This arsenal is divided into five parts: an iron smelting plant, a musket factory, an cannon factory, an armor factory and a knife factory. Li Guodong first visited the iron smelting plant. There are four new blast furnaces in the iron smelting plant, which combine the advantages of Li Guodong and Song Yingxing. There is a wharf next to the iron smelting plant, which is divided into a coke wharf and an iron ore wharf. Ships loaded with iron ore flow downstream from the Beijiang River, and most of these iron ore are transported from Shaozhou. The ships loaded with coke come from Dongjiang River. The high-quality coal transported from Annan was sent to Huizhou, refined into coke, and then transported to Foshan.

Iron ore and coke were poured into the blast furnace, and the bellows pulled by animal power provided the blast furnace with a steady stream of fresh air. The fire burned wildly. Soon after, the workers turned on the blast furnace, pulled up the blast furnace with a winch, and poured out the hot molten iron from the inside. After the molten iron solidified, the crude steel precipitated at the bottom of the iron plate trough was crude steel, and a large piece of pig iron on it was of high-quality.

The pig iron obtained from blast furnace smelting iron ore can be used to cast cannons and muskets.

Some of the pig iron obtained from smelting was placed in a blast furnace at a higher temperature, and a small amount of decomposed steel was obtained. The iron was locked into a tubular container. After cooling, iron rods were obtained.

These cooked iron rods are the materials used to create musket barrels.

The method of drilling the iron rod directly into a gun barrel is a new manufacturing method invented by Li Guodong. Using this method to build a musket gun barrel is much faster than the original method of turning iron into an iron pipe. A skilled worker can drill four gun barrels in a day by operating a manual drilling machine. However, using the original method of pounding iron pieces into a gun barrel, it takes a worker five to ten days to create a qualified gun barrel, and the efficiency is increased by at least twenty times!

In the past, the longest time to build a musket was to build a gun barrel. Now, with the drilling machine method, the speed has been increased by twenty times. There are ten drilling machines in this arsenal, operated by ten skilled workers, which makes the arsenal produce forty gun barrels every day and 1,200 gun barrels a month.

The reason why the method of drilling the gun barrel by hand instead of the more efficient water drilling is because the accuracy of the hydraulic drill is difficult to control and it is easy to damage the gun barrel. Therefore, the drilling gun barrel is drilled using a human drilling machine.

After approaching the problem of steel quality, all the muskets produced by Foshan Arsenal were all self-produced muskets, namely flintlock rifles.

Made of crude steel obtained from ironmaking, the workers swung their hammers and hit the crude steel again and again, but still adopted the method of making them into steel for hundreds of times, turning the crude steel into fine steel. Because the raw materials themselves are already crude steel, the time spent on making the crude steel into fine steel is saved a lot.

The excellent spring steel strips obtained by making steel can be used to install on the flintlock machine, which is one of the most important components of the flintlock rifle.

A small number of the best quality cooked iron rods are used to process them into magic guns, that is, rifled guns.

Next, Li Guodong visited the knife factory and the armor factory.

Armor factories use hydraulic forging to create pieces of plate armor. However, the scale of the armor factory is not very large and the output is not very high, because according to Li Guodong's military advisor reform, it is impossible to equip every soldier with strong armor in the future. With the development of firearm technology, it is no point in equip musketeers with armor. If they can prevent firearms from shooting, soldiers need to wear extremely strong armor and carry a thick iron shield to block firearms. Moreover, that heavy set of equipment can only prevent the clamps and flintlocks from being slag in front of the cannons.

Therefore, in the future, the ones that are still equipped with armor are heavy cavalry and grenadiers, and other troops will almost no armor.

The scale of the knife factory is quite large. After all, the knife is still the most important weapon. Not only does the iron-armored grenade equipped with a knife, but the navy's frogman battalion needs to use a knife, but even the musketeers are equipped with two knives, a bayonet and a multi-purpose machete.

No matter at any time, a knife is still useful. Even when it enters the information age of the 21st century, soldiers are still equipped with knives.

Ordinary machetes and daggers are handmade from hand-made iron, but the bayonets equipped by musketeers are made by casting. The materials used to produce bayonets are made of crude steel. Since the melting point of steel is higher than that of iron, it is impossible to completely turn into steel and pour it into the mold. Instead, the steel rod is burned red and soft, and then squeezed it with a cross-section of a triangular mold, and then hit it to make a bayonet.

The cross-section of the bayonet is triangular. This bayonet is also called triangular prick, which is equivalent to having three-sided blood grooves. It is very powerful. Even if it does not stab the vital points, as long as it stabs the legs and feet, it can immediately lose its combat power until it bleeds and dies!

The triangular thorn also has a strong armor-breaking ability, which can pierce the Qing army's cotton armor. If you encounter a heavy armored Qing army wearing multiple thick armor, the triangular thorn can be used to stab the opponent's hands and feet. As long as you stab it, it will make the opponent bleeding and lose its combat power soon.

Finally, Li Guodong visited the artillery factory again, which produced both iron cannons and copper cannons. Considering the weight of the artillery, the current Land Division still uses lighter copper cannons. Most of the cast iron cannons are provided for use by the navy.

The casting of iron cannons was carried out by hydraulic boring machines to smooth the inner chamber. The barrel casting method was adopted by sand mold casting, without white mouths, and the barrel was of high quality. The hydraulic boring machines were used to smooth the inner chamber of the cannons. The quality of these semi-mechanized cannons far exceeded the quality of previous cannons and was close to the level of artillery used in the Opium War of the British Empire in the 19th century.

With the smooth inner chamber as smooth as a mirror, the most advanced medicine disc fuze and cork mount, as well as various shells such as shotguns and shrapnel, and with gun mounts, these cannons have reached the peak level of the era of front-mounted smoothbore guns!

But the gun mount was not produced in this gun factory, but in another factory.

The factory that produces gun mounts is called Foshan Vehicle Factory, which specializes in producing various vehicles, such as four-wheeled carriages, cargo mounts, ammunition mounts and other vehicles. However, to complete the production of a vehicle, it is impossible to complete the construction of a vehicle factory. The key factory that provides accessories to the vehicle factory is the bearing factory, and the bearing factory is right next to the vehicle factory.

"The vehicle factory and the bearing factory are right opposite our gun factory. Let's go and have a look?" Song Yingxing suggested.

"Of course I'm going." Li Guodong replied with a smile.

Li Guodong and a group of people walked into the vehicle factory and saw that the vehicle factory was a new type of vehicle factory, which adopted the method of running water to produce vehicles. First, the workers set up the vehicle racks, and the frames were sent to the front, and the workers installed the axles and wheels.

The wheels are new-style wheels. The spokes of the wheels are wrapped in iron and wood. The rims on the outside are made of pure iron, and the outer periphery is covered with a layer of Eucommia glue.

Without rubber, Eucommia ulmoides are used instead. The wheels wrapped with a layer of rubber walk smoothly, reducing a lot of vibration. Such wheels are generally used on luxury four-wheeled carriages or cannon trucks. Ordinary wheels still use old-fashioned wood wheels, but bearings are installed on the axles.

Rolling bearings have been put into production. The wheels with rolling bearings are very labor-saving to roll and can greatly improve efficiency.

After the frame is set up, the axle and wheels are installed, the frame with the wheels is sent to the front and the workers will install the car.

The carriages of freight carriages and gun carriages are relatively simple, and workers can install the built carriages on the racks. The carriages of four-wheeled carriages are more complicated. The windows are made of transparent glass, and you can see the outside from the inside. There are seats and cushions in the carriages, and there is a heating stove under the seats, which can be heated in the car in winter. The luxury carriages have luxurious interior decorations, and there is also a copper lamp stand outside the car, which can be used to place whale oil lamps.
Chapter completed!