Tin-Plated Iron Sheets

After Victor finished speaking, he glanced at Bob and saw that Bob was still a little dazed.

Victor sighed and simply explained to Bob how the Two Rivers Territory should use commerce and trade to control the lifeline of the Black Pine Territory, as well as the deeper theories.

"... That's roughly how it is. Once Black Pine Territory becomes our raw material supplier, Black Pine Territory will be inseparable from Two Rivers Territory. In addition, we also have the cooperation of the garrison and local forces."

Even if the Black Pine family wanted to voluntarily break away from our system, their subordinates and subjects would not agree, as it would completely contradict their interests.

After listening, Bob finally understood the Viscount's intention.

"My lord, you are wise!"

Victor wasn't worried about whether Bob could understand the matter. Bob was just inexperienced; he had risen from a craftsman to hold many important positions, and he was undeniably intelligent.

At the same time, he himself is also very good at thinking and has a very active mind. Under his leadership, the Arms Factory has made great contributions to the territory.

Even with Victor's knowledge from his previous life, achieving all of this ultimately relied on Bob's management and the efforts of many craftsmen.

Bob's individual technical skills are not top-notch, but he is good at managing and organizing teams and communicating with superiors and subordinates. He can now be considered an important member of the civil service in the territory.

Victor valued him highly, and since he was much younger than Powell and had a good learning ability, Victor was willing to explain things to him.

Victor had originally planned to make Powell the chief political officer after he got old, and making Bob the Town Mayor now is also a good opportunity for him to gain experience.

After all, I was managing businesses before, which is somewhat different from the Civil Administration system.

Seeing that it was getting late, Bob took his leave. Veronica and Octavia would be sharing a room tonight, so Victor would have to sleep alone.

Considering he would have a lot to do tomorrow, Victor made a quick note and then went to rest.

The next morning, Victor went directly to the Arms Factory and the Machine Factory. Even in the winter, both businesses were very busy, as they had received many orders in preparation for the Civil War.

The Machine Factory, in particular, recently produced a very good product. Victor had never seen the real thing before, so he took the opportunity to take a look.

Bob led everyone into the interior of a factory building, which was very stuffy and hot. Many workers were taking out the thin iron sheets that had just been pressed from the rolling mill.

After the workers measure the thickness of these thin iron plates with a micrometer, they also need to manually bend and test their hardness before discarding plates with rust spots or scratches.

The workers then soaked the iron plates in vinegar for a period of time, and then rinsed them repeatedly with clean water before drying them.

Another group of workers placed the dried iron plates into clay crucibles, covered them with molten tin, and manually flipped them to ensure single-sided tin plating.

However, Victor noticed that the tin plating on these handmade tinplates was very uneven.

However, the factory took these factors into account, so the next step was to hang the tin-plated iron plates to dry. The workers then used scrapers to remove any excess tin nodules, which was the final step.

Finally Bob led Victor and his group to a finished goods warehouse, where a lot of finished products were piled up, and the surface of the iron plates had a silver-gray luster.

Victor touched the thin iron plates with great satisfaction. In Victor's previous life, these iron plates had another name: tinplate.

After the first batch of earthenware cans with corks were made in the territory, Victor put tin cans on the agenda. He didn't expect that they would be produced by the Machine Factory so quickly, although the entire production line was still very rudimentary and most of the processes were done by hand.

"Bob, how's the production volume of this tinplate?"

"It's not too high. We can only produce a little over 1 ton per month, mainly because there are still problems with the production process."

In addition, there aren't many workers involved, and with only this many people, production capacity can't be increased.

The raw materials aren't a problem; we can purchase tin from other territories. The ratio of iron to tin is approximately 20:1, and we currently have enough tin for our needs.

Victor nodded. The Northlands would certainly not lack tin, after all, many large Barbarians tribes could smelt bronze, and there must be plenty of tin mines on the grasslands.

Victor picked up a piece of iron plate and started gesturing with it, then asked, "You're making tin cans? How much material is needed for one tin can?"

"We made a batch of prototypes. To make a rectangular can that can hold 500ml of water, we need 19 grams of tinplate."

We can produce 1.4 tons of tinplate each month, enough to make one can of food.

"Anyone? If all of them were made into canned meat, it would only be 35 tons. At 5 cans a day for each 1st Army, that would only be enough for the entire army's consumption for a week. That's really a bit too little."

Victor stroked his chin thoughtfully, "Forget it, let's just treat it as an occasional treat and something new. There's no need to popularize this canned food throughout the entire army right now."

Victor turned to Bob and said, "Take these tinplate sheets to the cannery and have them make a kind of canned food. If it's sealed properly, it should greatly extend the shelf life of food, much better than the old earthenware jars with wooden stoppers."

"Yes, sir, I'll arrange it right away. I doubt the cannery is very good at processing this kind of canned food. I'll send a group of tin-plating craftsmen over to instruct them."

"Yes, that's very thoughtful of you."

Next, you need to find ways to further improve production efficiency, ideally increasing output by 5 to 10 times. Figure out which processes can be automated instead of manual labor.

"Yes, sir. Actually, we already have a clue. The engineers in the factory are designing it, and we estimate that once the new machinery is put into use, the efficiency will at least double."