The female doctor farmed the land, bought a husband and set up a separate household

Chapter 124 Iron Boat

Looking at the more than 100 people who were full of energy, Jiang Sining asked, "What's wrong with these people?"

"These..." Dong Ling hesitated for a moment, and finally said, "Madam, it's like this, these people are just part of the refugees. Because everyone has nothing to do now, I'm worried that they will become bandits, so I organized everyone to help herd cattle. But there are only ten cows at home, so most of the time they are idle, so I trained them a little bit."

Jiang Sining's face is almost rotten. You really can't sit still, can you?

Why don't you send some refugees who have nothing to eat or drink to work in the village and train them?

Do you really want to rebel?

However, with more than a hundred people, it seems that they cannot cause any rebellion. It is probably Si Chenan's instruction.

It seems that guy still has the will to rebel.

Now that everyone is here, and she just needs some strong people to do the ironworking, she might as well use them.

It is much better to be a blacksmith than to rebel.

So she didn't bother with Dong Ling about it, found a place to put the bricks and cement, and then let Dong Ling take these people to start building the house.

The rest picked up hoes and pickaxes and began digging ditches and reservoirs along the mountainside, while some made water wheels.

After more than half a month of hard work, more than ten small houses were built, water from the mountains was brought in through reservoirs, and three large water wheels were installed next to the three spacious houses.

The reservoir is not specifically used to store water, but for overflow. Excess water flowing from the ditch can flow away through the edge of the pool. In this way, the amount of water flowing into the waterwheel ditch can always be maintained at a constant amount, and the rotation speed of the waterwheel can also be relatively stable.

Another function is to be used for experiments.

However, in order to turn the rotation of the waterwheel into a hammering action, some mechanical devices are needed. Jiang Sining has never learned this, so he can only use his common sense. After several tests, he barely made a usable model.

Now you can start forging steel.

She piled the collected scrap iron in a small hut and asked Dong Ling to guard it strictly. Then she set up six coal furnaces, used a blower driven by a water wheel to melt the steel, and then sent it to the forging machine for forging.

With the automatic device, the efficiency of blacksmithing has increased by more than ten times. At the end of the day, at least tons of scrap iron are forged into steel with good hardness and toughness.

Dong Ling and Si Chenan knew about weapons. They knew at a glance that although these steels were not refined steels, they were definitely excellent materials for making weapons.

Moreover, at the current forging speed, Si Chenan is confident that he can forge hundreds of swords in a day.

So he tried to ask, "Madam, are we going to forge the broadsword next?"

"Why make a knife?" Jiang Sining said unhappily, "I plan to use this steel to make cars and boats."

"car?"

"Boat?"

Si Chenan and Dong Ling looked at each other.

They can understand using it to build chariots, but for ships... Wouldn't something as heavy as steel sink in water?

Jiang Sining knew that without welding technology, it was unrealistic to build a large ship, but making a small ship would be useless too, so he had to find another way and prepare to produce thin steel plates.

This is another big job.

First of all, you need a huge furnace, and also a roller press, which requires high-precision bearings. Bearings require high-hardness steel, lathes, tools, and tools that can accurately measure... In short, everything has to start from scratch.

Fortunately, she has plenty of time and enough workers.

She directly assigned half of the people to be responsible for making calipers, small steel balls, and high-strength steel every day.

After more than a month of trial and error, the first crude lathe driven by cement finally took shape. The workers were also able to use the various hand tools she invented, such as files and scrapers, skillfully.

She worked on the lathe for three or four days and finally made the first inner and outer ring of the bearing.

After installing the steel balls ground by hand by the workers and the support frame, the world's first bearing was finally born.

Looking at the strange thing in her hand, Si Chenan and Dong Ling were puzzled.

"Ma'am, what is this for?"

"This has many uses," Jiang Sining said, "You will slowly understand it in the future."

The first batch of bearings were used in the upgrade of lathes. The upgraded lathes had higher precision, which enabled us to manufacture lathes with higher precision and bearings with higher precision...

After going through five virtuous cycles like this, Jiang Sining has modified the lathe to be more precise.

With this thing, we can mass-produce bearings and start making roller presses.

While waiting for the roller press, she found a small cart, had two bearings installed in the wheels, and then placed it in front of Si Chenan.

"Try it."

Si Chenan nodded, lifted the handle of the cart, and pushed it lightly. It was several times easier than before!

This made him marvel in his heart. It turned out that the round thing that his wife spent more than a month making had a real use for this.

If a wheelbarrow can carry it so easily, then an ox cart or a horse carriage can certainly do it too. He estimated that a carriage of the same size could carry at least twice as much stuff!

Don't underestimate this, it is a huge advantage when transporting food and supplies.

But what surprised him was yet to come.

A few days later, the roller press was completed, and the huge furnace began to melt the steel. The red-hot molten iron flowed down and passed through the roller press, and it turned into a very thin steel plate with very uniform thickness!

And by adjusting the roller press, the steel plate can be made thin or thick.

The thinnest one is almost as thick as cloth!

And it is forged steel, so the steel plate is not only light and thin, but also very hard, and can be bent at will!

Si Chenan was born in a general's mansion. He knew that if he wanted to make a set of armor, he would need at least several skilled blacksmiths and it would take more than half a month.

But with this thin steel plate, one person can make a suit of armor in a day!

Si Chenan didn't dare ask Jiang Sining whether these steel plates were used to make armor, because this was a taboo and this thing was more strictly controlled than any other weapon.

If you hide a sword at home, if you are found, at most it will be confiscated and you will be beaten with a few sticks. If you hide a set of armor, even the king of heaven will come to punish you severely, and the lightest punishment is exile thousands of miles away.

But he also had a secret expectation, because if he had thousands of sets of armor, he wouldn't even need a warhorse, and he would have the confidence to reach the capital directly!

"Madam, it's better to hide these steel plates."

"Why hide it?" Jiang Sining asked, "It's made to be used."

"But... the timing is not right yet. If someone finds out..."

"What are you thinking about?" Jiang Sining said, "I made this to build a ship."

Everyone looked at each other in bewilderment. Are they really going to build a ship?

"But what's the point of building a ship here?"

"For Xia Shan."

More than a month ago, Jiang Sining told Xia Shan to buy the biggest ship possible.

Xia Shan did not disappoint her high expectations and bought a large fishing boat that was more than ten meters long. This was the largest boat in the local area, and now the boat was in the space.

Jiang Sining came to the huge reservoir and put the fishing boat in.

Si Chenan and the workers were all born in the mainland and had never seen such a large ship, so they couldn't help but marvel at it.

"Now, take your tools and stick the thinnest steel plates on the hull," Jiang Sining instructed, "and fill the gaps in the steel plates with rubber."

This job was relatively simple and was completed in a few days.

Looking at this new ship covered with steel plates, Jiang Sining wanted to go to Xiashan.

She really wanted to know if such a small boat could cross the ocean to Australia, or even go around the Cape of Good Hope to Africa and America.

It's not very realistic now, but she will definitely go in the future.

Jiang Sining gave the boat to Xia Shan and asked him to drive the new boat to explore more islands in the South China Sea.

These places are still deserted islands with countless resources waiting to be mined, but Xia Shan does not have enough manpower.

So Jiang Sining came up with a bold idea. Now there was famine all over Daxia and the people were living in misery. Why not send some brave villagers over there?

In this way, with people from Daxia gathering there, they can better explore resources, and when they want to invade Australia in the future, they will have a reliable logistics base and port.

So she returned to the village and found Aunt Zhang and her family.

"Aunt Zhang, do you want to go to a new place?"

"where to?"

"Nanyang."