As expected by Long Thirteen, it was close to the county seat of Neixiang, and it was almost dusk.

From a distance, the hills behind the county seat are still smoky.

"Big Boss"

Shang Ziyi said.

"According to your orders, twenty large kilns were opened on the mountain behind the county seat, ten of which were used to smelt iron and lead, and the rest were used as drying and bending kilns."

"It's still the same as Lingshi County, the height and width of the iron-smelting furnace are about one zhang more than that of Daming, and the iron-smelting furnace of Daming can produce two thousand catties of iron material per furnace, and we can wait for about one thousand catties."

"The steel pouring method was also used, in which wood was used as fuel for forging guns and cannons, and the iron produced was better, and the rest of the knives, spear heads, arrowheads, armor, etc. were made of coal from Dengzhou, which was also transported by boat."

"In this case, the ten furnaces can produce 30,000 catties of iron per day, which is 300 stones, but due to the use of Su Gang's manufacturing method, only half of the furnace can be used to smelt ore every day, and half is used to calcinate pig iron and wrought iron together, which is also used as a steel clamping method."

"In this case, half of the furnaces use the steel pouring method, and with the steel clamping method, up to 200 stone of fine iron can be produced every day."

"All the steel produced by the steel spraying method is used for firecrackers and artillery, and the steel clamping method is used for other objects."

Long 13 nodded, the so-called steel clamping method and steel pouring method were actually what he told the smelters in Shanxi after listening to what he saw in the book in later generations, and they explored it themselves.

Although the steel clamping method and the steel pouring method have long existed, they have been cherished in various places and have not been popularized on a large scale throughout the country, of course, as the imperial court will definitely give the task of paying steel to the iron merchants in Jiangnan or Fujian and Guangdong, who have used the steel coating method.

As for why it could not be smelted in Beijing and Nanjing, the private merchants naturally perfunctory the past with different iron content, impurities, and water quality for quenching, but the imperial court was very generous and did not pursue it.

In addition to the above three places, most of the iron obtained from smelting in other places is of average quality, and if you want to buy high-quality iron, you need to spend a lot of money to buy it.

At this time, the price of Sugang is very expensive compared to grain and gold.

Dragon Thirteen is not short of manpower now, but there is a shortage of iron ore, because the iron ore grade in Xiaguan Town is low, and a large amount of iron ore needs to be placed to calcinate the above amount of iron.

That is to say, if a furnace wants to produce 3,000 catties of iron, at least 10,000 catties of ore must be invested, which is still caused by the beneficiation in advance (the impurities on the ore will be knocked out with a small hammer in advance).

If you don't beneficiate, you have to invest a catty!

Long Thirteen Ji hung up on the kiln, and after getting off the ship, he did not enter the city immediately, but went directly there.

Because he knew that, according to the process, dusk was the time when the last kilns were opened.

Sure enough, when the group arrived at the kiln, they happened to run into the kiln!

In charge of the kiln is an old smelter in Jiaokoubao, who was naturally excited after seeing Long Thirteen, although they had already realized the smelting of the steel pouring method and the steel clamping method according to the method taught to them by Long Thirteen in Shanxi, but it did not reach the scale in front of them.

Long 13 walked to a furnace that was about to smelt refined iron by pouring steel, only to see a thin black man with a red upper body carefully open the seal of the molten iron, and then a large number of people lined up in front of the kiln to push a small cart with wrought iron ingots waiting in front of the exit.

"Puff"

The furnace water made a noise as soon as it met the air, and then the men hurriedly pushed the cart past the exit, just in time to pour the furnace water on the pig iron.

Because wrought iron is forged, the carbon content is low, and pig iron is calcined by wood/coal, the carbon content is the highest time, and there are more holes on it, the two are mixed, penetrated, and then slightly forged, you can get refined iron with moderate carbon content.

This kind of fine iron is not only hard, but also has a certain toughness, which is the best material for making weapons, because if the iron is too hard, it is fragile and easy to break, and if it is too soft, it will not work.

Shang Ziyi said just now

Some furnaces use coal as fuel, with the technology at this time, it is impossible to get good coking coal, can only be smelted with ordinary coal, and the iron obtained has more holes, which is just mixed with pig iron smelted with wood.

The iron material placed on the cart pushed by each person weighs about one stone, and after about 30 people have passed, the molten iron can be completely mixed and penetrated with the pig iron.

This process is still very dangerous, and the slightest carelessness is the destruction of the car (car), but most of the craftsmen at this time are both.

When the molten iron is fused with wrought iron, it will make a "crackling" sound, and the brave will obviously not be able to do this job.

Of course, the time for the furnace to produce water must be first and second, otherwise a furnace will be equipped with thirty such people, and no matter how rich the people in the hands of Long Thirteen are, it is impossible to do this, because a kiln also has a feeder, a person who adds coal and wood, takes care of the blower, and checks the furnace temperature (based on experience), how to do it also requires ten people.

After the mixing is completed, the iron needs to be transported to the side of the fine iron workshop for forging, Long 13 does not have a hydraulic forging hammer, can only rely on manual labor, fortunately he has nothing else, the craftsman is very rich.

After forging, the iron is fine iron, which can be transported to the workshop in the county for further processing, or to make artillery, or to make guns, or to make armor and weapons, and so on.

In this way, a furnace of molten iron and 10,000 catties of iron ore can only produce one catty of refined iron every day, which is seven catties.

This is still a two-day output, and it is about 3,000 catties per day.

The finished production rate of the guns and guns of the Dragon Thirteen is not high, and due to the frequent practice and use of the firecrackers of the Xiaoqiang Division, it will be necessary to replace the guns in one or two years, and a large number of them must be prepared.

At present, the Xiaoqiang Division's firecrackers have about 12 catties of firearms, and they need at least 20 catties of iron to make them (mainly because the drill bore waste products are higher), and if 3,000 catties are all used on the guns, they can make up to one rod.

Long Thirteen is currently using the firecrackers, and it seems that they can meet the needs of all the firecrackers in a month, but because it is impossible for all of these iron materials to be used to make firearms, and the subsequent forging, drilling, and drilling processes take a lot of time, it would be good to be able to meet this requirement in half a year.

Then he walked in front of a furnace that used the steel clamping method to make fine iron.

Compared with the steel pouring method, the steel clamping method is simpler, which is nothing more than tying pig iron and wrought iron together in advance, and then putting it into the furnace for smelting, and then letting the furnace cool down after firing, and then taking out the iron mass that has re-condensed in everything and forging it.

Because there are more impurities in the furnace itself, it is obviously very likely to be mixed again in the mixing of the two kinds of iron, although there is a future forging, but after all, it is not as reliable as the steel pouring method, but it is enough to use it to make cold weapons and armor.

Long Thirteen waited until all ten furnaces were out of the water and the kilns were sealed before leaving.

Then he had dinner with the craftsmen in the kiln before returning to the county seat.

Neixiang County is the newly built city of Daming and Nanyang Fucheng and Yuzhou City, all of which are about eight miles in radius, and the southwest corner of the city is the workshop area.

Before I could walk in, I heard a clanging iron.

First went to the workshop to make cold weapons to see, because of the high quality of iron, all cold weapons, including long knives, single knives, riding knives, spear heads, lance heads, arrows are cast with molds, in the city naturally can not use large furnaces, are small furnaces.

However, it is precisely because of the small size of the furnace that a blower can reach the target temperature of the furnace, and with the specially selected fine wood, the water can be poured into the finished mold one by one after the water is discharged.

Wait until it is cooled and then slightly forged, the weight and size of the mold base are naturally higher than the finished product, and the final product can be obtained after forging, quenching and cutting.

If the quality of the iron is not up to par, the blacksmith needs to obtain a better quality finished product through the frequency of forging and the number of quenching, in which case, the efficiency will be more than three times lower than the current one, that is, people can do the work that you need at least a month in ten days.

The final product of this work is not necessarily up to standard.

The whole process in front of him is the most important after repeated calculations and experiments between Long 13 and the craftsmen in Shanxi

In the end, when it was determined that when he was in Shanxi, most of the firearms needed by Long 13 came from the seizures, although they were all high-quality products of the Jingshi Firearms Battalion, but the quality of the iron materials was estimated to be worse than the current ones.

As for how to make the gun, at the moment, Long Thirteen has no settled method.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty still used to roll the calcined iron material on an iron rod with a diameter of exactly the same as the size of the hole and repeatedly forged it, and the craftsmen of the Dragon Thirteen mainly did this.

However, after coming to Nanyang Mansion, he also asked people to experiment with the method of casting a gun pipe (similar to a cannon) with a mold and drilling holes in the calcined gun pipe, and the specific effect was exactly what Long Thirteen wanted to see.

After seeing the process of using the mold method to make the gun pipe, Long 13 immediately dispelled this attention and told them not to do it for the time being.

Without him, because the hole is extremely small, it would be too time-consuming and laborious to use the method of casting artillery.

And in front of the workshop that used the drilling method to make the pipe, he stopped and watched for a long time.

The so-called drilling method is to fully calcinate a forged solid pipe again (half hard and half soft), and immediately pull it to the drilling room, where the two stand near the drawing drill used by the Chinese to drill wood in ancient times.

It is the kind of cross with a rope tied to it, and the rope is first put on the wood, and when drilling, the drill handle is held with both hands and shaken up and down.

But to use it to drill iron, although it is softened iron, there are several problems that need to be solved, one is balance, and the other is the problem of strength.

Neither of these two questions came up with by Long Thirteen, but the second was that the craftsmen themselves figured it out after he raised it.

This kind of drawing drill used for drilling is connected to a fixed, pre-measured device that is just level with the ground, and one person can stand on one side and hold one end of the drill handle while drilling.

The same is true for the solid rod below, one end of which is also fixed to a certain device, and then the hole is drilled in an accurate position, so that it will not be drilled at one time, and it will take several calcinations.

Therefore, every time you drill a section, you can insert a thin iron bar into the drilled hole, and then put the undrilled end in the furnace to continue calcining, and generally speaking, you can drill a gun.

Then the final calcination is carried out, in which an iron bar made of fine steel is the size of a hole and then forged once.

"Big Boss"

The overseer of this workshop was a firecracker craftsman from Lingshi County, and his eyes flashed with joy.

"In this case, a gun pipe can be produced every two days."

"How's it going?"

"I don't know, you need to make a finished product and then load it and try it, anyway, it's much faster, and if it's rolled into an iron bar, it needs to be drilled twice, and it takes at least ten days to drill one."

"And in this way, the pipe can be formed in one day, and drilled in the next."