With the supply of graphite, Chen Xian used graphite mixed slag with a small amount of porcelain clay to fire refractory bricks.

With graphite, Chen Xian also fired a graphite dry pot and tried to refine crucible steel.

Of course, with graphite, Chen Xian also used a real pencil.

With refractory bricks and cement as an external support, Chen Xian finally built the first small blast furnace.

But the blast furnace was eventually scrapped due to poor flow of filler.

It is not a simple task to make the packing material in the blast furnace flow down little by little at a given speed, and finally turn into molten iron and slag and discharge out of the furnace through different channels, which requires a precise grasp of the angle and size in the furnace chamber.

The first furnace was destroyed due to poor flow of filler, while the second furnace was destroyed due to a charge collapse.

It took Chen Xian more than three months and more than a dozen furnaces to finally build a satisfactory furnace.

With the data of the first successful furnace, the rest is easy.

Chen Xian chose a location on the upper tributary of the Muwen River with a large river drop to build a hydraulic factory.

In order to provide enough power for the ironworks, Chen Xian also improved the length of the hydraulic bow and changed the original waterwheel into a water wheel.

He cast the axle and bearing of the water wheel with cast iron, built a dam with cement, raised the water level, introduced it into the cement ditch through the hydraulic factory, and molded the water wheel bearing directly with cement on the cement ditch embankment on both sides of the ditch, and then installed the water wheel shaft on the bearing, and the blade of the water wheel was not a wooden blade, but a forged iron blade, which was bolted on the cast axle.

Such a turbine is simpler in structure, easier to install, and provides more power.

Chen Xian used the water turbines in this new hydroelectric plant as a power source to build ten small blast furnaces.

Each small blast furnace is equipped with a water wheel, the water wheel drives the cam, drives the organ bellows to blow the blast furnace, and each blast furnace has two linkage bellows, which take turns to blow the air, so that the small blast furnace can get uninterrupted blasting.

Chen Xian also designed an attached anti-blast furnace and casting furnace for each small blast furnace, which are located in the big pits on both sides of the small blast furnace on the left and the right, and the terrain is much lower than that of the small blast furnace, so as to facilitate the hot iron produced by the small blast furnace to be guided by gravity.

There are two outlets on both sides of the blast furnace, and the hot metal can be diverted to different furnaces by opening the outlets in different directions of the small blast furnace.

In order to increase the furnace temperature, Chen Xian also built a common thermal storage room for the small blast furnace and the refining furnace.

In order to facilitate feeding, Chen Xian also built a loading ramp next to the small blast furnace, and workers pushed small carts to pour a layer of coke, a layer of iron ore, and a layer of limestone into the entrance of the blast furnace in turn.

Coke, ore, limestone have a fixed proportion, and a small amount of soil is mixed in the coke to avoid the collapse of the ore in the upper layer after the coke is burned......

These things were gradually mastered by Chen Xian in more than three months of busyness.

Fortunately, Chen Xian already knew the conclusion, and then explored to build a small blast furnace in such a short time.

If there is no information, let him explore it himself, I am afraid that he will not be able to make a qualified small blast furnace in three years.

The hydroelectric plant is located between the Huojia's coal and iron mines.

In order to provide fuel for the ironworks, Chen Xian built a hydroelectric coking plant downstream of the ironworks

Chen Xian did not adopt the simplest earth-made coke oven, which resembled a charcoal kiln, but built a coke oven that separated the coke from the heating furnace.

The furnace chamber and the heating chamber are adjacent to each other like sandwich biscuits, and the heating chamber is an S-shaped heating channel distributed back and forth, and the two heating chambers are sandwiched between a chamber......

Each heating chamber of the coke oven is equipped with a separate thermal storage chamber.

There was nothing difficult about the coke oven, and after having heat-resistant bricks, he built it in one go.

The only fly in the ointment is that the coke oven cannot work continuously, and the fire must be extinguished first every time the material is taken out, and then water is poured into the material chamber to cool the coke before the coke can be taken.

In order to ensure a continuous supply of coke, Chen Xian built two of the same coke ovens, each with 10 chambers and 11 heating chambers.

In order to blow air to the heating furnace of the coke oven, each coke oven has eleven water wheels to provide power, which drive the cam connecting rod and pull the bellows.

When the coke oven, iron-making furnace, and reverberatory furnace are running day and night, Chen Xian can produce tens of thousands of catties of wrought iron every day.

The wrought iron was transported back to Yiyuan, where it was produced in a hydraulic forge to produce a variety of iron and steel.

These products include arquebuses, plate armor, piercing armor, various weapons, various iron tools......

Part of the pig iron was cast directly into small cannons, namely flying sand cannons, and large fortification cannons in the ironworks.

……

With the busy transportation between Nanzhuangzi and Yiyuan, Chen Xian found that the weight of the two-wheeled cart in this era was too small and the efficiency was extremely low, and the four-wheeled Taiping car was very difficult to walk because it had no steering device, and the efficiency was lower than that of the two-wheeled cart.

In order to solve the transportation bottleneck, Chen Xian had to put the development of a four-wheeled carriage with a steering device on the agenda.

The animal carts of this era were basically two-wheeled vehicles, and most of them were only attached to one animal.

In order to maintain balance, the two-wheeled carriage needs to allow the livestock to bear a part of the downward pressure of the cargo, which leads to the inefficient use of the two-wheeled carriage.

The carriage itself maintains balance, and the animals only need to take on the forward traction. Based on the relationship between rolling friction and the gravitational force of the object, we know that this traction force may be less than one-tenth of the gravity of the carriage itself.

However, the four-wheeled carriage is not just equipped with two more wheels, and there is no way to turn this kind of carriage if the front and rear axles are hard-connected.

This kind of hard-connected carriage existed in this era, called the Taiping chariot, which could only be transported for short distances on special roads.

To solve the steering problem of the four-wheeled carriage, it is necessary to design a steering system for the front and rear axles, so that the front and rear axles can rotate opposite each other.

This steering system is generally two frames with separate front and rear, and the middle is connected by a steering shaft.

With Chen Xian's current process ability, the production of this steering system is not difficult, and the steering shaft can be realized with castings, forged steel parts or wooden structures for separate frames.

……

When Chen Xian transformed iron-making technology, some technologies were also applied to the mining and smelting of copper ore, which doubled the output of Huojia copper mine.

At the same time, downstream of the Nanzhuangzi Ironworks, construction began on a larger forging plant and a cement plant......

On the banks of the rivers around the Yiyuan Plain, several forging and cement factories have also been built.

In order to solve the problem of cement crushing, Chen Xian even put ball mills on the research agenda.

……