Is the smelting technology of the Sui Dynasty really as backward as what Yang Ming saw in Shimen Village?
No, far from it.
In fact, the craftsmanship of the Sui Dynasty was passed down to the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Cast iron technology and carbon steelmaking technology have matured, and it is completely possible to create high-quality products.
The process Yang Ming saw yesterday is that after the blade is repeatedly forged, impurities are squeezed out to improve the texture of the blade, and then it is repeatedly thrown into a charcoal fire for heating, so that the carbon element penetrates into the blade body and increases its hardness. This is called carbon refining.
steel.
Carbon steel is currently the most common weapon material among the Sui armies, and civilian tools and equipment are also made of carbon steel.
The cast iron technology is to open a blast furnace, burn the molten iron and pour it into the mold. Because cast iron is hard and brittle and cannot be forged, it can only be made into castings and connecting parts.
So what is the real boutique?
It is the combination of cast iron technology and carbon steelmaking technology, the fusion of pig iron and wrought iron, this is steel filling.
It is impossible to mass-produce this thing. A real steel-filled sword is extremely labor-intensive and cannot be made in less than ten days and a half.
Many of the real sharp weapons are supplied to the nobles. Even if they are used as funerary objects, they must be of high quality. However, it is a foolish dream for ordinary soldiers to own a sword made of filled steel.
Therefore, more than half of the Wenxi smelting kilns currently produce carbon steel with the most backward technology.
Peizhuang, next door to Shimen Village, is where the blast furnace was built. The fired molten iron is pig iron. The molten pig iron is poured into the fired wrought iron, and the two are fused to form high-carbon steel. This is high-quality steel.
The blast furnace that Dugu Huaien set up in Peizhuang was specifically used to make high-quality products. After so long, the total number of steel-filled weapons was only about a hundred, and the armor and stomach were about twenty.
He is treating this place as a testing ground, only pursuing refinement, not quantity.
But what the army currently lacks is quantity, and the gap is very huge.
After Yang Ming inspected several villages one after another, he found that continuing like this was not an option. Except for Pei Zhuang who was setting up a blast furnace to burn pig iron, other kilns were burning carbon to make steel. The weapons made of these things were very easy to wear and tear.
Yes, basically after cutting off a few pieces of armor, the blade will soon be unable to withstand it. We can’t let the soldiers kill the enemy empty-handed, right?
So Yang Ming planned to open up a new site and integrate all the processes to form a huge production line.
To set up a factory, you must first select a site. There must be water around the factory site because it relies on hydraulic power.
Peizhuang is the best place. Seven or eight miles outside Zhuangzi is Shushui River, a tributary of the Yellow River.
So Yang Ming led a large number of people to the Shushui River to open up a new site.
After the new site is selected, the factory drawings are drawn, which requires the participation of all major craftsmen.
There are eleven craftsmen from the Taifu Temple sect here, Dugu Huaien has more than thirty people under his command, and twenty people from the Pei family have formed the Wenxi smelting expert team.
These people are senior craftsmen with rich experience, exquisite skills, and proficient in smelting technology.
Master craftsmen in ancient times had apprentices, and their apprentices were either their own children or grandchildren, or juniors of relatives and friends. Generally, they would not accept outsiders.
After all, this is the craft of eating. If the relationship is not in place, the skill will not be passed on.
There are more than sixty senior craftsmen, and there are four to five hundred apprentices alone. These people are all precious.
Yang Ming summoned all these craftsmen to discuss the matter of starting construction of the factory in the Wenxi County Government Hall.
Until now, almost all the craftsmen are full of complaints against Yang Ming. They feel that the prince is simply playing the piano randomly. You have only been here for a few days and you plan to abolish all the current kilns and reopen new ones. You are making trouble with us.
How about playing?
Dugu Huaien kept nagging and complained angrily. After being scolded by Yang Ming, he shut up with a look of disapproval.
When Yang Ming squatted down and began to draw left and right on a blank piece of oil paper laid out in the lobby, everyone present knew that things were not simple.
Yun Dingxing was also full of complaints at first, but he didn't dare to say it out. After all, the kiln belongs to others, and he is the prince. Who am I to give advice to others?
Right now, he was staring at the drawings on the ground attentively, without blinking.
Yang Ming first simply drew the first step, then raised his head and explained to everyone:
"First of all, we need to open up a flat land outside the smelting site to accumulate, screen and crush the ore, and then set up more than ten low furnaces next to it to burn refined iron."
Then, Yang Ming pointed to a location on the drawing and said: "This place needs a blast furnace to turn refined iron into water. The material of our current blast furnace is not good, and it can easily collapse if the heat is not controlled properly. You should collect some teff stones as soon as possible.
Silica, pine oil, kerosene, the more the better. Among them, kerosene, I will tell Yongfu Gong (Dou Qing) to allocate some, and other things are not difficult to find. I want to use these things to transform the furnace body."
The furnace must withstand high temperatures in order to produce molten iron. The reason why the furnace body cannot withstand the temperature collapse is because of material problems. In the blast furnaces of the Sui Dynasty, the furnace body often collapsed because the material was not good. Once it collapsed, people would basically die.
The purpose of raising a blast furnace is to provide wind. As long as the oxygen supply is sufficient, it can help increase the intensity of the fire and the temperature will naturally rise.
It is also necessary to improve the blowing equipment to help quickly raise the temperature.
He Yan from Taifu Temple said blankly:
"May I ask, Prince, where did you get this method?"
Yang Ming said: "Don't ask any more questions. Just follow the materials I told you and collect them immediately."
He Yan knew in his heart that he wouldn't be able to find out if the person refused to tell him, so he nodded and ordered his subordinates to immediately start collecting the materials issued by Prince Luo.
He Yan is the younger brother of He Chou, the Prime Minister of Taifu Temple. He is now the master smelter of Taifu Temple. Two brothers, one is proficient in smelting and the other is proficient in porcelain making. They may not seem to be the same thing, but in fact there is not much difference. They are both.
He who plays with fire is like a chef who plays with salt.
These materials are relatively easy to find. Among them, teff stone is graphite. In ancient times, this was a pigment used by women to draw eyebrows, and was available in wealthy families.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Silica is easier to find, which is quartz sandstone, and is found in Zhongtiao Mountain. Pine oil is also easy to find, and Zhongtiao Mountain is full of pine trees.
Kerosene is a strategic material and must be allocated from Weiwei Temple. However, there must be some stocks in the treasury in Hedong. Weiwei Temple must approve a note before it can be used. Yang Ming's approval of the note is more effective than Weiwei Temple, so directly
You can ask Dou Qing to take out the things.
Next, Yang Ming began to explain blast furnace transformation.
The height and width of the furnace are all important.
First of all, the height determines the uniformity of heating of the ore in the furnace. If it is too high, the iron ore below will have melted, but there will be no movement above.
Width is the space for increasing or decreasing the upward wind force, which allows the ore accumulated above the middle section of the furnace to receive high temperatures and promote the smelting process.
Another advantage of blast furnaces is their large shipment volume.
Among the materials listed by Yang Ming, both teffstone and silica need to be fired. The temperature of the stone is secondary. As long as the firing time is long enough, it can be turned into ashes.
Therefore, it is necessary to add a few more ash-burning furnaces. First, burn the stones. After the ash stone and silica are cooled, pour in the kerosene and pine oil and mix them evenly. As for the proportion, Yang Ming does not know, so he can only let
They figure it out.
Kerosene and pine oil are adhesives, the main material is teff stone, and the auxiliary material is silica.
The last step is to mix in refractory clay, which is the main material of the current furnace body, that is, bauxite, which the Sui Dynasty called alumina.
When He Yan saw this step, he knew that the prince was not joking. This was obviously an unknown craft? Where did the prince learn it?
Yang Ming put down the pen in his hand and said: "The new refining kiln still needs to be built slowly. Let's build the blast furnace first."
Yun Dingxing was also excited now, because he knew that the prince was not the kind of person who messed around, so in the following days, he asked people to speed up the collection of materials. Five days later, a piece of open space at the new site had been tamped down, and he personally
Take command from the scene and build a new type of blast furnace.
According to Yang Ming's method, Yun Dingxing led people to determine the proportion after several attempts, and then mixed the ash made from teff stone and silica with kerosene and pine oil evenly, then mixed in a large amount of alumina, and began to shape the stone slurry.
New furnace.
Seven days later, the blast furnace was erected, eleven meters high and five meters wide.
The outside of the new blast furnace looks dry, but the inside is not yet dry, so it is necessary to heat the furnace body over low fire first to allow the furnace body to adapt to the temperature of the fire.
After baking for three days, it was time to test the oven.
First, a large amount of chestnut charcoal is added, and then refined iron ore is added, and then the huge blower modified by Yundingxing supplies air.
The main test this time is the high temperature resistance of the furnace body to see how high the temperature the new blast furnace can withstand.
In just one hour, the temperature of the furnace body has risen rapidly. As time goes by, the heat wave can be felt from more than ten meters away.
Yang Ming's method is actually a very simple graphite crucible. It is limited by the current conditions, so the overall material of the furnace is definitely not good, but it is many times better than the original furnaces.
Testing the furnace is a very dangerous thing. After all, it is a new furnace. No one is sure about its high temperature resistance, not even Yang Ming.
For such a large furnace, there are fire watchers on the furnace platform set up next to it, and the vents in the middle of the furnace body are responsible for spreading the fire, which is to prevent the wind from accumulating on the bottom of the furnace and needing to be poked left and right with iron rods.
Insert, there are people operating the blowers to send fire, a total of seventeen or eight people.
Once the furnace body collapses, these people's lives will be in danger.
Except for these people, everyone else stayed far away, for fear that if it collapsed and a little spark splashed on them, they wouldn't be able to bear it.
Time passed little by little until the night was filled with stars.
On a high platform in the distance, a craftsman shouted excitedly to the crowd:
"It's turned into water, it's turned into water."
At this point, it at least proves that the blast furnace made by Prince's method is as heat-resistant as the original blast furnace, and it seems that it can be stopped.
But Yun Dingxing was not sure. What he wanted to test was how high the temperature this stove could withstand.
Based on his past experience, after the blast furnace melts water, it is necessary to stop the blast, open the furnace immediately, and bring out the molten iron to lower the temperature of the furnace body and prevent it from collapsing.
"Don't stop, keep blowing the air," Yun Dingxing took the risk, stepped forward alone, and circled around to observe the furnace at close range. Judging from the fact that the surface of the furnace body did not turn red, it should be able to continue to withstand high temperatures.
The experienced craftsmen also saw that the heat was coming, and they all ventured forward to look at the furnace body.
Those who are timid cannot do technical work, and this has been true in ancient and modern times.
After a long time, the sweat from the craftsmen on the high platform was dried as soon as it broke out, and they could hardly bear it any longer.
Yun Dingxing wanted to continue, but Yang Ming stopped him. He didn't want to cause trouble, so he said:
"Let's turn on the stove."
Next, several craftsmen opened the bottom of the furnace, and a pool of boiling hot water flowed out and entered the reservoir that had been dug underneath.
Yun Dingxing was in a state of embarrassment, and his old face had been burned like a monkey's butt. He ran back all the way, knelt down towards Yang Ming, and cried with joy:
"It's done, the prince's technique is so ingenious that it will be admired and worshiped by future generations together with the prince."
This flattery, I just renovated the blast furnace and it will be famous forever? Are you at a loss for words? Then what other adjectives can you use for what I am going to do next?
Dugu Huaien stood there blankly, looking at the molten iron in a daze. After a while, he let out a long sigh, Damn it, he actually knows better than me?
All the craftsmen present were full of suspicion at the moment, looking at Yang Ming secretly from time to time. Could it be that the palace really had some undisclosed secrets of smelting technology?
Otherwise, how could the prince know how to use these materials to build a blast furnace?
But now, no one doubts that the prince is a fool anymore. Everyone is convinced. From now on, he will do whatever he asks. Yang Ming will never be regarded as a layman anymore. He is clearly an expert.
Yang Ming looked around. The new site was still laying the ground and laying a solid foundation. It would take ten days and a half to build the site.
So he took Yun Dingxing back to Wenxi County, planning to think about what to do next.
Dugu Huai'en now regarded Yang Ming as his idol. He just followed Yang Ming even if they didn't call him. He planned to learn from his master or steal his master.
The Wenxi County Government Office has been completely vacated. The County Magistrate and all the officials are working in the County Magistrate's home. His County Government Office has been requisitioned by Yang Ming.
In the lobby of the county government office, Yang Ming frowned and said:
"It still took too long. It took a whole day to make molten iron with charcoal. This was due to insufficient firepower. Coal should be used instead."
Yun Dingxing frowned and said: "There are many impurities in coal, which may contaminate the molten iron material."
Yang Ming said: "White coal (anthracite) is used, and it is not used in the blast furnace, but in the low furnace where the miscellaneous ore is fired and the refined iron ore is used. The purer the refined iron coming out of the low furnace, the longer the firing time in the blast furnace will be."
Much shortened.”
After hearing this, Yun Dingxing frowned thoughtfully for a while, then nodded with a serious face and said: "You can give it a try. I have opened my eyes today. How to build the kiln in the future will only follow the prince's orders."
"What? Will you listen to me from now on?" Yang Ming asked.
Yun Dingxing was stunned and said quickly: "No, no, no, in the past, now, and in the future, I will always look at the prince as my guide."