Chapter 200 Shipbuilding
As he was talking, he suddenly saw a fat man in his thirties entering the cafeteria. He had a tall figure, knee-length shorts, a short-sleeved T-shirt, a waist bag and a pistol holster tied around his stomach with a black nylon belt, and a button-down holster. The straw hat on the back of his head proves that he is an out-and-out veteran.
The indigenous employees who were eating were no longer surprised by the elders who came in and out of the canteen - several elders could be seen in the shipyard every day, guiding work at various construction sites and workshops.
He poked his head and looked around, and suddenly saw Jiang Ye and the others. His eyes lit up and he waved his arms:
"Quick, a few people come and collect the goods!"
Zhou Bili picked his teeth and, surrounded by several apprentices, came to the shipyard's special station-actually a special unloading station. A diesel locomotive on the track was emitting steam, and several workers climbed up and down to inspect the locomotive. Now these diesel locomotives have all been gasified, and the flat-bed locomotives that originally seemed a little empty now have a gas stove. and a dedicated gas storage bag.
Of course, there are also many problems with high-yield gas stoves and gas storage bags. Air leaks are the most common and serious problem. Fortunately, the front of this kind of car is completely exposed to the air, and a slight air leakage will not be fatal.
On the flatbed truck, a yellow lantern hangs - this indicates that the truck is loaded with long or special-sized goods. At this time, several huge masts were loaded on the flatbed truck.
Large sailing ships have very high requirements for the supply of mast materials, that is, the mast must be straight and must have a certain circular diameter. Single straight pieces are best. In Europe, shipbuilding materials mainly come from the forests of Eastern Europe, especially Poland and Russia. However, on the coast of South China, it is very difficult to find such suitable wood - few traditional Chinese sailing ships have such tall masts. Even the large materials seized from Baitu Village were not enough to build such a mast.
There are very few such large timbers from Vietnam and Sanya. Although there are many fine hard woods such as teak and nanmu, there are not many that can meet the needs of masts in terms of height and diameter. In the end, Wen Desi decided to abandon the use of the entire mast and adopt the British method of composite masts.
The so-called composite mast, as the name suggests, means that the mast is made of multiple pieces of wood connected together. Such a mast is not limited by the size of the wood itself. Basically, sailboat masts of any size can be manufactured. Of course, the overall strength of this kind of mast cannot be compared with that of natural materials. The entire straight timber mast is comparable.
"After the British were cut off from the supply of mast wood, they relied on composite masts for a long time." Wen Desi said, "Before we could get more suitable wood, we just used composite masts."
Even when making composite masts, try to use large pieces of the same type of wood. Wu Kuangming asked the Forestry Department personnel to find all suitable timber from the inventory. We also collect information from traders and inquire about species of large timber that can be stably obtained in large quantities over a long period of time. The one who finally came to the conclusion was Fir.
Fir is a soft wood and is not ideal as a boat material, but it is by no means unusable. In fact, most of the merchant ships along the coast of South China in this time and space have been widely made of fir due to the lack of other hard woods. The British also used a large amount of fir and pine to make masts and decks. The best oak was used for hull, keel and ribs.
"Three fir masts, the dimensions are..." He read the numbers on the delivery note, "Measure them and prepare to receive them."
These large materials have gone through a series of preliminary treatments, and the next step is to be sent to the shipyard's special fumigation kiln for treatment. Hailin, who delivered the wood, was an expert in wood processing technology and went to the shipyard here every two days. Zhou Billy was already very familiar with him. He handed him a cigarette casually.
"The fir tree this time is really big!" he said casually.
"It's not big enough." Hailin took the cigarette and consciously put it in his ear. It's a rule that no cigarettes are allowed on the platform. Steam locomotives are fine, but gas locomotives are quite dangerous and explosive equipment.
"Of course, it would be nice to have solid materials. Now the hoopmast has become a complicated job."
"The biggest and best ones were all given to the Emperor," Hailin said, "either to build palaces or tombs, and the smaller ones were cut into sections to make coffins."
“It would be nice to have wood from Southeast Asia.”
"It depends on when the wise and mighty Governor will make this great decision." Hai Linyin said angrily, "Let's go and see where the mast is hoisted. I would like to see if these big and small How can the same wood be joined together?"
In the metalworking workshop with a long-span iron truss structure, steam filled the air, and the carbide lamps emitted a dazzling light. The loud noises of the two steam forging hammers were repeated one after another, the creaking of the overhead crane, the honk of hoisting and lowering, and the sound of the forgings being hammered by the forgings made the whole workshop lively.
In one corner of the workshop is the hoop mast work area. The round materials with joints opened according to the best strength combination according to the CAD software have been placed on the iron pulley and interlocked with each other to firmly fix it. In terms of interlocking technology, Wu Kuangming has done some traditional mortise and tenon technology. Ensure a tighter bite. According to the requirements in the technical data, workers have nailed iron fasteners into the occlusal frame to ensure the strength of the occlusal connection.
When Hailin and the others came to the workshop, workers were installing iron hoops on the composite mast under the command of Lu Youtian. Installing iron hoops can ensure the strength of the composite mast to the greatest extent. Even the entire straight mast needs to be equipped with iron hoops.
The parts where the iron hoops are to be added have been marked with ink pens, and there are different numbers on them - because the diameter of the mast is not exactly the same up and down, each iron hoop is customized according to the size of the part. The diameter is slightly smaller than the diameter of the mast to ensure that it can be tightly hooped once it is put on.
The iron hoops are being heated in the nearby heating furnace. The heating furnace uses gas as fuel, which not only has guaranteed calorific value, but is also clean to use. The iron hoop is heated to a red-hot level in the heating furnace so that it can be properly inserted into the mast.
6 One day, I stared at the industrial thermometer next to the heating furnace - ever since the invention of this thing, the original mysterious craftsmanship of craftsmen has become useless. In the past, he relied on looking at the color of the fire and the workpiece, the temperature of the skin and listening to the slight sound from the furnace to tell whether the appropriate temperature had been reached. This was his experience accumulated over the years. Even if he was willing to teach, the young apprentice would not be able to do it for a while. It was difficult to understand even after a while. Since Australians widely promoted this thick and ugly so-called thermometer, this secret that can only be understood but cannot be expressed has become worthless. The Australians have compiled special process manuals for each type of processed parts and processing techniques, and special processed parts will come with a process sheet. The workers only need to look up the process manual to know what temperature they should heat to, and then look at the thermometer's display to achieve a level of heat that is exactly the same as that of the old master.
This kind of thing made Lu Youtian collapse. However, he quickly adapted to this new technology - after all, it is more reliable to rely on unstandardized personal senses to learn this kind of thing. It is not easy for him to have problems when processing and manufacturing workpieces.
"Get item No. 1!" He shouted quickly when he saw that the temperature had risen to the specified value. His son, Liu Shooyong, is a first-level technician in the metalworking workshop. He quickly used long-handled iron pliers to take out the red-hot iron hoop from the furnace. Several other hand-held iron pliers helped, and slowly put the hot iron hoop on the mast. The iron hoop touched the surface of the mast. There were wisps of white smoke and a burning hissing sound. From time to time there were flames. When the iron hoop was finally in place and stuck, a small flame burst out from the surrounding area. Workers quickly put it out.
"This thing is so fucking exciting!" Hailin said with emotion, "Industry is about making the impossible possible!"
Then, the workers began to hoop the second and third hoops, and the entire mast hooping work would continue until early the next morning. The number of masts required in a shipbuilding plan is quite a lot!
"I heard that if you can build a ship, you still use ropes as anchor chains?" Hailin asked Zhou Bili, who was observing the processing, "Why don't you use iron chains?"
Zhou Billy said: "This is to save iron - and save production time. Making iron chains by hand is a very time-consuming thing. In fact, iron chains are much easier to use than anchor cables."
"Didn't the Navy retrieve the iron chains that locked the river from the Pearl River Estuary? Why not use the ready-made ones?"
"I've seen that thing before. The craftsmanship is too rough and the iron material is not good. It was probably made at short notice. It's very brittle. Ji Wusheng has probably turned it into molten iron by now."
"Iron is fine, but it's the copper covering the bottom of the ship. Wu De is probably scratching his head. Even though it's copper, it still has to cover the bottom of a big ship."
"A lot of bronze cannons were seized from Guangdong this time, and most of them were turned into copper sheets."
The process of covering the bottoms of all ships with copper sheets is not difficult in itself. What makes the Planning Institute troublesome is that copper, as a scarce metal in China, has a limited stock in the warehouse. So in order to meet the needs of the future electric power industry, the Planning Institute had to impose strict restrictions on the use of copper materials. Even the wired telegraph system used iron wire. Copper is only allowed to be used in places where it cannot be replaced: including some refrigeration equipment, pipelines, telecommunications and power equipment, and valves.
In order to expand copper reserves, the Planning Institute has purchased Japanese copper in Guangdong at high prices in the past. This kind of copper has brought them very high economic benefits - about 20% of silver can be extracted from it, but the increase in copper reserves is very limited.
Now the ship's bottom needs to be covered with copper. Whether the existing copper is enough and how much reserve can be left is what the Planning Institute is eager to know.
Most of the copper stored in the Planning Institute is red copper that has been refined using fire techniques, and there are also brass and bronze. The latter two mainly come from various loot. Copper has excellent elongation, second only to gold and silver among all metals. The Planning Institute believes that if the copper plate can be made very thin, a small amount of copper may be able to meet the demand.
"There is no need to use copper." Ji Wusheng said at the planning meeting, as long as brass is used. According to information provided by the Great Library, the copper plates covering the bottom of ships were generally tin brass. That is, adding a small amount of tin to brass.
Brass itself is an alloy of copper and zinc. Zinc was widely used in ancient China, especially in coining coins, where zinc was often used as a filler. Therefore, in the colored metal inventory of the Planning Institute, the stock of zinc is very considerable. Many are not even purchased specifically, but are by-products extracted from recycling copper coins and various household metal objects.
According to Ji Wusheng's suggestion, a kind of brass was specially made for the bottom of the boat. The proportion is roughly 65% copper and 35% zinc. The so-called a brass. This can minimize the consumption of copper while maintaining basic performance.
"If the zinc content in brass is too high, the brittleness will become high and it will become difficult to process with pressure. So 35% zinc is almost enough."
The ductility of brass itself is also quite good. The thickness of brass strip rolled by modern industry can reach o.o2mm. Lingao's industrial system does not have such powerful equipment, but people from the mechanical department estimate that with the existing processing capabilities, rolling to about 0.5mm will not be a problem. This is much thinner than the copper sheet used to cover the bottom of ships by the British. What the British used was basically thin copper plates.
"Add 0.5% tin to a brass, and it becomes tin brass. This alloy has good heat resistance and the ability to resist seawater corrosion. It is the so-called navy brass."
Tin was also the most commonly used base metal in ancient China, and the inventory in the Planning Institute was larger than that of zinc. Not to mention the dosage is insignificant.
The Planning Institute approved the production plan for the production of tin brass strips. There is a large-scale steel rolling mill in Lingao's steel complex, including two hot rolling mills, which can easily hot and cold roll various steel plates and strips. However, Zhan Wuya decided to imitate a special rolling mill for production - after all, continuous production in the steel manufacturing industry will be a trend in the future, and it is impossible to temporarily shut down and switch production just because copper strips need to be rolled today.
A rolling mill is simply a series of rolls with increasing pressure from small to large. The most critical of these is the strength and power level of the roll itself. These two are not difficult for the manufacturing director department, which has been able to mass-produce high-power steam engines and various grades of high, medium and low-carbon steel.
The only thing that is not ideal is the transmission gears and chains. The quality of these things is still not up to standard so far, and the working life is very short. In some equipment with harsh working environments, the replacement frequency is very fast, which can only barely solve the problem of yes and no. The scrap recycling warehouse of the Metallurgical Ministry is filled with gears, bearings and chains waiting to be recycled.
The rolling mill for producing copper plates was quickly manufactured with the cooperation of people from the Ministry of Machinery Industry. After a brief debugging, it was put into formal production. In order to ensure strength, although o. brass strips were rolled out in experimental production. The final decision was made to use thick strips of copper plate for the bottom of the ship.
Rolls of tin-brass strips were transported to the shipyard. They were cut to certain sizes, and then one piece at a time, workers used special brass rivets to hammer them into the bottom of the ship. The copper sheets were overlapped with each other. Make sure not to get out of the wooden bottom of the boat. The copper-clad area should always cover the full load waterline of the vessel. This method can almost completely prevent the damage of shipworms, and even attachments such as barnacles will be greatly reduced.
In order to prevent electrolysis of copper and iron in sea water, when the bottom of the ship is covered with copper, the iron frame part is protruded from the bottom of the ship. It must be covered with wooden cladding in advance, and then filled and isolated with human mao and tar hún compounds to ensure that there is no electrochemical reaction between the two. Even the rudder bolts had to be converted to brass bolts to avoid electrolysis.
A wooden sailboat with carefully treated shipbuilding timber and copper-clad bottom can last 50 to 70 years with good regular maintenance. There is no problem even for 1oo years. Although the elders do not want 854 to serve for so long, they expect it to last at least 10 years. Even if it cannot be used as a warship, it can still be used as a transport ship.
The Ministry of Machinery Industry on Steam Engines has sufficient technical reserves to mass-produce steam engines of 12 horsepower, 50 horsepower, 1oo horsepower, 2oo horsepower and 5oo horsepower. Zhan Wuya, in accordance with Wang Luobin's requirements for the construction of a standardized system, stipulates that steam engines adopt all standardized designs. . All parts that can be used universally are manufactured to uniform standards and sizes. And reduce the tolerance as much as possible-the latter is the goal that the entire Lingao industrial system is working tirelessly to achieve.
Because of the different layout and propulsion methods of the ship, marine steam engines are very different from ordinary steam engines used on ships. The Ministry of Machinery Industry also had to develop two different steam engines to adapt to the paddle wheels - the so-called paddle wheel propulsion and propeller propulsion.
"To be honest, operating a marine steam engine is not a problem." Xiao Gui studied the line diagram of the 854 modification, "The question is, what to do with the propeller?"
The advantage of the paddle wheel is that it has a simple structure and no sealing problems during installation. The 854 is going to use a propeller, which involves the issue of dynamic sealing of the propeller shaft.
"This problem is very difficult to solve, at least I can't think of how to solve it." Xiao Gui said, "There are several ways to dynamically seal. After much deliberation, I only have to use the packing method. Packing around the propeller shaft will not burn and will absorb water. Expanding filler."
"I remember that there is something special about the rotating shaft." Meng De suddenly remembered, "I heard from the old workers at the shipyard that older ships used iron pear wood bearings. This special wood bearing is extremely hard. It does not need oil for lubrication, but relies on water lubrication. The friction between the shaft and the shaft will produce a smooth water-soluble substance. It can not only lubricate the bearing but also ensure that water cannot enter the cabin through the shaft sleeve. I heard that iron pear wood bearings should be stored Keep it moist, otherwise it will dry out and crack and affect use. It’s very expensive.”
"Ironwood? This thing sounds familiar. It seems that we have it in our ship material reserves." Zhan Wuya thought about it. Among the ship materials collected from Baitu Village, there was so-called ironwood. I wonder if it is Same kind of thing.
