Chongzhen's domineering

Chapter 122 Pirates and Treacherous Officials Collude (Part 11)

Zhu Jue personally persuaded the Spanish envoy and then carefully instructed Zheng Zhilong, so the deal was almost certainly going to be finalized.

The problem is that these items are still nowhere to be found. Putting aside glass, mirrors, medicinal herbs, and steel ingots, there's not even a trace of silk, cloth, tea, or porcelain.

He made a boastful promise that he would produce tens of millions of bolts or even tens of millions of kilograms of silk and tea. If he can't produce even a million or a few million bolts, he'll be a disgrace overseas.

Will Xiong Wencan be able to help him secure the silk and tea?

This guy didn't keep him waiting long.

Not long after the Spanish envoy left the capital, Xiong Wencan began to send the seized raw silk and tea to the capital.

However, each time they seized raw silk and tea, they only got a few hundred dan (a unit of weight), which was only tens of thousands of jin (a unit of weight), which was far from enough.

Leaving aside tea, it's far from enough to reach tens of millions of kilograms, and the raw silk is only enough for them to test the large spinning machines and new looms.

Around 9 a.m. that day, Zhu Jue had just finished reviewing the memorials when he led Zheng Zhilong, Wang Chengen, Fang Zhenghua and others straight to the Dongcheng Machinery Factory.

Zheng Zhilong has become his follower now. This guy is still young, and he's determined to train him well. In the future, they might not only do foreign trade, but also seize colonies abroad. This guy is a rare talent in this field.

When they arrived at the machinery factory, Song Yingxing, Song Yingsheng, Tian Hongyu, Yuan You, and others had already received the imperial order and rushed to the workshop where large spinning machines and looms were being tested.

This machinery factory is different from a machine factory. A machine factory researches and develops machine tools, while a machinery factory specializes in making various kinds of civilian machinery.

However, the factory buildings of the machine shop and the machinery factory are about the same size, and can each accommodate more than twenty machines.

At this moment, the huge factory building only had a few machine tools, a large spinning machine, and a weaving machine.

The large spinning machines have been converted to be powered by steam engines, and they have already been loaded with raw silk and started spinning. The various rollers and wheels on them don't seem to be spinning very fast, but the speed is much faster than hand spinning.

This is because hand spinning involves drawing the yarn, twisting the strands, turning the yarn, and winding it around the spindle at the same time, which is too much for both hands to handle, so the speed is not fast at all.

This large spinning machine uses various rollers and turntables to replace actions such as drawing, twisting, turning, and winding the yarn, just like a person with many hands, so the speed is naturally faster.

Furthermore, machine-twisted yarn is much more uniform in thickness than hand-twisted yarn, basically maintaining the same thickness from beginning to end, and its quality is definitely better than that of hand-spun yarn.

The biggest problem with this large spinning machine is the yarn reeling, because the yarn reeling is still manual. Someone has to constantly pick up the yarn ends and feed them onto the reeling wheel. This large spinning machine simply does not have an automatic yarn reeling function.

Zhu Jue took a closer look and understood. No wonder cotton and wool shorter than a foot could not be spun on this large spinning machine. It was because the silk or fluff shorter than a foot was pulled away by the spinning wheel in the blink of an eye, and manual spinning simply could not keep up.

This problem is not difficult to solve.

In fact, the yarn or fluff of spinning does not necessarily have to be picked up one by one by holding the end. Short fibers such as cotton and wool can be brushed into strands using a brush roller similar to a wire brush.

After watching for a while, he raised his hand and beckoned Song Yingxing over, gesturing and saying, "Chang Geng, actually, the drawing and twisting of the silk can be replaced by two brush rollers studded with steel nails."

The front brush roller continuously brushes the cotton and wool in the feed trough, and the spaces between these rings of steel nails will accumulate fluff, thus separating the cotton and wool into strands. The size and thickness of these strands can be adjusted by the gap between the rear brush roller and the front brush roller.

The steel nails on the front and rear brush rollers crisscross, brushing away excess fibers so they fall back into the feed trough. Meanwhile, strands of fibers are transferred from above the rear brush roller to the yarn turning stage. Do you understand?

Upon hearing this, Song Yingxing's eyes lit up and he said, "Your Majesty, wouldn't this allow us to split the yarn into eighteen, twenty, or even thirty strands at once? Moreover, the drawing of the yarn will no longer be done manually, and the brush rollers can rotate at a faster speed, making the yarn output speed more than twice as fast."

Hmm, it seems you understood.

Later spinning machines spun incredibly fast, unlike this large spinning machine which seemed to move in slow motion.

Zhu Jue nodded slightly and said, "Yes, just nail in as many steel nails as you need to divide it into sections."

Wow, this is good stuff.

Song Yingxing looked rather impatient; if the Emperor hadn't been there, he probably would have run away long ago.

Zhu Jue, however, remained calm and focused his attention on the new loom.

This loom was not steam-powered, but manually operated.

He looked at it for a while, then asked, "Chang Geng, this loom isn't difficult to make, is it?"

Of course, this thing doesn't require you to do anything yourself.

Song Yingxing nodded repeatedly and said, "Yes, Your Majesty, these looms are basically made of wood, and it's incredibly fast to process the parts with machine tools. Especially after Liangfu developed the saw, we can process a whole bunch of these supports and such in a day. Now, the only time it takes to assemble the looms is when we build them. However, as long as we have more skilled craftsmen to assemble them, it's not a problem for one factory to produce dozens of looms a day."

The problem is that this loom is too inefficient, and hand weaving is too slow.

Seeing that a new batch of spindles had been brought in, Zhu Jue asked, "Are there enough spindles now? Can we start weaving?"

Song Yingxing glanced at the area where the yarn spindles were placed, then nodded repeatedly and said, "That's enough, that's enough, we can start weaving now."

After saying this, he instructed Yuan You, the father-in-law of the emperor, to summon a middle-aged woman and order her to quickly prepare to weave cloth.

The preparation for weaving is quite troublesome. Dozens of spindles need to be inserted in front of the loom, and the yarn from each spindle must be threaded through the loom from head to tail.

The middle-aged woman was quite efficient, but it still took her more than fifteen minutes to prepare before she sat down and started weaving on the loom.

Zhu Jue looked at it carefully for a while, and suddenly thought of something.

The weaving process involves stepping on the loom to make two rows of densely packed warp threads intersect, then shuttle through to let the weft threads pass through, then use a comb to tighten the weft threads, then turn the small round rod at the back to roll up the woven cloth tightly, and then repeat the process.

There's no way to operate a loom, such as stepping on it, moving it back and forth, or pressing it tightly; we can only use a steam engine to replace it. However, there is a way to roll the cloth tightly.

He thought for a moment, then beckoned Song Yingsheng over and asked, "Yuan Jiu, has the spring steel been forged yet?"

Song Yingsheng nodded repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty, spring steel has long been produced. The shrapnel in flintlock muskets is made of spring steel, and Marquis Meng said it works very well."

Zhu Jue then asked, "Can spring steel be made into sheets as thin as paper?"

Uh, this.

Song Yingsheng thought for a moment, then said cautiously, “Your Majesty, are you talking about foil? Gold foil, silver foil, and copper foil are all easy to make because gold, silver, and copper are inherently soft. But spring steel probably can’t be made into foil. It’s too hard. Not only can it not be struck, but it might even crack if you keep striking it.”

Who told you to knock it?
Zhu Jue shook his head slightly, then gestured and said, "You can make two steel rollers that rotate in opposite directions, then heat the spring steel until it's red-hot and soften it, then press it between the two steel rollers and twist the spring steel into a thin sheet."

Is it ground out like this?

Song Yingsheng nodded slowly and said, "Your Majesty, some people do use this method to grind dough when making noodles. However, that's dough, which is very soft. If spring steel is heated to that softness, the temperature is already very high. The steel roller would probably turn red and soft after grinding for a while, and it would be impossible to grind it at all."

That's a small problem.

Without hesitation, Zhu Jue said, "You can drill a hole in the middle of the steel roller, connect pipes to both ends, and continuously pour water into the hole. It doesn't matter if the pipes are small or leak. Just cool it down like you would when drilling a hole."

"The thin sheet I'm referring to isn't wide either, about the width of a finger would be fine. To roll such a narrow sheet, just make the rollers larger, and with water cooling, there shouldn't be any problems."

Oh, and it can also be cooled with water.

Song Yingsheng nodded repeatedly and said, "If the spring sheet is this small, there shouldn't be a big problem. Your humble servant will have someone make a steel roller to test it."

Zhu Jue nodded slightly, then gestured to Song Yingxing and said, "Chang Geng, let's make a device called a clockwork. This clockwork is made by inserting a coiled spring steel sheet into a round iron box, and attaching a gear to the outside so that the spring sheet can rotate with the gear."

Next to the gear driven by the spring plate, install another gear with a handle. Then connect the gear of the spring plate directly to the wooden rod that tightens the cloth. As long as the gear with the handle is turned to its limit in the opposite direction before weaving, and the cloth is hung on it, the wooden rod will be automatically tightened by the spring plate.

This way, they could skip the step of winding the cloth while weaving. I think that winding the cloth wastes at least 20-30% of their time. If the loom could be wound up, weaving a bolt of cloth should be reduced from about four days to about three days.”

What a good thing!

Upon hearing this, Song Yingxing's eyes lit up again as he said, "Your Majesty, I understand."

As they were discussing, Fang Zhenghua suddenly rushed over with a memorial in his hand, bowed and said, "Your Majesty, General Yu Zigao, Commander-in-Chief of the Zhejiang and Fujian Naval Forces, has sent an urgent report from eight hundred li away."

What's with this guy playing? Does he want a beating?
Zhu Jue took the memorial, glanced at it, and couldn't help but sneer.

Yu Zigao actually turned around and accused Zheng Zhilong of being incorrigible and ordering his men to plunder merchant ships and fishing boats indiscriminately in the southeastern sea area. This fellow even used this as a pretext to request an imperial decree to gather a large army to wipe out these pirates under Zheng Zhilong's command!

It seems that the wealthy merchants and powerful families of Zhejiang are getting restless. These guys not only want to use the power of the imperial court to eliminate Zheng Zhilong, but also want Yu Zigao to use the pretext of eliminating pirates to smuggle their own agendas!

Alright, send me some more of your personal goods. I'm really short of them right now.

He thought about it carefully, and then decisively said, "Ruoyu, draft an edict and order Yu Zigao to investigate carefully before making a conclusion. Why mobilize a large army without any evidence?"

(End of this chapter)