Zhao Hao had called Yang Fan over in a letter, asking him to see with his own eyes how backward the Ming Dynasty's shipbuilding technology had become.

It was not easy to get Yang Fan to admit this, after all, he was the supervisor of the Longjiang Factory, which produced Zheng He's treasure ship. Therefore, even though he knew it was a provocation, he still came.

Yesterday, when the castle-like, yet work-of-art Oriental Beauty entered the shipyard, he was stunned. As a shipbuilding expert, he could tell at a glance how difficult this ship was to build. When the Oriental Beauty was ready, he could not wait to visit it and studied it for a whole day.

Finally, Yang Fan had to admit that the Ming Dynasty's shipbuilding technology, which was once the most proud in the world, is now far behind that of Westerners. How embarrassed are the proud Ming Dynasty craftsmen?

So when he saw Zhao Hao, his former arrogance that was unique to technical talents was gone, and he looked listless. It seemed that he still couldn't accept the fact that the Ming Dynasty's shipbuilding technology was no longer the best in the world.

There is no way. We have been the Celestial Empire for too long and we want to be the best in everything. We feel uncomfortable if we are second.

"This is called sailing against the current. If you don't move forward, you will fall behind. We have stopped moving forward for 150 years. It is normal for others to catch up and surpass us." Zhao Hao patted Yang Fan on the shoulder. This is exactly what he wanted. "This is a good thing. If you don't recognize the gap, how can you catch up?"

"Yes." Yang Fan nodded heavily.

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

~~

The shipyard covers an area of ​​more than 600 acres and is a first-level security unit of the group. An entire security brigade is responsible for its security work.

After the Tamra Garrison was separated from the Gangnam Security Company, Zhao Hao reorganized the security company according to the principle of "focusing on the outside and ignoring the inside", changing the original vertical management model to a flat management model. There is no special captain, and the corresponding security team is dispatched to a specific company factory area according to the needs of the group.

The first-level security unit dispatches a 500-person security brigade; the second-level security unit dispatches a 100-person security squadron; the third-level security unit dispatches a 20-person security squad. The security teams are not subordinate to each other, and the company is directly responsible for daily training and logistical support.

This would obviously weaken the security team's combat effectiveness and turn them into real security guards, but Mr. Zhao had to use this method to make it clear to the group that he had no intention of being disloyal, so as to prevent them from having any inappropriate thoughts in the future.

The entire factory area is very spacious, and the quantitative management that Mr. Zhao has always advocated is implemented in the factory, and everything seems to be in good order.

The first place they entered was a huge lumberyard. In the era of wooden sailing ships, wood naturally played the leading role.

The lumberyard has a separate dock. Next to the pier, a fleet of logs is unloading. Popeye cranes lift the slightly trimmed logs ashore and load them onto flatbed oxcarts.

There are also rails on the ground, and the wheels slide on the tracks, allowing a cow to easily pull a whole cart of logs and send them to a lumberyard not far away.

This section of the railway is exactly one kilometer long and is made of wrought iron. This is the kind of railway that Mr. Zhao promised to build for Lao Xier. But firstly, Lao Xier had offended him, and secondly, Wuhu didn't have that much production capacity, so Lao Xier could only wait.

Zhao Hao took a ride on the "ox-drawn train" with great interest and entered the lumberyard, where he saw all kinds of wood neatly stacked. There were fir, elm, camphor, locust, cypress... a dozen kinds of wood in total, filling up most of the lumberyard.

"There must be tens of thousands of them, right?" Zhao Hao climbed up to the observation deck and looked down at the entire lumberyard.

"Total of all kinds of wood are about 23,000 pieces." Ma Hu replied quickly.

"How many?"

"Eighteen kinds." Ma Hu explained: "The masts of the thousand-ton sea-going ships are made of straight fir wood, and the beams and masts are made of camphor wood and locust wood. Shallow boards are made of any wood; the rudder is made of elm and tung wood; the door-closing stick is made of cypress wood and locust wood; the oars are made of fir wood and cypress wood..."

"With so many different kinds of wood, won't it affect the performance of the boat over time?" Zhao Hao asked curiously.

"It will have an impact. If we can use only two or three kinds of wood, that would be great." Ma Hu said with a wry smile, "But there is nothing we can do about it. There is very little wood produced in Jiangnan. The wood we use to build our ships is purchased from Huguang, Sichuan, and even Yunnan, Guizhou, and Fujian. The cost is incredibly high. We can only use what we have and cannot be picky."

"Don't worry, this problem will be solved next year." Zhao Hao said with a smile. According to the Oita Treaty, the Japanese old man has organized people to cut down trees to pay off the debt.

"That's great!" Ma Hu smiled from ear to ear. Since last year, Jiangnan Group has been buying a lot of wood for shipbuilding, which has directly led to a surge in wood prices and a sharp drop in shipbuilding profits. He didn't dare to raise the price with the boss Chen who bought his boat, which put him under great pressure.

"If there's anything you need, just tell me and I'll solve it for you." Zhao Hao asked as he walked down from the observation deck.

"Then there is a shortage of iron." Ma Hu added, "A 1,000-ton seagoing ship needs three anchors, plus nails and shackles of various sizes, a total of 5,000 kilograms of wrought iron. But Wuhu can only deliver 20,000 kilograms a month, so the ship has to wait for the anchor to be launched after it is built."

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

"I'll solve it for you next year." Zhao Hao promised, but he didn't have the confidence he had before. Because not only the shipyard was short of iron, but also all the companies in the group and even Jeonra Island were short of iron!

In fact, the steel mills in Wuhu have already fully opened their ironmaking furnaces. But I didn't expect that the Jiangnan Group would be even more useless than Hu Zongxian's anti-Japanese war. Wang Yu supplied 70% of his steel to the Jiangnan Group, but it was still not enough...

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

~~

Leaving the lumberyard, everyone came to the drying kiln surrounded by high firewalls. The wood from the lumberyard was sawn into individual pieces and then transported here for drying.

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

The entire drying kiln consists of two major parts: the boiler room and the drying kiln. The huge manual bellows continuously delivers 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 racks, and after preheating, drying, and intermediate treatment, it can usually be taken out of the kiln in about a month. In fact, the commercial mass-produced wood in later generations is also dried quickly in this way. As long as the temperature and humidity are controlled properly, the effect will not be much worse than the traditional shade drying for many years.

The kiln was hot and stuffy. An old carpenter in singlet clothes and his apprentice were taking care of it. Their job was mainly to control the humidity in the kiln. When the moisture baked out made the kiln humid to a certain degree, they would open a window for ventilation.

This is a job that requires experience. Currently, there are no more than ten people in the whole Jiangnan area who can master this humidity. Of course, this is mainly because most carpenters don't spend a lot of money to bake wood to speed up drying.

Ma Hu told Zhao Hao that the biggest problem with the drying kiln at present was its limited capacity. The drying capacity was less than one-fifth of the wood required by the shipyard, and it could only provide drying for key parts of the ship. In order to save time, the boards for minor parts such as decks and cabins were baked on the fire and used directly...

"Then continue to expand the drying kiln!" Upon hearing this, Master Zhao waved his hand and said proudly, "Wouldn't it be enough to build five more of these?"

After a pause, he continued, "Five are not enough. Let's make ten at once first! If you don't have enough money, please report it and I will ask President Jiang to approve it for you!"

"Yeah." Ma Hu nodded quickly and wiped the sweat off his face.

Yang Fan and the others were sweating, one because of the heat, the other because of fear. How much money would it cost? Did Mr. Zhao dig up a mountain of silver overseas?

~~

After leaving the yard of the drying kiln, the outside world suddenly opens up. On both sides of a wide and straight cement road are woodworking workshops, iron workshops, oyster shell workshops, tent workshops, rope workshops, cable workshops, paint workshops... The tall factory buildings made of bamboo-reinforced concrete are strong enough to withstand the strongest typhoon.

The workshop is in good order inside and out, which shows that the management is very strict.

Zhao Hao praised Ma Hu a few words, saying that he did a good job and deserved a credit. This made Brother Hu very happy.

He did a good job indeed. In just over a year, he transformed the Sand Shipyard, which could only produce 400-ton sand ships, into the Jiangnan Shipyard, which could produce 1,000-ton large Fu ships. He also had to combine the original shipyard's workers and the two groups of craftsmen hired from Jinling and make them obey the rules and management. The hard work involved can be imagined.

Then everyone put on masks and entered the woodworking workshop. Sawdust was flying everywhere, and carpenters and their helpers were processing wood.

In this era, whether in the East or the West, ship design was mostly done by shipbuilders based on their own experience and on-site lofting of the construction methods passed down from generation to generation. There were no precise data and drawings, but the ships built were basically exactly the same. The trick was to use molds to standardize production.

For example, the Jiangnan factory currently focuses on manufacturing 1,000-ton seagoing ships. Experienced shipbuilding masters will first use pine and other lightweight boards to build a prototype ship, then dismantle it, number each component, and use it as a mold for formal production.

The workshop director divided the carpenters into several groups, and each group only needed to be responsible for the duplication and production of a part of the molds. This greatly simplified the carpenters' work and made production skilled and efficient.

Moreover, the molds have accurate specifications, so it is easy to check whether the processed wood is qualified. With strict quantitative management, the scrap rate can be controlled below 1%. At the same time, the scrap rate of European shipyards was more than 10%!

ps. Today is my eldest son’s birthday, I will try to write another chapter…