This year is a warm winter, and the ice on the river has melted before the first month. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

The blower designed by Zhong Yu and the craftsmen had been erected yesterday, and today Zhong Yu plans to open the furnace again to test the coke.

When Zhong Yu came to the blast furnace by the Yongding River, there were already many craftsmen waiting.

A blast furnace was built by the Yongding River, which was built by craftsmen transferred from Wang Gong's factory and built according to Zhong Yu's requirements.

This Wang Gong factory mainly manufactured gunpowder, mainly for the pro-army, and nominally belonged to the Ministry of Industry, but it had already evolved into a royal arsenal, which was no longer just a manufacturer of gunpowder, and was supervised by the factory superintendent dispatched by the celebrant superintendent. Nowadays, most of the best craftsmen in the Ming Dynasty have been collected by Wang Gong Factory, and Zhong Yu, a few masters who watch the fire and build the blast furnace, still use the classic formula of black fire medicine to find Wang Gong Factory in exchange.

In order to prevent heat dissipation, Zhong Yu also ordered the craftsman to build a layer of refractory bricks half a meter thick inside, so the blast furnace was very large, and at the halfway point, people piled up stone houses along the furnace wall, and a lot of coking coal was piled up in the house.

Such a blast furnace is different from the ordinary blast furnace, on the one hand, the length is increased, on the other hand, the furnace wall has also been widened a lot, this blast furnace has quite a few descendants of the prototype of the blast furnace, the bottom of the furnace around and the upper part of the carbon bricks, the lower part of the clay bricks; The whole stove was four people high, half a room in size, and there was an air inlet below. This air inlet is specially designed for the installation of blowers.

Zhong Yu ordered people to build the blast furnace on the Yongding River, precisely to use the water conservancy blower, which not only solved the problem of manpower shortage, but also greatly improved efficiency.

Of course, you can make such a water blower. On the one hand, I want to thank my ancestors, Zhong Yu and those craftsmen of Wang Gongchang who spent a lot of effort to find the relevant information of the Han Dynasty, and on the other hand, it is naturally the advanced knowledge of later generations brought by Zhong Yu.

Seeing that everything was ready, Zhong Yu breathed a sigh of relief, he was afraid that those craftsmen would do bad things and not be able to achieve his own ideas, he didn't expect these guys to do so perfectly, but he almost underestimated them.

Today is the day of opening the furnace to ignite and take carbon, and now everything is ready, Li Yongtao, the craftsman in charge of the blast furnace, saw Zhong Yu coming, and hurriedly ran over to ask Zhong Yu to ignite the furnace for trial.

Zhong Yu waved his hand imposingly and said, "Light the fire, try the furnace first!" ”

Craftsman Li agreed, and hurriedly shouted at the craftsmen to do it.

Soon, the dewatering wind wheel and the blower box were connected, and the coking coal in the blast furnace was ignited. Driven by the turbulent water of the Yongding River, the blower began to click with the crank movement, and the air immediately blew out from the box mouth.

The water flow is turbulent, the air outlet of the blower is also continuous, and the wind is extremely strong, the air outlet is facing the air outlet of the blast furnace, suddenly, the coking coal that was only emitting black smoke and not completely burning quickly began to crackle, and the coking coal in the furnace burned immediately.

Zhong Yu couldn't test the temperature, and of course he didn't know how to read the fire, so he could only stand aside and wait nervously with bated breath.

The craftsmen around him were also silent, but they all had some faint expectations in their hearts. Because Zhong Yu promised that if they achieved qualified good carbon, their salary would be doubled. If you make good steel, double it. Their craftsmanship is top-notch, but in Wang Gongchang, they are exploited by those officials and officials, living a life of poverty, everyone is just coping with things, there is no day of chaos, how the iron is refined, it has nothing to do with them, anyway, as long as the quantity and quality are completed, Shangguan will not care, and they are even more lazy to care. But since he came here, Zhong Yu has not only been very polite to them, but his salary has also been much higher, so he is full of enthusiasm.

Smoke began to rise from the roof of the stove, and the whole stove was red.

A few craftsmen who watched the fire took a deep breath and said, "My lord, in the past, we used to take coke, which was roughly this temperature."

Zhong Yu had seen the coke they made, and naturally knew that if it was only at this temperature, it would be impossible to completely remove the sulfur in the coking coal. At that moment, he nodded his head: "Wait, the burning is not enough, we have to wait a while to get it."

After waiting for another half an hour, the temperature in the furnace continued to rise, and Zhong Yu estimated that the opportunity was almost over, and said, "Take carbon."

At the sound of an order, several blacksmiths had already taken out special tools to take out the hot coke, and there were many things that followed, such as bonding, solidifying, and shrinking, but these things, the blacksmiths were good at it.

After working for more than an hour, the sample of coke was delivered to Zhong Yu.

Zhong Yu looked left and right, and saw that the carbon body was jet black, without a trace of impurities, and it looked good, but Zhong Yu was not sure, so he turned around and handed it to Li Jiangtou next to him, and asked, "Li Jiangtou, come and see, how is this coke?"

Li Jiangtou took the coke in Hao Fenglou's hand, and his eyes widened. How much coke have I seen, the coke refined today is very different from the past, the color is black and shiny, and there is no variegated color on the whole body, which is really breathtaking.

Li Jiangtou chick nodded as if he couldn't help pecking rice, and said with praise: "My lord, this coke is no longer the best grade, but the best."

Zhong Yu pursed his lips and smiled slightly, it's not very difficult.

In fact, everything is most afraid of seriousness, but it is a pity that although there is more than innovation in ancient times, it is not serious enough, and refuses to refine, and everything I do, in addition to some necessary improvements to increase the temperature of the blast furnace, the most important thing is the word "serious".

Zhong Yu said with a smile: "Since the coke is qualified, then use the coke to smelt a furnace of iron first, remember, the furnace must be cleaned well, with this blast furnace and blower, the heat should not be a problem, coke is also the best, whether you can refine good iron, it depends on you."

With these conditions, it is estimated that it should not be difficult for the blast furnace to reach the temperature of completely melting iron ore.

The craftsmen cheered up, some went to carry iron ore, some prepared coke, some went to clean the furnace, and after a busy time, another hour or two passed.

Then everyone started to make a stove, put in iron and stone, and ignited the coke.

While waiting, the temperature in the furnace begins to rise until a critical point is reached.

Immediately afterward, molten iron flowed out of a notch.

Some people couldn't help but exclaim: "It's molten iron, molten iron, iron turned into water."

If you talk about molten iron, everyone has seen it, but all of it melts into molten iron, but not many people have seen it, once it melts into molten iron, it means that a large number of impurities are separated from the iron.

With molten iron, you can make any kind of iron you want, and this is no problem for making steel billets.

The next thing is much easier, with the right iron to be smelted into steel, it is easy to use the steel filling method.

The steel filling method is easy to operate and easy to master. If you want to obtain steel with different carbon contents, you only need to mix pig iron and wrought iron in a certain proportion and smelt them.

Today's events have been quite successful, and Zhong Yu can't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

As for how much carbon content is the most suitable steel for making and controlling, and how much steel with carbon content is the most suitable steel for making swords, it needs to be opened and tempered again and again in the future to summarize the data.

Zhong Yu instructed these blacksmiths to develop a habit of recording after practicing a furnace of iron. This time, the approximate heat of the fire, the strength of the wind, the time of smelting, the color of the molten iron, and the amount of coke added, all need to be recorded by experienced veterans, and then according to the quality of the steel, continue to correct, so as to improve.

In fact, as far as innovation is concerned, the Celestial Empire at this time is definitely a dust, whether it is the four major inventions, just steelmaking, there has already been a steel-filling method and a coke steel-making method, and this steel-making method did not appear in the West until after the Industrial Revolution, even if the Japanese people are proud of the Japanese knife, it was also born from the Tang knife, using the steel technology, but although it is innovative, it has not been carried forward, but it has not moved forward. The most important reason for this Zhong Yu summed up, in fact, to put it bluntly, there is no scientific method, how to use new technology to make good steel, you need to constantly ponder, constantly correct, how much coke, how much furnace heat is appropriate, a little deviation, the result may be different.

Thinking of the sword, Zhong Yu suddenly remembered the Qi knife invented by Qi Jiguang. Qi Dao learned the posture of the Japanese sword, and changed the style of the past as a whole, and at the same time made adjustments based on its own characteristics. The Ming army did not need to pay attention to the grinding of a single knife body like the Japanese Kou, but paid more attention to the overall efficacy and manufacturing cost. The overall strength of a Ming knife of this type is very good, and it is very suitable for fighting on a large-scale battlefield.

Zhong Yu secretly said in his heart: When the steelmaking technology is mature, you must make a few Qi knives to try.

Soon a month passed, the book dedicated to recording steelmaking has been densely recorded countless information, Zhong Yu encouraged everyone to discuss, teach each other experience, naturally, in fact, there are also people who want to hide secrets, but Zhong Yu directly divided the blacksmiths into two groups, telling them that between the two groups, every month according to the quality of the steel, which group is good, the future salary will be doubled, no mother-in-law will find a way to find you a mother-in-law, and those who have a mother-in-law will bring your mother-in-law early.

So everyone didn't dare to hide their secrets, and after the daily tempering of the furnace, they got together to analyze and discuss according to various data, and the steel that came out was obviously much better than before.

Although Zhong Yu is half-baked about this steelmaking, he has a more serious energy, and the steelmaking skills of this Huotong workshop are improving very quickly!

After a month of continuous attempts, the craftsmen gradually mastered the law, and the steel smelted not only greatly reduced the cost and greatly increased the output by using the coke ironmaking method, but also made leaps and bounds in the quality of the steel.

In the past few days, the craftsmen have built more than a dozen fire systems, each of which has been experimented more than a dozen times, and none of them have exploded, Zhong Yu can't help but be overjoyed.

Zhong Yu drew it from his memory and handed over the style of the Qi knife to Li Jiangtou, and explained the characteristics of the Qi knife, and instructed that the knife ridge must use low-carbon soft steel, and the blade should be made of high-carbon hard steel, and then forged it.

Craftsman Li was listening, nodding his head incessantly, and seeing that Craftsman Li understood, Zhong Yu instructed him to build a few first.