"Mom, have you seen my sworn elder brother and second brother in the past few days? On the way back today, I was still thinking about a rare day off, so I could have a good time with them in the evening~"
The shirtless Hou San lay half-lying on the head of his bed and asked lazily.
However, although his face looked a little tired, he looked much better.
This guy returned home in the middle of the morning, that is, around nine o'clock in the morning, and then had a good time with his wife.
By the time I was satisfied with my work, it was already two quarters past noon, which was 11:30 in the morning.
Of course, the above point is not important. The young couple had been separated for such a long time just a few days after getting married. It is quite understandable that they would be a little warm.
While facing the man's inquiry, his wife was busy sewing a piece of clothing.
To be more precise, at the request of the street office, some old clothes and trousers handed out were first changed into the style of the Song Dynasty Forbidden Army's jersey.
Then, on the shoulders, knees, elbows and other places that are prone to wear and tear, use some extra rags to reinforce them and put on some ugly patches.
After completion, hand it over to the street office again, and exchange it for some rice and noodles based on the number of pieces and handwork.
Eventually, these modified old clothes will be reissued to a group of new troops and used as training uniforms for daily training.
It was only after Hou San joined the army that he learned that the new army of the Song Dynasty lacked everything, but it didn't even have to issue uniforms, at least for the time being.
Because originally in Kaifeng City, the Song Dynasty court had a large amount of cloth and war robes in stock.
Either they were sent to the Jin's camp one by one as part of the compensation for the Jin's retreat; or they were burned by the Jin before they retreated, seeing that they couldn't take them away.
As a result, some time ago, Hou San and other new troops could only train wearing their own clothes.
Even the current training is just a simple queue, military postures, and training subjects such as wearing clothes and vigorously touching and rolling have not officially started.
However, many of the clothes worn by Hou San and other new soldiers were almost exposing their buttocks.
So in desperation, the Kaifeng Mansion could only use food from the private sector and buy some extra old clothes. After making some changes, the Kaifeng Mansion decided to deal with the current situation first.
As for the official jersey, it will have to wait for a while.
When can we get it specifically? It is said that we have to wait until the newly established Commercial Department of the Ministry of Household Affairs is responsible for the specific responsibility of the former oiran and the current Minister of Household Affairs.
When will we find a way to get a large enough amount of fabric?
However, under the circumstances, this situation can be regarded as the daughter-in-law of the three Hou families in the city. This kind of woman who cannot carry it on her shoulders or lift it with her hands has solved the problem of her source of survival.
As long as you work hard at sewing for a whole day, there is no problem in having a full stomach...
After hearing her man's question, the young lady immediately answered:
"Four or five days ago, my second brother came to our house and gave us a bag of millet. I saw it once. My second brother asked me to tell you that he is afraid that he has to live and eat in the workshop recently. He has to live in a workshop.
It will take some time to come back.
But as for the eldest brother, I have never seen him these days; I saw his sister-in-law Jin Lian yesterday, and she said that she was working for a noble person, and she had no worries about eating at home."
After hearing this, although I knew that today was a rare holiday, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get together with my two sworn brothers.
But after knowing that both of them had good jobs now, they put down all their worries.
After closing my eyes, I prepared to have a good sleep, wait until noon to have a meal of noodle soup made by my wife, and then have a good time.
The reason why Hou San was struggling so hard was not because he had already suffered some internal injuries after holding it in for half a month in the new barracks.
It was only after I came back that I learned from my wife that the primary school run by the imperial court had started teaching.
As long as the children are of appropriate age, they can go to school, but they will be divided into two different schools for men and women.
What's more important is that the primary schools run by the imperial court not only don't have to do school work, but also provide lunch at noon every day.
Just for this free lunch, almost all the people in the city sent their children to school.
On the one hand, after so many royal families, officials, and wealthy businessmen in the city were captured by the Jin people, in many people's homes, even the adults had no work to do, and the children staying at home was just a waste of food.
On the other hand, Kaifeng City is at the feet of the Emperor.
Who among the common people in Kaifeng City does not know the truth that "everything is of inferior quality, but education is of high quality". In the past, it was just a matter of family not being able to afford education, and not being able to afford education.
Nowadays, he even cares about a meal, so naturally he is willing to send his children to school.
So Hou San was also thinking about getting his wife pregnant with a child early so that he could continue the weak bloodline of their old Hou family.
It would be best if you succeed in your studies and be able to roll your name outside the Donghua Gate in the future to honor the old Hou family and honor their ancestors...
****
It was night, when the night had just darkened, Hou San had gone to bed early.
What he doesn't know is that his second brother Xie Ergou's day's work today, or the late shift, has just begun at this time.
The reason for this is because in the words of Grandpa Lang Qing, Minister of the Ministry of Industry.
The new army is in desperate need of food and is extremely short of equipment. In order to complete the comprehensive arming as soon as possible, the people in the workshop can stop, but the machines cannot.
The so-called machines are actually some water-powered forging hammers that are quite ordinary in the modern plane, and even look like antiques.
But for Xie Ergou, it was really a knife in the butt, and it was an eye-opener.
He had been learning blacksmithing from his master since he was thirteen years old, and for the first time he knew that there was such an ingenious method that could help people avoid the most tiring and proud task of swinging a sledgehammer.
I saw Grandpa Langqing building several artificial dams on the Xu River.
In this way, a water drop of about six feet was created between them.
In this way, when the water flows on the blades of the large waterwheel built along the river, pushing the waterwheel to rotate, it also drives a large hammer to automatically hit the iron felt through some bronze gears and levers. stand up.
It can be said that as long as the water in the river does not dry up, the hammer will continue to hammer forever, saving countless manpower.
Moreover, there is no need to say that the water-powered forging hammer is tiring; the strength of each hammer blow is no longer stronger than that of a strong man like Xie Ergou.
The effect of forging iron materials is naturally better than that of human power.
The only problem is that the number of dams that can be artificially built on a river is limited, and naturally the number of such hydraulic forging hammers is also limited.
Therefore, in order to make the most of this good treasure, blacksmiths like Xie Ergou worked in two shifts, day and night, and the two of them worked on the tools in succession.
Just like that, Xie Ergou, who still had eye drops in his eyes, replaced Old Man Sun who was on his shift.
I saw a fine iron ingot on the stove nearby, which had been heated by a coke oven with an automatic blast device and turned red. The temperature was definitely sufficient.
Holding a large tong with both hands, he picked up the ten-pound red iron ingot and placed it on the iron felt of the hydraulic forging hammer.
Suddenly, amid a rhythmic sound of striking, the originally long iron ingot began to deform.
At the same time, some red powder also continued to fall off during the beating process.
As a veteran who has been forging iron for nearly 20 years, Xie Ergou naturally knew that these were impurities in the iron, which were knocked out through repeated forging.
The cleaner these impurities are removed, the better the quality of the iron.
If it can be repeatedly forged hundreds of times, the final finished product will be the legendary hundred-smelted steel.
In the past, if I wanted to get a piece of 100-melted steel, I just wanted to forge it by hand. I don’t know how much time and effort it would take.
In front of my eyes, in less than two quarters of an hour, the hydraulic forging hammer was miraculously struck.
And the overall shape gradually formed a curved steel plate weighing about ten kilograms.
At this point, there were not many impurities knocked down by each hammer; Xie Ergou quickly took away the steel plate and put it aside.
Like a stream of water, another apprentice soon took over the subsequent work.
The apprentice took a small steel drill and struck it with a hammer, leaving a finger-sized hole in the four corners of the steel plate.
Then he took a steel seal and hammered it on the lower right corner of the armor. A wolf head mark was left on it.
After doing all this, he put it into a barrel of quenching oil on the side.
In the coming time, these iron plates will be transported to the next workshop. As long as they are equipped with some straps for fastening, some cushioning leather mats, and a piece of plate armor that can only protect the vital parts of the chest and abdomen.
appeared.
This thing, plus a helmet and an iron mask.
The above three-piece set is all the armor that Lang Qing and the others have prepared for the new army musketeers in the future.
As for the wolf head mark on the armor, it was just a trivial matter that Lang Qing made out of his personal bad taste and was not worth mentioning.
Although such a small workshop with only three hydraulic forging hammers is small, it is enough to produce more than a hundred breastplates in one day and one night.
In terms of work efficiency, compared with the original manual knocking, I don't know how much better it is.
So much so that Xie Ergou and other blacksmiths were kept clean every day.
But when Hu Biao saw such a statistic, he only had one comment: "No, it's too slow..."