Chapter 8: The Plate Glass Factory

The day-and-night-long five-year plan meeting finally came to a close amidst Ma Qianzhu’s constant reminders to “stick to the facts and not get off topic.” The various departments began to implement the general principles of the five-year plan formulated at the meeting.

This general principle was quite broad, and each department still had considerable discretion in its implementation. The Planning Committee only issued the goals to be achieved in the recent stage. As for how to achieve the goals, it depended on the coordination between the various departments. Documents flew all over the OA between departments. Although there were many experts and incompetent people in all walks of life among the transmigrators, no one had any experience in coordinating the operation of a huge industrial system. There were naturally many jokes, and some waste was also present—it often happened that a project was halfway through when it was discovered that the supporting project was not even in sight, so it had to be stopped and wait. As Ma Qianzhu said, “We are learning how to do a planned economy, and it’s normal to pay some tuition.”

What Ma Qianzhu was looking at now was the expansion report of the glass factory.

The goal of the Ministry of Light Industry at this stage was mirrors and window glass. To make these two things, they had to have the ability to manufacture plate glass. Most of the people in the transmigrator group had read Verne’s “The Mysterious Island” and knew that plate glass was first made by blowing a long, oval glass bubble, then slowly rolling and shaping it, and finally producing a cylindrical glass tube. The two ends were then removed with a diamond cutter, and then it was cut vertically and horizontally, reheated to soften it, and then spread out into a glass plate and rolled flat. This process was very vividly called the manual blowpipe spreading method.

From the description itself, this method seemed easy to implement. However, when everyone went to practice this process, they found that Verne had greatly weakened the requirements for professional skills in manufacturing—he probably copied it from a book as well.

This process began to replace the older and more troublesome crown plate glass manufacturing method in the early 19th century, but it still required glass craftsmen to have very high and exquisite skills and strong judgment. The material collector had to be able to properly estimate the amount of glass liquid needed to make the cylinder. After being cut and spread, it could be made into a glass plate of a given size and thickness—if this was not a problem for the transmigrators who only wanted to make the product, then the skills of the blower were much more difficult: he had to constantly swing and rotate the molten glass to ensure that the entire cylinder reached a uniform thickness and the correct overall size. Plate glass made by this method required the participation of five types of skilled workers: material collectors, blowers, positioners, cutters, and flatteners. Finally, the glass plate had to be ground and polished to make plate glass that could be used as window glass or mirrors.

The skills, techniques, and experience involved were simply not something that the transmigrator glass craftsmen, who were halfway through their training, could master. Especially the skills of the blower, who were the most experienced and senior workers in the glass factories of that time—even the five people on Lincoln Island might not have been able to do it.

The first four or five experiments failed without any suspense. Either they couldn’t make a cylinder at all, or the thickness of the glass was uneven, and it even shattered due to stress before it was spread out.

After repeated experiments, the mechanical experts who were moonlighting as glass craftsmen finally produced a strange-looking glass plate with uneven thickness. Naturally, no one thought that this thing could be sold, let alone used to make mirrors.

“Let’s use the plate casting method,” Wang Luobin said helplessly, looking at the many extra baskets of broken glass.

“Are you sure you want to use this?” Ji Situi had some knowledge of glass manufacturing. “This can be considered industrial scale.”

Wang Luobin sighed. “Industrial scale it is. We don’t lack technology, but we lack skilled workers. We have to use scale to make up for the lack of technology.”

Plate glass made by the casting method, also known as the “French plate glass casting system,” began to be mass-produced in France in 1688. By 1760, the annual output of French plate glass had reached more than 1,000 tons, most of which was used for window glass and the windows of four-wheeled carriages.

It was very different from the plate glass made by the manual blowpipe spreading method. The advantage was that it could produce larger glass sizes, almost three times that of the blowing method. The technical requirements for workers were also much lower. The disadvantage was that the investment in fixed assets was very large. If the former spreading method was still a handicraft workshop-style manufacturing, then the casting method was completely like a modern factory.

If it weren’t for the fact that the plate glass market in 17th-century China was completely blank, it would be difficult to make super profits by investing in plate glass. The British failed completely in their first attempt to introduce it in 1691, and the second attempt almost went bankrupt due to cost and loss rate issues.

“Alright,” Ma Qianzhu knew that agreeing to this request meant increasing the expenditure on fixed assets. For the trial production of plate glass, the glass factory expansion plan designed by Bingfeng shocked Ma Qianzhu. Was this still that shed-style glass workshop? A large-span factory building with a steel frame structure, with one melting furnace and one calcining furnace in the workshop, and another 10 annealing furnaces. The entire workshop had hundreds of meters of ceramic pipes to collect the waste heat from the furnaces for comprehensive utilization.

“Isn’t the scale too large?”

“Not large. The annual output of this factory is probably only 200-300 tons,” Wang Luobin said from the side. “This is a joint enterprise, much more economical than the original small glass factory. Especially in terms of waste heat utilization and material circulation, the front-end processes such as sintering materials can also be completed in one step.”

“Ten annealing furnaces? That’s too many. There’s only one melting furnace and one calcining furnace each, right?”

“It takes ten days to anneal plate glass. Ten annealing furnaces are the bare minimum. Otherwise, continuous production cannot be guaranteed.”

“Alright,” Ma Qianzhu knew that it was better not to argue about professional issues.

The expansion project of the glass factory began in full swing. The casting method required at least one set of pulley cranes to be installed in the workshop to lift and move the crucibles containing the molten glass. In addition, the large number of glass furnaces inside required the workshop to have good ventilation. Therefore, the clear height of this workshop exceeded 6 meters, and to accommodate 12 furnaces, the span of the factory building was also very large.

Bingfeng completely abandoned the original simple brick column and wooden beam structure and switched to a portal steel frame structure factory building—this was his specialty.

The choice of a portal steel frame structure factory building not only had a short construction period, but also had a fire prevention effect. It was much safer to use in a glass factory full of fire furnaces than to use wooden trusses.

“You want such a long steel truss, our rolling mill is not yet in place,” Ji Wusheng was a little worried. “And it hasn’t been trial-rolled. I’m afraid it won’t be done in one go.”

“It’s okay, this can be made of wrought iron or pig iron.”

“Wrought iron? Malleable iron, right?”

“Yes, to simplify it completely, we can use pig iron castings, not only for the trusses, but also for many load-bearing parts and columns. I plan to use pig iron castings. There are many benefits to using a steel structure, especially for those of us who want to engage in a Great Leap Forward-style industry.”

Although the columns were still made of brick as usual, in order to strengthen the structural strength, pig iron cast columns were built inside. The entire workshop had a herringbone roof, with rows of large windows on the outer walls near the roof for ventilation and heat dissipation. In addition, a large number of pipe racks were to be arranged in the workshop. The effect drawing already looked very similar to the old-fashioned workshops common in another time and space.

Ji Wusheng considered for a moment. “I’ve never done such a super-large component before, but I can give it a try.”

“This is not yet a super-large component,” Wang Luobin brought a roll of drawings over. “You guys still have to cast this thing.”

The drawing was of something like a large ping-pong table with a heavy stand underneath. Ji Wusheng looked at the dimensions marked on it and was shocked. The dimensions were very frightening: 3 meters long, 2 meters wide, and 150mm thick.

“All made of pig iron?”

“At least the tabletop has to be cast from pig iron. Can you use other materials for the frame?”

“Such a large-sized pig iron plate, it’s definitely not supported without steel. At least it has to be a reinforced concrete platform or a stone one would do.”

“This iron plate cannot be fixed, it has to be able to be pushed. So it must have a frame.”

“Damn it, this is so fucking exciting,” Ji Wusheng cursed, but he also felt very happy in his heart—if he hadn’t come to this other time and space, he would never have had this experience even if he had worked in a steel plant for a lifetime. He calculated a little, and the entire table, including the support, would weigh 8 tons.

“What is this big iron table for?” Xiao Bailang was breaking down the structure of the future huge casting on paper. He was responsible for designing and manufacturing the sand casting mold.

Wang Luobin explained, “The molten glass liquid is poured on this. Then it is spread out on it.”

“Can’t we use other materials? 8 tons of pig iron!” Xiao Bailang was then shocked by the volume of the sand mold he had calculated. “And so much molding sand and charcoal powder!”

“The iron is not a problem. There are more than two hundred tons of pig iron in stock. Another ship is coming soon,” Ji Wusheng looked at the drawings over and over again. If there were no accidents, this would be the largest casting they had ever made, and probably the largest casting in the next few years. Although there were many experts in the Industrial and Energy Committee, most of them were from a mechanical background, and they only knew a little about casting—he was a little hesitant.

“Let’s give it a try. There’s a first time for everything,” Wang Luobin encouraged.

“Okay, let’s give it a try. But Commissar, you have to approve us to build two or three more large-scale cupolas for this,” Ji Wusheng’s reason was very sufficient: there was only one cupola now, and each furnace could only produce 1.5 tons of molten iron at most. Although the 8-ton iron table could be broken down into several parts for casting, no part could be done with one furnace of molten iron.

“What a waste of money and manpower,” Ma Qianzhu felt more and more pained as he looked at it. Although he understood that this was a necessary technological upgrade with his knowledge. To engage in industry, one must be willing to invest in basic industries. There was no harm in expanding the scale of the steel plant. And now that they had built such a large platform, the transmigrators would have experience in making large castings in the future.

“Okay, I agree,” [Ma Qianzhu][y0e_S2] signed the project list.