"Well, the long history is reasonable, sending troops out is just a waste of food and grass, and the military advisor ordered General Han to collect his troops, and only arrange manpower to inspect, so as not to let Goguryeo easily explore the truth." Zou Yu agreed.

"Whoa!"

"It's a long history of trouble in this aspect of government affairs, I want to go to the mining area and refine weapons and armor as soon as possible!"

"Subordinates obey!" Fang Xuanling gratefully bowed his hand, and he was very moved by Zou Yu's trust. Because it is not only an official position, but also power, which is equivalent to delegating it to him.

Not to mention that Fang Xuanling began to take over government affairs, anyway, Zou Yu was very relieved, came to Fushun Iron Mine, which is worthy of being one of the richest areas of mineral deposits, there are many dark red hematite in the open air, earthy yellow limonite, although Zou Yu does not know these, but the blacksmith knows it, it does not need much advanced knowledge, you can distinguish it, generally different colors, the composition is different, the most important thing is that any kind of mineral, bucket will not exist alone, and associated minerals, such as magnetite, iron sulfide.

Since the end of the Qin Dynasty and the beginning of the Han Dynasty, iron tools have been used in large quantities, so with nearly a thousand years of experience, blacksmiths are no strangers to these.

Zou Yu's main purpose here was to discuss with the blacksmith how to improve the forging method. At present, the production of weapons and armor all relies on forging, that is, thousands of tempers, and the so-called hundred tempers into steel means this.

This is mainly because the heat is not enough to melt the iron and stone, so as long as the method of hammer forging is adopted, the so-called hundred refining into steel, in fact, the hot red pig iron is beaten countless times, and finally like kneading dough, the bubbles in it are hammered out to remove impurities. If you want to make a good knife, you need to hammer it repeatedly, which is not only extremely inefficient, but also takes too much time.

Pure iron is very soft, pig iron is very brittle, so this is why in the Qin Dynasty, iron weapons were not taken seriously, and later people found that adding some other minerals can improve this characteristic, so it can be used in large quantities, so many times in the process of iron smelting, add animal blood, urine and other strange things.

In the process of continuous refining, some people summarize their experience and finally refine divine weapons, but those methods are not suitable for batch refining.

Although Zou Yu didn't understand the principle, he knew that this was the earliest alloy, and the alloy needed a lot of experiments, which was not too urgent for him, so he used another way, high-carbon steel!

High-carbon steel has high strength and hardness, high elastic limit and fatigue limit, and in this era, it must be regarded as a magic weapon.

Now there is enough coal, fuel is available, what needs to be done is graphite crucible, with graphite crucible to make iron, can be directly steeled, this is because now graphite can also be found, this material with a much higher melting point than steel, not only that, Zou Yu remembers that graphite crucibles have been widely used in later generations.

Another feature of using graphite crucibles is that after the molten iron melts, it absorbs the carbon in the graphite, resulting in high-carbon molten steel, which is superior to most metal materials at that time, even in the eighteenth century.

Use different proportions of graphite, mix clay, make a crucible, start refining iron ore, keep burning, watch all the iron ore in the crucible turn into golden molten iron, and wait for the bubble impurities on it, completely disappearing, which means that this pot of iron ore has become steel.

Using wooden boards and clay, make a mold, pour molten iron into it, wait a little, knock open the mold, and inside is a steel knife that has been formed.

Zou Yu remembered that when he was a child, his father forged iron drills by himself, and when he was quenching, he did not use water, but directly inserted them into the ground.

This is because it is quenched with water, one cold and one hot, cooling too fast, but destroying the balance, so it cannot be used, and inserted into the soil, which is much milder, and some will use grease to cool.

Because Zou Yu uses a graphite crucible here, the carbon element should be enough, so it is inserted into the soil and quenched. I saw the steel knife come out of the mold, and immediately a blacksmith stepped forward to forge it again.

This is to check whether the heat is enough and whether the shape is intact, because the mold may have some flaws, but this forging does not take too long, so soon the blacksmith will stick the steel knife into the ground and make a "snort!" A puff of white smoke rose from it.

Ten steel knives, almost at the same time, were inserted into the ground at the same time, and after waiting for a while, it was estimated that they could already start, Zou Yu grabbed the steel knife. I saw that the steel knife was re-forged and quenched, and the blade was distributed with many lines, and it looked like there was some mysterious beauty.

"Hack it with your knife!" Zou Yu said to the guards.

"Whoa!" The guard answered, drew his knife and slashed at the blade of the knife that was in Zou Yu's hand.

"Dang!" There was a crisp sound, and everyone looked over attentively, only to see that the knife in the guard's hand was already a third shorter, and the fracture was neat.

"It's... The blacksmiths were all startled, and they couldn't believe that they had forged it.

"Come again!" Zou Yu pulled out a knife again and said to the stunned guard.

As a result, the knife in the guard's hand was shortened again. Soon all ten knives were tried, and all of them were equally sharp and hard. Zou Yu tried it himself, and the toughness was quite good.

Knives forged from fine iron, in order to maintain its hardness, are generally thicker, which means that the weight is not light, and the steel knives made of this mold are much lighter, a knife with a length of one meter and five is only about ten catties.

"What's the hurry! There will be all in the future. Zou Yu smiled and scolded the hot-eyed guard.

"Hey, hey! This is simply a miracle soldier! The guard reluctantly put down his knife and said.

"This will be everyone's standard equipment in the future, this is just the first batch, the latter is better, don't worry."

"Hey, hey, thank you, General!"

With a graphite crucible, forging can be said to be very convenient, for alloy, Zou Yu is not thinking about it now, because even if the alloy is better, but it takes time, so it is just for people to write it down and do it in the future, and now the primary goal is to change the clothes of the whole army.

The weapon is easy to do, but the armor is not easy to do, and after discussing this, there are only two things, the same is a steel helmet, the steel helmet can not only protect the head, but also be used as a pot and bowl, and in the future, when marching, finally do not need to bring all kinds of clay pots.

The other is the half-body armor, this kind of half-body armor, the body is an arc-shaped steel plate, which protects the front, and the back is tied up with a rope, so that the back is not protected, because the warrior is only allowed to charge, and only when he escapes, can he light the back to the enemy, which not only has a protective effect, but also reduces the weight, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.