Half a month has passed since the affairs of the Stone Tribe, and today Su Yan came to the smelting area in the north of the Source City, and today, a very important achievement for the Dragon Tribe is about to appear, that is, bronze.

When Su Yan was seventeen years old, he found copper ore and mined and smelted it, and the appearance of the first furnace of blister copper represented the dragon tribe's entry into the Bronze Age.

Before the advent of bronze tools, the dragon tribe had always used stone tools and bone tools, and there was no way to use even wood tools because there were no better knives.

After the appearance of bronze tools, the development speed of the dragon tribe has risen impressively, copper spears and copper axes instead of stone spears and stone axes, people with copper shovels and copper pickaxes are active in copper mining areas and cultivated land, and copper knives are all kinds of wooden furniture into every household.

The Bronze Age and the Age of Agrarian Age are the best symbols of the development of civilization.

The bronze came out, but it wasn't enough, that was because the dragon tribe could only smelt blister copper, and there were too many impurities in blister copper, and it was impossible to even use blister copper to cast kitchen knives and pots.

Think about what kind of results will be caused in the end when a kitchen knife cast in coarse copper is used to cut vegetables and cut meat, and rice and vegetables are cooked in a pot cast in coarse copper.

Therefore, the knives used to cut vegetables and meat in the Dragon tribe are still stone knives, and the pots used to cook rice and vegetables are still pottery.

Blister copper was only the beginning of the Bronze Age, and the pinnacle of the Bronze Age was bronze before the Bronze Age was replaced by the Iron Age.

Bronze, that is, copper-tin alloy, bronze has high strength and low melting point, 25% of tin smelting bronze, the melting point will be reduced to 800 degrees, and the melting point of blister copper is about 1,000 degrees.

Bronze castability is good, wear-resistant and chemically stable, because of the particularity of bronze, the Bronze Age was directly replaced by the Bronze Age in history, there is no Bronze Age, only the Bronze Age, and even at the beginning of the Iron Age, the iron still cannot be compared with the bronze that has developed to the peak.

In fact, it is a misconception to call it "bronze", the initial color of bronze is not cyan, but golden yellow, and high-purity bronze is close to the color of 18K gold when it is first made.

The ancients called it "Ji Jin", and the "gold" mentioned in the pre-Han literature often refers to bronze, but according to the different proportions of copper and tin, bronze will also have silver-white and pale yellow.

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In the age of the use of bronze ware, bronze was closest in color to gold, and was a symbol of strength, whether it was sacrifice, daily use, or decoration, these acts were only used by people who were not rich or noble.

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Because bronze is prone to oxidation, the surface will be covered with green rust after many years of moisture or burial in the soil, so there is the term "bronze".

The Bronze Age will eventually be replaced by the Iron Age, and there are also iron mines in areas controlled by the Dragon Tribe, such as Akagi, which is named after the red land in the area near Akagi, and there is a high probability that there will be iron ore under that land.

However, Su Yan was not in a hurry to let the tribesmen mine iron ore, the melting point of iron is higher, and it is not even possible to use charcoal to make iron, the best iron-making fuel is coal, but it is difficult to find traces of coal, and the most suitable for the dragon tribe is only copper.

Its practical coarse copper casting utensils are very coarse, and they need to be carefully polished before they can be used after casting, and if they are replaced with bronze, they can be directly cast with more delicate utensils.

From the initial blister copper to the final bronze, there is the most important step in between, pure copper.

Pure copper, also known as red copper and red copper, is suitable for forging and not casting.

It's just that it's too difficult and too difficult to break through the middle step, and since the dragon tribe smelted blister copper, they have been trying to purify blister copper.

Now Su Yan is twenty-seven years old, this step has been going for ten years, and now it has finally succeeded, pure copper has been refined, the next step is to smelt bronze, the most important step to refine pure copper is completed, which represents that the smelting technology of the dragon tribe has reached a certain level, and there is not much difficulty in carrying out the last step, and success is in sight.

The raw material for smelting bronze is pure copper, the other is tin, the natural cassiterite color is gray and black, shiny, tin ore and even silver ore are often the associated ore of copper ore, and the existence of tin ore is found in the only copper mining area of the dragon tribe.

Tin is easier to smelt and process than copper, tin is soft, can be melted at more than 200 degrees, and will turn into powder at tens of degrees below zero, so it is not excellent in practicality and is not taken seriously.

However, when tin and copper are combined, it is the pinnacle bronze of the Bronze Age.

Ten years, in order to purify the blister copper, the clay blast furnace has changed greatly, the height and volume are increasing, and the internal structure is also constantly changing, from simple to complex, mainly there is a large pottery that can be tilted or taken out inside, and the blister copper ingot is placed in this large pottery for heating and purification, and after becoming copper liquid, the "large" pottery is tilted, and the copper liquid can flow out.

This can no longer be called an earthen blast furnace, it is a real smelting furnace, there are two such smelting furnaces in the smelting area, which are specially used to purify blister copper, and now this smelting furnace is about to be used to smelt bronze.

The original clay blast furnace still exists, the height and volume have also increased, the number has decreased, the weight of smelting blister copper every day is still about 200 catties, and more than 40,000 catties of blister copper can be smelted a year, and this clay blast furnace can also be used to smelt tin.

Su Yan came to the smelting area, and the manager of the smelting area, Snake Li, had already arrived, and led the clansmen to finish the preparations before smelting bronze, so they could only open the furnace for smelting.

Earlier, Su Yan did not directly hand over the task of smelting bronze to Sheli, but only took out the task of purification, and the task of purifying blister copper alone made it difficult for Sheli to understand, not to mention the complex thing of copper-tin alloy, in fact, even the process of blister copper purification had Su Yan's participation, step by step to remove the main impurities in blister copper, and finally leave barely qualified pure copper.

In the past ten years, Sheli and other clansmen in the smelting area have made great progress, and the biggest progress is the high advancement of the earth blast furnace, which is almost Su Yan's limit, but Sheli and the other clansmen have used their wisdom to build a better smelting furnace.

Seeing the arrival of the king, Sheli and the other clansmen stopped one after another, turned around and shouted in the direction of Su Yan: "King! ”

It was a fanatical belief, like the fanatical belief in the gods that the Stone Tribe believed in before it was conquered.

Su Yan waved his hand, and then walked in front of the snake.

"Wang, everything is ready, and you can start smelting."

"Well, let's get started."

"No"

Su Yan watched from the sidelines, and Sheli commanded the clansmen to work.

Take out the large pottery in the smelting furnace, put the copper ingots and tin ingots in proportion, and put the large pottery back in a hurry, you need to put the charcoal into the smelting furnace first, so that the charcoal can be put in the fastest way.

After that, the large copper objects containing the copper and tin ingots are placed in the smelting furnace.