For more than a month after the Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhong Hao has been busy working in various workshops inside and outside Jingqiang Village. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoThe revenge of the Western Xia army has not come again, and at first Jingqiang Village was still on guard, but later saw that there had been nothing to do, so they should be busy with something.

However, there is no shortage of scouts in this faction, and the scouts on the west bank of the Guye River maintain more than three teams every day, and the range of sentry is at least fifty miles, and Yang Huaiyu regards this scout as part of the training. In the future, when marching and fighting, scouts are also an indispensable job

According to the test notes of several old craftsmen remembered by the students of the two schools, Zhong Hao formulated a production standard that was still relatively rough for the time being, so that the craftsmen could make standard gunpowder, and then make standard earth-shaking thunder and ** bag.

That time, when the cavalry of the party was defeated, the earth-shaking thunder and ** Bao showed their might, and several old craftsmen in the gunpowder workshop made great contributions, and Zhong Hao gave them the prescribed reward as promised. There are also test notes that Zhong Hao is more satisfied, and Zhong Hao's reward of ten yuan of test notes is also distributed as promised, and the enthusiasm of several old craftsmen and the children of the two schools has risen sharply.

Zhong Hao also taught the technique of making granular gunpowder to those old craftsmen, allowing them to slowly experiment and ponder. As long as the particle gunpowder made can satisfy Zhong Hao, Zhong Hao promises a greater reward. Zhong Hao hoped that the particle gunpowder could make the power of the earth-shaking thunder more powerful and become a sharp weapon in Jingqiang Village

The craftsmen of the brewing workshop in Jingqiang Village are becoming more and more proficient, and now the output of soju is getting bigger and bigger, and there is just harvested grain, so there is no need to worry about the raw materials of the wine for the time being.

Now there is no shortage of horses in Jingqiang Village for the time being. The most regular cavalry battalion of more than 300 horses is not sufficient. Because there will inevitably be losses in training, and the number will definitely drop. However, the cavalry battalion of Jingqiang Village can keep one man for the time being, and there are more than 30 horses to prepare for horses, Zhong Hao feels that he can deal with it for the time being. The money earned from selling soju will be used for the construction of Jingqiang Village for the time being.

Jingqiang Village was built from a wasteland, there was nothing inside, all kinds of facilities were lacking, and it needed to be built as soon as possible. And the materials for construction need the money earned from shochu to buy

Now that the weather is getting cooler, Zhong Hao feels that the time has come for him to make money from iron furnaces and coal.

There are many surface coal seams around Jingqiang Village, which are very easy to mine.

Zhong Hao originally thought that mining and selling it was a good business. But then I remembered that the most important thing in Hedong was coal, and Shanxi in later generations was the largest coal base in the country. As for the Yongxing Military Road to the south, there seems to be no shortage of coal. If you sell it farther and transport heavy coal, it doesn't seem to be profitable, and the cost of transporting dry roads in this era is too high. Thinking about it like this, I feel that this business is not so easy to do.

As for the iron stove with a hearth and the chimney made of thin iron sheet made according to the appearance of later generations, it has proved to be very marketable in Qingzhou, but it is worth making.

But then Zhong Hao found that he had some preconceived ideas, and after Zhong Hao asked Han Hu and a few other old people who had been in the northwest for a long time, he learned that there were not many carboniferous veins found in the east of the river.

Zhong Hao couldn't help but scold himself for being stupid, Shanxi and other places are rich in coal reserves, which were only discovered by later generations, and people today are afraid that they can only occasionally find some shallow carboniferous mines, and they don't know that the ground under their feet is charcoal.

It seems that there should still be a good profit from mining carbon. Zhong Hao organized a large number of people in Jingqiang Village to mine in order to cope with the large demand for coal after the iron stove equipped with chimneys was popularized.

However, Zhong Hao felt that the charcoal was a primary product after all, and the profit was too thin. This thing is heavy and expensive to transport, reducing profits.

Zhong Hao felt that refining it into coke was a good choice.

Coke is not only less soot, but also high in heat, which must be liked by those rich and noble, so that it can be sold at a good price.

Moreover, Zhong Hao felt that coke could also be used to make iron and steel, and it would inevitably be possible to make better steel.

In this era, steelmaking was mainly to melt the malleable iron, and then repeatedly beat it to knock out impurities to obtain forged steel.

And the malleable iron used for forging steel is very rare. The blast furnaces of the Great Song Dynasty at this time were all made of charcoal, and it was impossible to completely melt iron ore into molten iron. Therefore, this kind of malleable iron that can be forged repeatedly, with better flexibility and less impurities, produces very little, and most of the iron ore smelted is pig iron with more carbon and other impurities. These pig irons are too brittle to be used to forge steel, and can only be used for civil ironware in heavy iron pots.

At this time, the best steel is 100 forging steel, can be malleable iron after calcining, beating, quenching, folding four processes for a forging, so repeatedly forged 100 times and 100 steel, this 100 forging steel rate is very small, it can only be used to make knives, swords, can not be used for the manufacture of standard weapons, forged steel of general weapons, forging ten times eight times is rare.

Iron ore cannot be completely melted, and naturally the temperature of the blast furnace with charcoal cannot reach the temperature that can dissolve iron.

In fact, carboniferous has been widely used for a long time. The use of coal ironmaking can improve efficiency and reduce costs on a large scale; After all, charcoal is not easy to obtain, and it needs to be burned into charcoal, which costs a lot of manpower.

However, the iron made from coal is mixed with too many impurities, and it is not suitable for iron smelting at all. Generally, charcoal is used to make iron, only a lot of impurities will be produced, and the iron that is refined is very inferior, and it is easy to be brittle, and most of the smelted iron is pig iron containing impurities, and the amount of malleable iron is not as good as charcoal. Therefore, in the Great Song Dynasty, there was basically no iron smelting with coal.

However, Zhong Hao knew that coke could meet the conditions for refining, because coke not only had fewer impurities, but also had more heat.

Coke is made from high temperatures of carbon. The high temperature is used to remove impurities, and finally the coal is smelted into coke.

Zhong Hao commanded the craftsmen and soldiers of the Pingxi Army to build a sealed blast furnace that could make coke by the Kuye River. The reason why the blast furnace was built by the Kuye River is because it is difficult for the general blast furnace to reach the temperature of coke refining, Zhong Hao thought of installing a water conservancy blower on the blast furnace, which can make the combustion in the blast furnace more sufficient, and the temperature is easier to reach the high temperature of coke refining.

Zhong Hao and the carpenters of the Pingxi Army designed a large water blower. When Zhong Hao was sorting out the materials of his own research institute in his later generations, he once happened to see the information of a water conservancy blower in the Ming Dynasty, and he used it at this time.

The blower appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty, taking the water drainage power, that is, choosing the bank of the turbulent river to erect a wooden frame, erecting a rotating shaft on the wooden frame, installing a large water wheel at the upper and lower ends, and installing a leaf plate around the wheel axle of the launching wheel to bear the water flow, which is a device that converts hydraulic power into mechanical rotation; In front of the upper horizontal wheel, a drum-shaped small wheel is installed, and the upper horizontal wheel is connected with a "chord"; A crank is installed at the top end of the drum wheel, and a connecting rod that can swing is installed on the crank, and the other end of the connecting rod is connected to the bellows. In this way, when the water flow hits the lower horizontal wheel, it will drive the upper horizontal wheel to rotate. The connecting rod connected to it moves, and the connecting rod reciprocates, so that the row fan opens and closes, and blows air, which is almost the prototype of the later generation of blowers.

According to Zhong Hao's instructions, several Pingxi army carpenters finally designed and installed the water conservancy blower on the blast furnace for making coke.

The effect of the blast furnace test is very good, although the coke refined in the first furnace is not as good as the quality that Zhong Hao has seen in later generations, after Zhong Hao has burned, he is quite satisfied with these cokes.

With this good coke, Zhong Hao couldn't help but have expectations for refining better steel. In fact, the process of steelmaking is similar to that of coke, and only the inside of the blast furnace needs to be slightly modified so that the molten iron can flow out.

In this era, charcoal ironmaking could not completely melt molten iron, and there were naturally many impurities in it, and it was naturally difficult to make malleable iron forging steel. The iron formed by the molten iron can naturally be made into malleable iron, and it is even qualified and good steel without forging. When the time comes, it will be used to make weapons and armor, and it will inevitably be sharper.

With this coke, even if the iron ore cannot be melted into molten iron, more malleable iron can be smelted, because the coke has few impurities. Of course, as long as there are more tests and improvements, Zhong Hao is confident that he will melt iron ore into molten iron.

However, Jingqiang Village does not have many iron embryos, and if you want to test it, you need to get more iron embryos.

Recently, things in Jingqiang Village have been dealt with almost completely, Zhong Hao plans to go to Bingzhou, and find his Taishan old man to get some iron embryos or iron ore for Jingqiang Village, and it is best to get permission to cast weapons for Jingqiang Village by the way.

Also, the battle report reported by Jingqiang Village has not been heard from for so long, so we just went to explore the situation together.

Of course, Zhong Hao still wants to follow some personal feelings, he hasn't seen Fu Ruozhu for a long time, and he misses him abnormally, so he can take the opportunity to meet him to comfort his lovesickness. To be continued.

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