After spending another day on the matter of weaving linen, Su Yan finally remembered a very important thing - the three green stones that Su Yan brought back when the expedition team went out for the second time this year.

These three green stones are not ordinary stones, Su Yan guessed that they may be copper ore, and the green on the stones may be patina.

If he wanted to prove whether these three green stones were copper ore, with the current conditions, Su Yan could only try to smelt them.

Smelting copper is simpler than smelting iron, the melting point of iron is 1538 degrees, and copper is only 1083 degrees, so in the history of civilization, human beings first smelted copper and then smelted iron, but it is a bit troublesome to smelt copper under the conditions in Su Yan's hands, and it will always be necessary to smelt metal on a large scale in the future, and this time it will be regarded as a trial.

It is possible to use firewood when firing pottery, but the temperature at which firewood burns cannot reach the melting point of copper, and no coal is found, so Su Yan can only use charcoal to smelt copper.

Making charcoal is also not a simple matter, charcoal is a dark brown or black porous solid fuel left over from incomplete combustion or pyrolysis of wood or wood raw materials under the condition of insulating air.

If you want to make charcoal, simply put, you will first ignite the wood, and after burning half of it, place the wood in a closed and airtight space, let it slowly burn and decompose in a state of lack of oxygen, decompose harmful gases such as carbon monoxide, wood tar, and wood vinegar, leaving only charcoal, which is charcoal.

If you want to burn charcoal, you must first build a brick kiln, and the brick kiln should be sealed and impermeable as much as possible.

Because harmful gases such as carbon monoxide, wood tar, and wood vinegar are produced when burning charcoal, the brick kiln should be kept away from the dragon tribe's residence.

In one day, Su Yan and ten tribesmen set up a brick kiln covering an area of more than ten square meters in the area between the jungle and artificially planted fruit trees on the west side of the Dragon tribe's residence, and the exterior of the brick kiln was carefully painted with clay.

After the brick kiln was established, Su Yan did not rush to burn charcoal, first put a pile of firewood and grass into the brick kiln and lit it, then closed the kiln door, observed the situation of the brick kiln outside, and checked whether there was smoke coming out of the gap.

Such a test really found several air leaks, and Su Yan commanded the clansmen to plug the gaps with clay, until all the air leaks in the brick kiln were blocked by clay.

Next, it was time to burn charcoal, Su Yan found some people in the dragon tribe who were more powerful, such as Dali, Biao and others, and took them to the jungle to chop trees and chop firewood, until the wood obtained almost filled the internal space of the brick kiln before stopping, in order to obtain enough wood, the stone axes were damaged three times, and the remaining few stone axes are expected to be damaged in a short time.

Leaving a kiln door, adding hay as a ignition in the remaining space in the brick kiln, a fire burned, and soon the wood in the brick kiln was ignited by the fire, and when the wood burned much, Su Yan commanded the clansmen to block the kiln door of the brick kiln with adobe bricks, and pasted the gaps with clay, leaving no gaps.

The next day, Su Yan harvested a kiln of black charcoal, but when he was burning charcoal, Su Yan did not do nothing, he led his people to build a cylindrical furnace less than a meter high with adobe bricks, which was used to smelt copper.

I still remember that in that special era, in order to get more iron, people built a large number of earthen blast furnaces for ironmaking, although the final product quality is very poor, but with Su Yan's current situation, it is a good method, large earth blast furnaces will be built later, first build a small furnace to smelt three suspected copper ore.

The open top of the small stove is used to place charcoal and ore, and the bottom has a slag outlet and an air inlet.

After the charcoal is out of the kiln, Su Yan puts the cooled charcoal into a small stove, and finally puts three pieces of ore into the furnace and ignites the fire.

After the fire burns, a group of people out of the air inlet take a fan made of plant leaves to fan the wind, and temporarily replace the position of the bellows with artificial fans, so that the charcoal in the furnace is fully burned, and the temperature in the furnace is also increasing rapidly, until the temperature reaches the melting point of copper, and the copper in the copper ore begins to melt.

It didn't take long to smelt three pieces of copper ore, and after half a day, the temperature in the furnace had cooled down, and Su Yan commanded the clansmen to clean up the residue in the furnace.

Pure copper is purple-red, and it is not surprising that some near-red and near-purple colors appear on the blister copper that has just been smelted, but there are many impurities in this blister copper.

The melting point of pure copper is still too high, in the history of human civilization, the era before the Iron Age is the Bronze Age rather than the Bronze Age, bronze refers to pure copper, and bronze refers to the alloy of copper and tin or lead, the color is blue-gray.

The melting point of pure copper is 1083 degrees, but the melting point of bronze is between 700 and 900 degrees, which is much lower than that of pure copper, and casting bronze is far simpler than casting pure copper, not to mention that the hardness of bronze is higher than that of pure copper, which is more suitable for use as a metal tool, whether it is a farm tool or a weapon.

However, the process of smelting bronze is more complicated than the process of smelting pure copper, and even pure copper is not produced, thinking that smelting bronze is still a little far.

Playing with the blister copper that had just been smelted, Su Yan fell into thought.

This ore is indeed copper ore, and there should be a copper mine where copper ore is found, and there is a high probability that it is an easy copper mine, after all, copper ore can be found on the surface, but I don't know how big this copper mine is, but even a small copper mine is enough for the Dragon Tribe to mine, after all, the Dragon Tribe has just started in smelting metals, and it is more than a thousand catties of copper that can be smelted in a year at first.

Thinking about the copper mine, thinking about the smelted copper, thinking about the metal farm tools and metal weapons that were cast, etc., Su Yan threw these thoughts out of his mind, and he didn't know the specific situation of the copper mine for the time being, what was the use of thinking so much.

Su Yan plans to take someone to explore in person in a few days, and then make the next decision after understanding the specific situation of the copper mine.

"Alas!" Thinking about the copper ore that might soon be mined, Su Yan sighed deeply, and the problem that plagued the development of the Dragon Tribe appeared again.

What is the reason why the dragon tribe has to go to war almost every year or two?

For the sake of the population, of course.

The more people you have, the more you can work, and the more you can do.

Now the total population of the Dragon Tribe is only more than 1,500 people, and minors still account for most of them, and if the labor force is transferred to mine copper mines, there will be fewer people to do other things. ()

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