all the mines of the Luo family, Zhengliang, accompanied by his retainers, inspected the various workshops in the workshop town.

In the weapons workshop, Zheng Liang carefully watched the spear, bow and tire bow, feather arrow, katana sword, black eagle dagger (assassination weapon, black eagle and necessary equipment for detectives), flying fire meteor projectile vehicle, ladder, and city-breaking vehicle , new-style footwear (a mixture of leather armor and iron sheets), new-style armor and other weapons and armor production processes.

Regarding the Feihuo Meteor Projector, Zheng Liang hoped that Guoyou Hebei and Liu Ye would find a way to improve it, so that these projection vehicles that can only project pyrotechnic jars can be transformed into catapults that can project boulders.At present, these projectile vehicles cannot launch boulders due to the fact that the material that activates the boulder cannot withstand the excessive tension caused by launching boulders.

For this question, Zhengliang first thought of rubber.As long as there is rubber, there must be rubber trees.However, rubber trees are native to South America, and they were not transplanted to Kew Gardens in England until 1873. In 1877, 22 rubber trees were transported to Singapore, and in 1898, they were introduced to the Malay Peninsula. China also began to introduce them in 1904.At this time, no matter in the local area or in the Ming Dynasty, it is impossible to find rubber tree species (as for sending people to find it or entrusting the Nanman people to help you find it, it is impossible, only the Nanman people and Ming country businessmen can help. Just keep an eye out).So the rubber is not considered.

Then the only other way left is to go to sea to hunt whales.The rubber band on the whale can be used as a material.It’s just that hunting whales is not easy. Although there are definitely not fewer whales in the sea at this time, after all, the area of ​​​​the ocean is also quite large. It is not easy to find them immediately. Moreover, with the current strength of the ship, it is reckless to go hunting Whales are likely to inflict their own damage.Therefore, the matter of whales can only depend on opportunities.

After much deliberation, there was no very good solution to the problem that the projection vehicle could not launch the boulder. Zheng Liang had to give some suggestions, and then let everyone in the workshop think about it slowly.

Then Zhengliang inspected the firearms workshop and carefully watched the production process of gunpowder, bullets, shells, iron cannons, and large cylinders.For the production of large cylinders, Zhengliang's only requirement at present is to find ways to increase production.At present, Luo's family only has one large cylinder (it was placed on the fort of Qibu City as a defensive weapon), and two large cylinders will be produced next month, but even if all the large cylinders produced this year can pass the test Putting it into use smoothly, there are only five large cylinders at most, which obviously cannot meet the needs of the Luo family's military power.Therefore, it is urgent to improve the production efficiency of the large cylinder.

As for gunpowder and iron cannons, Zheng Liang put forward suggestions for improvement.At present, the gunpowder manufactured by Luo's family contains a lot of impurities and the proportion of materials in the configuration process is inconsistent, which leads to the problem of low power of gunpowder and inconsistent power of gunpowder produced in different periods. It caused great inconvenience, and even caused accidents, causing unnecessary casualties.

For this reason, Zhengliang asked the firearms workshop to create a special proportional utensil, so that every gunpowder produced should be placed on this utensil, so as to avoid the situation that the power of gunpowder would drop or be too high due to the inconsistent placement of various materials. .

Regarding the problem of impurities in gunpowder, Zheng Liang asked the smelting workshop to also participate in the research on this issue, and find a way to solve the problem of the decline in the power of gunpowder due to impurities contained in various raw materials.

As for the iron cannons, the current iron cannons of the Luo family are much more advanced than the iron cannons in other regions in terms of overall structure and use in wet weather.Masara once sent Wooden Shigetada to spend a lot of money to buy an iron cannon from Kyoto, Omi, Zaga, and Satsuma, and then used the same ammunition to test fire at the same time to compare the difference between these iron cannons and Roche's iron cannons. .

In the end, it was found that the iron cannons of the Luo family are better than those in other regions in terms of the structure of the gun body, the convenience of carrying, and the convenience of use.After the test firing, it was even more discovered that the iron cannons of Luo's family can not only shoot in wet weather, but also have a farther shooting distance than iron cannons in other regions, at least ten meters farther.

Of course, even so, Zhengliang still hopes that the Firearms Workshop can continue to work hard on the range, accuracy and power of the bullets, so as to completely widen the distance between the iron cannons of Luo's family and the iron cannons of other regions, so that Roche The home iron cannon team has an advantage when facing the enemy's iron cannon team. (to be continued..)