Under Chen Xian's efforts and coordination (bribery), the stewards, craftsmen, and helpers who were responsible for building the blacksmith shop were united in their hearts, and the speed of construction was amazing, and just over half a month later, a brand-new courtyard house stood in front of Chen Xian, which was a small miracle in this era.

In the next seven or eight days, the iron furnace he requested to melt pig iron during casting, four ordinary blast furnaces, and a simmering furnace to be used for carburizing and steelmaking in the future were also completed.

In this more than half a month, with the efforts of twenty-six young apprentices, the courtyard was surrounded by dense and thick thorny shrubs, along with a few acres of land behind the courtyard.

Chen Xian asked the craftsmen to build a wooden fence nearly three meters high on the street side directly in front of the shrub fence, and a wooden gate was opened in the middle for horse-drawn carriages to enter and exit.

Before the completion of the shop, Chen Xian entrusted the Yang family caravan to bring back a batch of iron materials from the iron factory in Laiwu, several special anvils, and some tools, such as rulers, files, chisels, saws, pull drills, and various hammers, etc., and also followed the Yang family caravan back to Zhuangzi.

The anvil that Chen Xian asked for was different from the anvil used by the blacksmiths of the Song Dynasty, and it was a bit strangely shaped, and this intricately shaped anvil actually had a special purpose for each part, such as the semicircular groove in the middle was used to make iron pipes.

In addition to the anvil, Chen Xianyao's hammers are also different, with round heads, pointed heads, V-shaped heads, large flat heads, small flat heads, etc., and there are many of them.

During this time, Chen Xian also made some specific preparations for the creation of the katana.

He personally went to the Yi River to find some gray sandstone suitable for whetstone, and when he returned, he handed it over to the stonemason to be divided and carved into long strips, and used a file to trim the front of the whetstone.

……

After the completion of Chen Xian's shop, Chen Xian collected more than 20 old bedding from Zhuangzi and officially placed the apprentices in the shop.

Learning the lesson of staying in Wu Liangjia, Chen Xian hired someone to dismantle and wash the bedding he received, and put them in a cage drawer to steam and dry them before using them, and the twenty-six apprentices also had to take a bath and change into his new clothes before they were allowed to live, and the old clothes on their bodies and brought with them had to be steamed in the cage drawer.

Under Chen Xian's precautionary arrangement, almost less than a week after the completion of the blacksmith workshop, the blacksmith shop was ready to start construction.

Early that morning, Chen Xian personally lit the fires of the five furnaces in the workshop, and the Chen's blacksmith workshop started for the first time......

Chen Xian was the first to light the fire of the simmering furnace.

The simmer is a high shaft furnace, with an ash outlet at the bottom, and an iron bar grille above the ash outlet, and a combustion chamber above the grille, where the charcoal is burned.

Above the combustion chamber is the smoldering chamber, which is divided into ten layers by iron bars from top to bottom, each about half a foot high.

The mouth of the furnace above the smoldering chamber gradually narrows, turning into a large chimney leading out of the wall.

Before lighting the fire, Chen Xian spread the purchased pig iron plates and steel plates densely in the simmering furnace.

When entrusting the Yang family caravan to purchase iron materials, Chen Xian specially instructed that all iron materials should only be made of charcoal, not charcoal.

Hearing him say this, the caravan's steward Wu, that is, Wu Liang's eldest brother, also praised Chen Xian for being knowledgeable, because the Yang family's own blacksmith shop did not want to smelt coal when purchasing some good iron materials.

Don't use coal, that is, the iron material made by coal, the reason is very simple, the coal used to make iron in this era has not been coking, coal contains a large amount of sulfur and phosphorus, in the ironmaking process, sulfur and phosphorus these two harmful elements will enter the iron, reducing the quality of iron.

Chen Xian was a little surprised that the blacksmiths of this era also knew the disadvantages of coal ironmaking, because according to historical records, since the Song Dynasty, coal gradually replaced charcoal as the fuel for ironmaking in the Central Plains, and he also thought that the ancients did not know the disadvantages of using coal to make iron directly.

But when you think about it, it's not surprising.

Coal is directly smelted without coking, and the sulfur and phosphorus contained in it will be injected into the smelted iron, increasing the hot and cold brittleness of iron.

The so-called hot brittleness refers to the fact that when the sulfur content in steel exceeds the standard, the brittleness of steel increases with the increase of temperature.

Cold brittleness, on the other hand, increases when the phosphorus in steel exceeds the standard, as the temperature decreases, the brittleness of steel increases.

The cold brittle is just fine, and the blacksmith is more difficult to find, but the increase in hot brittleness will be very obvious to the blacksmith.

If the sulfur content in the iron is too high, the red-hot iron will become very brittle, and it is easy to crack or even break in the forging process.

Therefore, if a blacksmith has used both charcoal and coal for ironmaking, it is easy for him to see the difference and form experience.

The Song Dynasty was such a transitional period from charcoal ironmaking to coal ironmaking, so it is not surprising that the blacksmiths of this era knew that charcoal ironmaking was better than coal ironmaking, but it was the blacksmiths of the Central Plains in the Ming and Qing dynasties in later generations who could only use coal to make iron, and if there was no charcoal ironmaking available, it was likely that they could not know the advantages and disadvantages of charcoal ironmaking and coal ironmaking.

As for why the quality of charcoal ironmaking is better than that of coal, it is easier to explain why China's ironmaking has to transition from charcoal to coal.

According to historical records, during the Song Dynasty, China's copper and iron production reached its peak, and the peak of iron production occurred in the Northern Song Dynasty and Yuanfeng period, as high as 20,000 tons.

The peak of copper production occurred during the Xining period of the Northern Song Dynasty, with a peak output of nearly 13,000 tons, which even exceeded the world's copper production in 1800 and the copper production of New China in 1952.

With such a large production, the forests near the mining area were cut down, so from the 11th century onwards, the smelting industry in the Northern Song Dynasty began to use coal instead of charcoal to smelt metals.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, China's finest iron was produced in Foshan, precisely because most of the forests in northern China's iron-producing areas had been destroyed and could only be made from coal, and only subtropical areas like Foshan, with abundant rainfall and fast-growing vegetation, could provide enough charcoal to make iron.

The price of charcoal iron smelting is more expensive than coal smelting, and Steward Wu told Chen Xian that the pig iron smelted from coal only costs 28 wen a catty, and the carbon smelted costs 36 wen a catty.

Generally speaking, coal iron is mostly used to cast hoes, shovels, ploughshares, iron pots and other agricultural tools and daily utensils, while charcoal ironmaking will be fried to mature iron, or then used to make steel by the steel filling method.

The wrought iron smelted by charcoal costs more than 40 wen a catty, and the steel filled costs more than 100 wen a catty.

Chen Xian mainly purchased some charcoal-smelted pig iron plates, and some charcoal-smelted iron-fried wrought iron, and he also bought 20 catties of steel-filled plates.

Charcoal pig iron plate was originally the raw material for steel filling in iron yards, and most people would choose cheap coal to make iron when buying pig iron.

Lighting the fire of the simmering furnace, Chen Xian arranged for two teenagers to take turns pulling the bellows to heat and calcinate the iron plate in the furnace......