Chen Xian asked the doubts that had already arisen in his heart: "Steward Yang, why are there so many fields in this village?" ”

If it is an official city, Chen Xian is not surprised that there will be so many vacant land, but the countryside Tuweizi, enclosing so many vacant land, is a little unreasonable, Chen Xian is on the mountain behind Lujiazhuang, looking at it with a telescope, most of the Tuweizi he sees are relatively compact, at most there are some vegetable fields, I have not seen anyone have such a large area of farmland in the Tuweizi.

Steward Yang said: "Dongzhuangzi was not so big at first, when the Song and Jin countries were at war, many people from outside the mountains fled to Yiyuan, and the ancestors of the Yang family were merciful, organized the victims to reclaim the wasteland, and saved many people. ”

"There are more and more people living in the group, the world is chaotic, and there are many bandits, in order to protect themselves, the ancestors of the Yang family initiated the people to repair this Zhuangzi today."

"Later, the world gradually became peaceful, and the people outside the mountain slowly left, and there were so many vacant lands in this Zhuangzi."

Chen Xian was stunned when he heard this.

When everyone came to the vicinity of the north gate of Zhuangzi, Steward Yang pointed to the large farmland on both sides of the road and said to Chen Xian: "The fields near the north gate are all fields of the Yang family. ”

Chen Xian originally wanted to choose the area at the city gate, because there were the fewest houses and the place was spacious, but he was afraid that it was too close to the city wall and people would suspect that he had any bad intentions, so he chose a vacant lot on the side of the road about sixty or seventy meters away from the city gate.

After looking at the place selected by Chen Xian, Steward Yang turned around and asked his entourage: "Who is this place?" ”。

The entourage said: "This is the leader of our family's brave family, a brand leader named Yang Jingzong. ”

After listening to the words of his entourage, Steward Yang waved his hand and said, "Change it for his family." ”

……

After setting the address, Steward Yang said goodbye and left, leaving Chen Xian to Chen Laojia and his son.

Chen Laojia invited Chen Xian to their house to discuss the rules of the blacksmith shop.

Chen Laojia's house is on the side of the street not far from the back gate of Yang's mansion, it is a brick house with a yard, it seems that this Chen Laojia is also a decent person in Dongzhuangzi.

Walking into Chen Laojia's house, Chen Xian found that the furnishings here were still a little similar to the old houses he had seen in the countryside when he was a child.

The hall was dimly lit due to the lack of windows.

There are two transepts on each side of the hall.

Chen Laojia let Chen Xian into one of the ear rooms, which was supposed to be the place where the Chen family entertained guests, with a square table, several stools, and two bamboo chairs.

Chen Laojia invited Chen Xian to sit down and told his son to boil a pot of tea.

The two sides sat down, and Chen Laojia asked about the regulations of Chen Xian's blacksmith shop.

Ever since he planned to open a blacksmith shop, Chen Xian has been thinking about this issue, and at this time he said his idea.

The blacksmith shop envisioned by Chen Xian was a large courtyard house with a depth of 10 zhang (about 32 meters) and a width of 6 zhang (about 20 meters).

The front side of the courtyard faces the street as a street frontage, and the wings on both sides of the courtyard are the dormitories for apprentices and workers, and the back is a wrought iron workshop.

He also asked for a twenty-meter-deep open space in front of the courtyard as a place to park the carriages and horses.

Of course, Chen Xian didn't really just want to be a blacksmith, he actually planned to become the owner of a blacksmith workshop first.

Listening to Chen Xian's assumption, Chen Laojia's face was embarrassed, in his opinion, Chen Xian's request was really a bit excessive, which had exceeded the scale of a blacksmith shop.

Chen Xian naturally understood why he was embarrassed, and explained: "Of course, this blacksmith shop can't let Yang Yuan go out to pay money, and he is not a person who doesn't know what to do. ”

Hearing Chen Xian say this, Chen Laojia's face softened, if he added fifty yuan, Chen Xian's request would not be too much.

In fact, Chen Xian didn't plan to spend the fifty taels of money on this blacksmith shop, the ten taels of silver and half a tael of gold he gave to Steward Yang were for this blacksmith shop that obviously exceeded the standard.

said fifty yuan, just to give Steward Yang an excuse.

After talking about the regulations of the shop, Chen Xian asked Chen Laojia to build him a furnace in the workshop.

There is nothing peculiar about this stove, it is a simple primitive stove with ordinary lower level burning in air and upper level heating in a closed room.

The only special thing is that Chen Xian requested that the closed heating chamber on the upper floor of the furnace be made very high, and that many layers should be separated by wrought iron bars.

The furnace is very simple, but the role of this furnace in Chen Xian's plan is not simple, Chen Xian wants to use this furnace to make steel!

There are only a few human steelmaking technologies from ancient times to the present.

The simplest and most primitive steelmaking method is called "carburizing method", although this method is primitive and simple, labor-intensive and time-consuming, but in the hands of masters, it can make high-quality steel.

The opposite of the carburizing method is the "decarburization method".

The carburizing method is to forge and carburize the wrought iron smelted by the "block refining method" to obtain steel, while the decarburization method is just the opposite, which is to turn the pig iron with too high carbon content into malleable pig iron through annealing, and then decarburize it through forging to obtain steel with suitable carbon content.

These two completely opposite steelmaking processes are exactly the same, whether it is carburization or carburizing, completely relying on the experience of craftsmen to master the proportion of calcination and forging time, and the technical requirements for craftsmen are relatively high.

Whether it is carburizing or decarburizing, it is all by the blacksmith's hammer and hammer forging to make steel, the efficiency is pitiful, in order to improve the efficiency of steelmaking, the ancient Chinese invented the steel frying method.

The so-called steel frying method is a method of injecting pig iron from the blast furnace into a shallow pond and stirring it with a wooden stick to let the carbon in the pig iron react with the oxygen in the air to reduce the carbon content of the pig iron, and finally obtain the steel.

However, the reaction of the decarburization process of the steel frying method is very violent, and if one is not well mastered, the decarburization is too much, and the pig iron is directly smelted into wrought iron.

Because ancient China did not attach importance to the technology of craftsmen, coupled with the frequent wars, the method of frying steel with extremely high requirements for craftsmen's technology was very easy to be lost, so most of the time in ancient China, most of the products produced in the frying steel pool were wrought iron, and the frying steel method became the frying iron method.

In order to turn the wrought iron into steel, the craftsmen of ancient China invented the steel filling method.

The steel filling method is to put the pig iron on the wrought iron plate, put it into the furnace and calcine, let the melted pig iron be spread on the wrought iron plate, and the carbon in the pig iron will seep into the wrought iron to form steel, and then fold and hammer to make the carbon in the steel evenly divided, and the last thing obtained is to fill steel.

It's a pity that pig iron is not a good cementite, so the carbon content of the steel produced by the steel filling method is extremely uneven, and the inside of a piece of steel is brittle and brittle, soft and soft, and the quality is extremely poor.