With the blacksmith and the iron material sent by Deng Niu, the work of making weapons can begin. However, a new problem appeared in front of Zhang Miao, that is, the speed of the fight.

"These are wrought irons, which are too soft and need to be charcoal fried to make steel." Lu Tong said to Zhang Miao.

"Then fry steel, Master Lu, do you know?" Zhang Miao said.

Lu Tong nodded: "Naturally, it will." Build a stove and heat charcoal with wrought iron to get steel. However, what you need is a weapon that can fight, unlike farm tools. The steel that is smelted still needs to be forged repeatedly, and the speed is not very fast. ”

Zhang Miao asked, "With your father and son, how many weapons can you make in a day?" ”

"How many?" Lu Tong smiled bitterly, "It depends on what weapon you want, if it is a hundred refining knives, it will take at least five days for a saber to be completed." If it's a spearhead, you can make it in a day. ”

Zhang Miao exclaimed: "Why is it so slow? ”

Lu channel: "There is no way, only repeated forging can the impurities be beaten to get the steel." Otherwise, the quality of the weapon is too poor, and it won't take long to curl the blade, how to fight the enemy? ”

Zhang Miao said: "What if there is a hundred refined steel? How many weapons can you make in a day? ”

Lu channel: "If there are 100 refined steel, the speed is naturally much faster, take the spearhead as an example, it is not a problem to make twenty or thirty a day." But if you don't have a hundred refinements of refined steel, how can it be stainless steel? There's no way to get it. ”

Zhang Miao smiled: "You don't have to worry, I have a way to get 100 steel." ”

In this era, the level of smelting was very poor, and although steel could be smelted, there was too much scum in it, so it was necessary to forge it repeatedly, so that it took too long to make weapons.

If the smelting level can be improved and high-quality steel can be obtained, it will undoubtedly greatly shorten the weapon production time and become better quality.

Zhang Miao is a top student in the history department, and she originally didn't know what smelting was. But when he was in the summer vacation of his junior year, he checked a lot of information for his sister and had some understanding of smelting. Well, Shi Niang is teaching at the Iron and Steel University next door.

One of the benefits of crossing is that my memory is unusually good, and all the books I have read before are stored in my mind and I remember them vividly. Including the information that I have checked before, and even the furnace structure diagram of ironmaking and steelmaking that I have seen.

Generally speaking, steelmaking is divided into two stages, first the iron ore is smelted into pig iron in a blast furnace, and then the pig iron is fried into steel using a converter. In the whole process, the most critical thing is the temperature inside the furnace during smelting, and only when the temperature is well controlled can the steel be obtained.

The reason for the poor steelmaking technology in ancient times was the backwardness of these processes.

Now since there are a lot of structural diagrams of blast furnace converters in my mind, I can choose a relatively simple blast furnace converter according to the actual situation now to obtain high-level stainless steel.

As soon as she thought of it, Zhang Miao left and returned to her room, found two pieces of white silk, and drew the structural diagrams of the blast furnace and converter on the white silk. The blast furnace is simple, as long as there are refractory materials, it is easy to build, but the converter is more troublesome, after all, it can be rotated, and there is no advanced automatic machine in this era, and it is necessary to rely on manpower to complete the rotation.

First of all, the converter should not be too big and heavy, otherwise it will be more troublesome to make it spin. Zhang Miao thought about it for a long time and drew an ultra-small converter in his memory, which could only smelt a few hundred catties of steel at a time. With the help of the lever mechanism, it can be rotated by manpower.

Zhang Miao drew very carefully, and the dimensions of each part were clearly marked, almost copying the drawings in his mind.

The drawings are available, in order to make the blast furnace and converter, you also need to have suitable materials, the most critical is the refractory material, in order to erect it, you must first solve the problem of refractory bricks. There are many materials that can be used to make refractory bricks, such as silica, quartz, diatomaceous earth, wax stone, clay, bauxite and so on.

There is a large amount of quartz ore in Nanshan next to Sanshui Village, and there is an inexhaustible supply of clay on the shore of the water, so it is not a problem to make refractory bricks.

Then, Zhang Miao wrote out the production process of refractory bricks on white silk.

"This, this is painted by Childe?" Looking at the blast furnace and converter on the white silk, Lu Tong said incredulously.

Zhang Miao smiled: "How?" These two stoves could have been built? ”

Lu Daodao: "Childe's painting is already so detailed, if it can't be recreated, the old man can be killed by a headhead." But can these two furnaces really make steel? ”

Zhang Miao said: "As long as you completely follow the process I wrote, there is naturally no problem." ”

Naturally, weapons are very important to an army. Soldiers with bamboo spears can deal with thieves without armor, and they can't fight regular armies at all. Not to mention anything else, even the leather armor can't be pierced by a bamboo spear.

Zhang Miao's purpose in establishing the township soldiers was not only to suppress bandits, but to have his own ambitions, which was to compete with the world's strong soldiers. So he attaches great importance to weapons.

In the next few days, Zhang Miao put aside everything else and devoted all her attention to the construction of the blast furnace and converter.

Send people to Nanshan to dig quartz stone, go to the shore of Bishui to dig clay, fire refractory bricks according to the process under the guidance of Lutong, and then build a blast furnace and converter according to the drawings.

It's easy to say, but in fact it's a very complex process to start something from nothing. Fortunately, Lutong is professional enough, and he also knows how to smelt, and with the drawings and process technical standards given by Zhang Miao, it is not a big problem to make two furnaces.

Then there is the important issue of the fuel for steelmaking. The quality of fuel is directly related to the quality of smelted steel.

The best fuel is coke, which is made from desulphurized coal. If you use coal to make steel directly, the iron quality will be very poor and brittle because of the sulfur contained in the coal. The ancient Chinese didn't know this at all, and the coal used in steelmaking has always been used, which has always made the weapons very poor. Take the sword as an example, the quality was still very good in the Tang Dynasty, but after the Song Dynasty, the quality of the sword was not good, and even the Japanese sword of the Japanese State was far inferior, because of the direct use of coal to make iron and steel.

Of course, it is also possible to make steel from charcoal, which is not as good as coke, but also much stronger than coal.

There is no coal mine in Huyang, and in the whole of Nanyang, only Nanzhao County has coal, well, Nanzhao was called Pheasant County in the Han Dynasty. And Pheasant County is under the control of Cao Jun. Moreover, the coal mine in Nanzhao was discovered very late, and it is estimated that it has not been developed at all in this era.

It was too difficult to find coal in the mountains and mountains in the enemy's territory, and then transport it back to Sanshui Village for hundreds of miles, and it was directly vetoed by Zhang Miao. The only option is to make steel from charcoal.

So before making steel, you have to burn charcoal.

So, Zhang Miao said that his father Zhang Yu was moved, and while building the blast furnace converter, he sent a full fifty people to Nanshan to cut down trees and directly open a kiln to burn charcoal at the foot of Nanshan.

This winter, the entire Nanshan Mountain was covered in smoke, and half of the Nanshan Mountain was almost cut down, revealing bare earth and rocks.

In order to prevent soil erosion, Zhang Miao persuaded his father Zhang Yu to prepare for large-scale tree planting in the spring, well, plant ash trees! Raise ash worms on ash trees, and you can get a steady stream of candles later.