The Rise of the European Emperor

phone-reading

"What? You mean zinc bars?" Marin was startled, then overjoyed. With zinc ingots, many of his ideas can be put into practice. For example, make tinplate and wrap the bottom of the boat with tinplate to prevent the gnawing of ship maggots.

You know, many wooden boats have accidents because the bottom of the boat has been gnawed by boat maggots, or is about to break. If it is smashed by enemy artillery shells, or hit by wind and waves, the ship will leak. The Spanish Armada was destroyed only by the combined attack of ship maggots, sea wind and waves and the British cannons. Not many were actually sunk by British artillery alone.

After listening to the report from the guard, Marin couldn't sit still, and couldn't sleep. At dawn the next day, Marin went to Port Emden with dark circles under his eyes.

Then, Marin saw the zinc ingots brought back from Newfoundland...

There were not many zinc ingots brought back this time. A pile of zinc ingots weighed only about 1 ton. This is so because the ore from the Bakens lead-zinc mine is too difficult to get out.

This 1 ton of zinc ingots was carried by Marin's subordinates using a team of mules from the Bakens Mountains over the mountains to the seaside Corner Brook Port. A total of about 17 tons of ore (ore containing about 6% zinc). There, there was a blast furnace, and coal for smelting brought from Cape Breton Island…

In fact, Marin's team of mules alone could not transport 17 tons of ore. It was the chief of Cornerbrook who used a large amount of Cape Breton Island's salt and other commodities popular with the Beotuks in the interior of Newfoundland, in exchange for the locals to use their domesticated reindeer to help carry them together.

The Beotuk people of inland Newfoundland mainly live by herding reindeer on the inland plateau. The inland is not like the coast. The fishermen along the coast can add a lot of salt by cooking sea fish. After all, it is a saltwater fish, which itself contains salt.

And the inland Beotuk people do not rely on the sea, they are very salt-deficient. Sometimes, in order to replenish the salt, they have to learn from the reindeer and lick some salt from the rock wall. Or, kill reindeer and drink reindeer blood for salt. However, these two methods are a drop in the bucket and cannot add too much salt.

And Marin just relocated the cooking salt base to Cape Breton Island, where the production of salt is huge. So give those Beotuks a little salt, no pressure. It's like a big farmer giving someone a bag of rice, is there any pressure? No!

But to those Beotuks in the interior, that was a great gift. In order to repay their favor, these simple inland Beotuk people not only helped with mining, but also picked out some strong and good-tempered reindeer to help carry lead and zinc ore.

Although the reindeer can't keep up with the mules, there is no problem walking the mountain trails. After all, this is their home ground. Even if the load strength is not as good as that of a mule, the local people have many reindeer, and the number of reindeer has increased, and there are also many people on the load. In the end, the first smelter at Corner Brook received 17 tons of ore.

Following Marin's suggestion, the craftsmen made small changes to the top of the blast furnace - a copper tube was used for the upper flue gas outlet, bent to the side. However, a cold water tank is attached to the copper pipe to cool the copper pipe.

Originally, without this copper tube, the zinc would have turned into steam and escaped directly from the top of the blast furnace. But with this copper pipe that is cooled by a cold water tank, the zinc vapor is directly cooled down, first turned into zinc liquid, condensed and sank to the bottom, and then slides down the copper pipe...

Of course, there are also a lot of zinc liquid that condenses directly on the copper pipe into a solid, but most of them still flow out...

Afterwards, scrape the white zinc layer attached to the inner wall of the crude copper tube with a scraper to obtain crude zinc. Next, a furnace with a temperature of only a few hundred degrees was used to re-melt the crude zinc, and after stirring and separation, the impurities were removed, and zinc ingots with less impurities were extracted...

Of course, in Marin's eyes, 1 ton of zinc ingots is not much! Because zinc has so many uses...

So, Marin decided - to buy another 100 mules,

Transport of ore for the Bakens lead-zinc mine on Newfoundland. Before, Marin only sent 10 mules, which is really not enough...

However, with this ton of zinc ingots, Marin can start making tin...

So, Marin ordered the steel factory to start manufacturing a large number of thin iron sheets and cut them into half a square meter...

The reason why only half a square meter is made is because there are too few zinc ingots...

Marin ordered the construction of a flat-bottomed furnace, in which the zinc ingots were melted into liquid zinc. Then, cut out the ordinary iron sheet, and after pre-drilling the nail holes, put it into the zinc solution to soak for a while, and then take it out... In this way, a galvanized white iron sheet is successfully made...

The reason why the nail holes are made in advance is to prevent the nails from destroying the galvanized coating when nailing towards the bottom of the boat. In this case, the tinplate is more likely to be corroded by seawater. If the nail holes are nailed in advance, even if the nails are nailed, the galvanized layer will not be damaged. In this way, galvanized tinplate is less susceptible to corrosion by seawater...

Although, the corrosion resistance of tinplate is much worse than that of copper. However, at least it can last a year or two. As long as you don't rub against the reef yourself and damage the galvanized layer, the tinplate can still be used for a long time. After it is corroded and damaged, it is a big deal to replace a tin plate. Anyway, the cost of tinplate is much lower than that of copper...

Then, after making another batch of tinplate, Marin ordered - to the bottom of a battleship, start nailing tinplate. After nailing, the test results when going to sea...

Anyway, when Aben's fleet of exploration in Panama returns, Amerigo will be able to bring a few ships with tin sheets on the bottom, along the land line of the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the west coast of the South Pacific, and rush to Panama City first. , and then start the route to the Eastern Daming...

And by that time, Cornerbrook could almost produce ten or twenty tons of zinc ingots and send them back. That way, you can get a lot of tinplate for nailing down the waterline of a boat that needs to go out to sea.

Of course, you have to keep a spare batch of tinplate in case you need to replace it. After all, no one can guarantee that a ship will bump into each other during the voyage. If it hits the reef hard, it will definitely be finished, but if it hits and scratches the galvanized layer of some white iron sheets, the best way to deal with it is to use spare white iron sheets to rub the damaged white iron. The tin is replaced.

Anyway, the part below the waterline of the hull was nailed with pieces of white iron. To replace the tin, simply drive the boat to a suitable tidal zone. When the tide is low, the ship is temporarily stranded, and the craftsmen go down to change the tin. When the tide is high, the boat continues to sail...

Looking at the shiny white tin, the craftsmen exclaimed in admiration:

"It looks like silver!" However, they all know that it is the effect of a fusible metal ingot plated on the outside of ordinary iron, not made of real silver.

But what surprised those craftsmen was that they didn't seem to have heard of this metal. From the point of view of properties such as melting point, it was somewhat like tin, but more shiny than tin. The silver-white tinplate can even be used as a mirror. Before the glass mirror was invented by the Venetians, the tinplate seemed to be comparable to the bronze mirror... It is also with reference to this property that Marin asked people to use the tinplate to make a few solar cookers using the reflective properties of the tinplate instead of the tinplate. Expensive copper-clad solar cookers...

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