For more than a month, under the organization of Ling Xinyan of Lingju County and Sima Li Yanzhi of Lingju County, more than 1,000 county soldiers and thousands of displaced people hurriedly built new homes on those wastelands near the mountains in the downstream direction of the reverse water.

The winter wheat seeds selected by the county government officials from the warehouses of Fan Ji Grain Shop were also gradually distributed to the displaced people as the reclamation progressed. The 50 strong cattle that Li Yanzhi bought from the bald department were also distributed to the officials in Xinli to arrange for the households to use in turn, and let these officials sign an agreement with the county government.

If the cattle go missing or die for no reason, the company where the lost cattle are located will be responsible for compensation. If the ox is deliberately killed, the killer is held accountable according to the law. In this way, the possible mutilation of these animals among the displaced people is eliminated. After all, this batch of strong cattle is not easy to come by, and it is also a vital group of laborers in farming. Xin Yan and Li Yanzhi did not dare to take any risks.

In this troubled world, the only way to punish possible illegal acts is to punish them with heavy penalties and increase the cost of crime, so that those with bad intentions can be restrained.

The fifty or so good horses were also sent to the county government by Li Yanzhi a few days ago, and Xin Peng personally interrogated them, and handed them over to the scribe in charge of trade to pay them to the caravan that set off. It was transported to Guzang and Wuxing for sale. Whether these horses can be sold, Li Yanzhi is not worried at all, all he is worried about is whether these horses can be exchanged for enough coal and iron for the county.

Coal was called charcoal in this era. Poorly designed furnaces can cause death from closed coal to produce large amounts of toxic gases such as carbon monoxide. Therefore, the people did not use this kind of coal for heating. However, some craftsmen began to use coal as a fuel for smelting as early as the early Han Dynasty, so although the intensity of coal mining during this period was not large, it was still enough to meet the needs of smelting work.

In the mountains on the northeast side of Lingju County, there is a small coal mine set up by the county government. The monthly output of this small coal mine is only four or five hundred stones, which is enough to meet the needs of the smelting workshop with the county government as the main body. After Xin Yan took over the post of Lingju County Commander, he also sent Liu Jiwu to this coal mine to buy coal for the newly established workshop.

At this time, in addition to some of the pig iron that Li Yanzhi bought from the county government with great pains, part of it was used by the blacksmiths to forge spears, swords and other weapons by traditional methods, and some of it was selectively forged into wrought iron by the blacksmiths, and most of the remaining pig iron was piled up in the treasury. Although Li Yanzhi has already made his own decision on how to use these metals, he suffers from not having a relatively generous spare time to allow himself to practice this idea.

As a mining child, Li Yanzhi himself knows a little about metallurgy. In this era, it was customary to rely on the frying method to remove impurities from pig iron and smelt qualified wrought iron or mild steel. Obviously, this product does not meet the increasing demand for large quantities. It is even more impossible to rush to produce and provide a large amount of armaments for the use of front-line armies in a wartime state.

Wrought iron and mild steel, which are not qualified blanks, need to be forged to become steel that meets the requirements for the preparation of ordnance. As a result, both man-hours and manpower will be consumed more on production. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a more efficient smelting method to replace the frying method.

Coal has been used for smelting, and Li Yanzhi thinks that the first choice is the steel filling method. The first is that it is easy to operate, and the second is that the smelting technology and other hardware conditions of this era are also very suitable for this method. Coal is already being used for smelting, and it is time to create a furnace suitable for the steel-filling method. And create a medium that can withstand high temperature calcination and melting of molten iron in the furnace.

In addition, the formula of the proportion of wrought iron obtained from the test to facilitate the production of large quantities of steel that meets the requirements of sword forging is also a matter of urgency that must be solved as soon as the matter is on the right track.

Although the steel produced by the steel filling method still needs to go through the forging process before it can be made into swords and other weapons, the carburizing and forging process required to change from wrought iron and low-carbon steel to high-carbon steel is omitted, and the manpower and man-hours will undoubtedly be greatly reduced. If this can be realized, it will undoubtedly be of great benefit to this era of labor shortages and low productivity.

Li Yanzhi first expanded the scale of the ironwork workshop, and relocated some of the craftsmen involved in other trades, making room for the craftsmen to cast two huge hearths out of clay. According to his vision, coal was used as fuel in the two hearths, and then wrought iron bars were coiled outside the pig iron block and smelted in the furnaces. As for what quality of steel can be obtained after smelting, he has no bottom in his own heart now. When you act for the first time, you always have to try it to know.

Thus, after several days of intensive preparation, the blacksmiths cast the batch of pig iron smelted satin brought by the county government into wrought iron for later use. Li Yanzhi has been in the workshop wholeheartedly these days, and it can be said that he has witnessed the whole process of turning these pig iron into mature iron billets. In the process, some problems have indeed been exposed.

Lingju County is just a small county with a population of only tens of thousands, and due to congenital conditions, the county produces neither iron ore nor coal. However, it is good to produce coal in Guangwu County. Although the yield is not high, it is always better than nothing. And the shortage of handicraftsmen caused by the small population is also a congenital deficiency that cannot be solved quickly.

This deficiency, when put into concrete matters, has formed an obvious defect: because of the shortage of the number of people employed in the handicraft industry, not only has it led to the undesirable phenomenon of technological blockade, but also the imperfection of the innovation mechanism and the incentive mechanism does not seem to be able to mobilize the enthusiasm and creativity of these handicraft workers. As a result, the quality of wrought iron billets produced these days can be described as uneven.

And among these wrought iron billets produced, Li Yanzhi saw that the technically qualified products still accounted for a minority! More than sixty percent and nearly seventy percent of the products are not qualified! It is conceivable that even if steel is cast from such wrought iron and pig iron, it is most likely a defective product that needs to be reprocessed. His intention to use the new law to shorten working hours and save financial resources was not possible.

To change this, the first thing to do is to break through the current technological blockade. After staying in the workshop for a long time, Li Yanzhi also figured out some doorways. Among the craftsmen who worked sweatily day after day, he had identified the old blacksmiths who had mastered the most essential blacksmith skills.

Among these blacksmiths, there are also many people who were previously recruited by the county government to concentrate on work and production, and they have several connections in the county government's workshop earlier, so both sides are not strangers to each other.

Li Yanzhi greeted the old blacksmiths, and together they went to the warehouse where the wrought iron billets were stored, selected a batch of wrought iron billets that met the standards, and stacked the iron materials that were not very passable, ready to return to the furnace for rerefining or secondary forging later.

Li Yanzhi attaches great importance to these people who have mastered the core technology in his heart, and through what he has seen in the workshop in the past few days, he is also thinking about what kind of means and rhetoric should be used to persuade these people to contribute the core technology they have mastered. These core technologies are the most important thing if the new steelmaking method is to be implemented and become a regular one.

The key to the steel filling method is to use the simplest method and the shortest man-hours, and consume the least financial and material resources per unit of output to produce as many wrought iron billets as possible that meet the technical requirements. The pig iron is melted into molten iron, mixed with these wrought iron billets, and through different ratios of pig iron and wrought iron, rough steel that meets technical standards is produced in batches.

However, at the moment, Li Yanzhi is also very clear in his heart that even if he works hard to break the technological monopoly of the core technology, implement the steel filling method, and use this to pry the storm of technological innovation in the entire Liangzhou smelting industry and further improve the equipment level of the Liangzhou army, it is also a relatively long time ago. It is easier to change the county, but it is a goal that will take a long time to implement to change the whole state.

However, at the moment, Li Yanzhi really has no better way in his heart. He himself only knows one thing about metallurgy, but he doesn't know the other. Although he knew how to do it, it was not something that could be done by letting him do it himself.

Therefore, under such circumstances, Li Yanzhi could only retreat and offer his own-for-tat method towards the technological monopoly, in the hope that by breaking this technological monopoly, he would immediately raise the equipment level of the Lingju county soldiers. After all, as Sima of this county now, if the war breaks out again, he will definitely have no way to retreat.