Dugu Xin rested on Longshou Yuanzhuang for one night, and set off again the next morning, without stopping.

Not long after Li Tai sent Duguxin away, before he had time to carefully understand the specific business conditions of Longshou Yuanzhuang, Li Hu's doorman rode into the village and came to inform Li Tai that he could handle the handover of the workshop today.

Li Tai did not delay this, even if he was ready to travel. can think of the attitude of Li Hu and his subordinates yesterday is not friendly, although there is Dugu Xin's peace, but Li Tai is still not completely relieved, and directly brought hundreds of heavily armed subordinates, and then went to see Li Hu.

Li Hu was waiting in a fort in the northwest of Chang'an City, on the south bank of Weishui, and after Li Tai arrived, he went straight out and explained: "The smelting and casting workshop is still in Xianyang on the north bank, and if the horses come and go and everything goes well, it should be possible to hand over it clearly today." ”

While speaking, Li Hu led a team of entourage to go straight to Weishui Ferry, and actually wanted to personally lead Li Tai to hand over affairs.

Li Hu waved his hand to say that he was not polite, and when he waited for the ferry to come, he said again: "I have a deep love for Hanoi bus, and he cares about you very much." There were indeed some feuds with each other before, but now that they have been resolved, there is no need to say more. From now on, I hope to be able to get along in harmony, and if Li Lang doesn't know where to go when he goes in and out of Gyeonggi, he might as well be a guest at home. ”

This attitude is much better than yesterday, Li Tai laughed when he heard it.

After the group crossed Weishui, they galloped north for more than an hour, and in the morning they came to a plateau in Xianyang and southwest of Jingshui.

The slope of this hill is still gentle, and you can already see several blast furnaces towering above it from a distance, some of which are still billowing smoke.

There was a fort large enough to accommodate thousands of soldiers, and the fort was surrounded by fields of farmland, mulberry forests and orchards, and many felt tents and houses scattered among them.

The area of the entire platform is between two and three hundred hectares, which is a typical manor layout of the integration of soldiers and farmers, and it obviously belongs to Li Hu's manor industry. One of these Beizhen military leaders is counted as one, and everyone is a big landlord.

The smelting and casting workshop was arranged in the northeast of the manor, near Jingshui, and the group ascended from the southwest and needed to walk through the entire manor to reach it. Li Tai also took this opportunity to observe the business situation of Li Hu's manor, and secretly judged the power of Li Hu.

There are nearly 1,000 households living on the plateau, both Han people and Zhuhu subordinates. This amount is not too large, and Li Tai doesn't know if it is all of Li Hu's trilogy.

However, last night he also heard Dugu Xin say that in addition to Li Hu's own power and subordinate family slaves, he also has great prestige among the Hu tribes who have moved to the vicinity of Xianyang in Weibei.

In short, these veteran military leaders, in addition to their respective official positions and prestige in the township party, their respective official resumes have also provided them with a lot of personnel accumulation.

However, this situation can only be maintained until the eve of the establishment of the government soldier system, and when the complete government army system is established, the overall planning and control of the hegemon will be greatly strengthened, and the prestige and influence of these pillar states will be gradually erased.

There are many craftsmen in the workshop who are busy with different divisions of labor, some are filling the furnace, some are forging utensils, and the air is filled with a choking smell of scorched lakes.

The scale of Li Tai's smelting and casting workshop in Baishuizhuang is not small, and he is no stranger to the current process and production process, and he also has some comparative thoughts in his heart.

In addition to the several blast furnaces that can be seen at the bottom of the hill, there are various other smelting and casting facilities for the production of different metal products.

The ancient smelting technology can be roughly divided into several methods or stages, such as block refining method, steel frying method and steel filling method.

The block smelting method is the most basic and primitive smelting technology, the ore and charcoal interlayer are placed in the furnace for smelting, and the solid sponge iron is obtained, and then heated and forged to remove impurities and carburizing at the same time, so as to obtain various iron products.

The advantage of this smelting and forging method is that it is simple, convenient and easy to operate, and does not require much skill, experience and tool materials. In later generations, many people who survived in the wilderness often used this method to obtain iron products.

However, the shortcomings of the block refining method are also obvious, the temperature in the furnace cannot reach the melting point of iron, and only solid sponge iron can be formed, and there are too many impurities, even after full hammering, the quality is not too high, and the efficiency is very low. The so-called 100 steels are relatively high-end products produced by this process, and it is difficult to hear the name alone.

Therefore, when better smelting technology appeared, this relatively primitive method was naturally eliminated.

When the blower appeared, the temperature in the furnace during smelting was greatly increased, and the blast furnace was generated, which could directly melt the iron ore in the furnace into molten iron, and after cooling, it could become pig iron with extremely high hardness.

The frying method is based on the development of blast furnace smelting, which is more efficient and more advanced smelting technology.

A very key factor affecting the performance and quality of iron products is the carbon content, which is pig iron, which is hard but brittle, and can be cast but not forged. Wrought iron is refined from pig iron, which has a low carbon content, a softer texture, and good plasticity, but is not as hard as pig iron.

The frying method is to fully stir and fry the pig iron liquid flowing out of the blast furnace smelting, and add iron ore powder and air for oxidation and decarburization, so as to obtain wrought iron with lower carbon content.

Pig iron is strong and castable, wrought iron is tough and easy to forge, but in real life, especially in weapons and arming, it is often necessary to have both.

However, the blast furnace molten iron in the process of steel frying is always in a state of high temperature flow, and it is difficult to accurately control the process of oxidation and decarburization in the production environment of ancient times, which is all manual operation.

A skilled and experienced craftsman may be able to flexibly control the quality of the product with just the right amount of carbon directly from the frying steel, but in most cases this is not the case.

In order to make the carbon content in the steel smelting process more accurate and controllable, the steel filling method is produced on the basis of the steel frying method.

The blast furnace directly smelts pig iron, which becomes wrought iron after frying and decarburizing, and then smelts the two together according to a certain proportion, and the pig iron is used as a carburizing agent, melted into a liquid, and poured on the solid wrought iron, so it is named the steel filling method, and the steel with superior performance is obtained after smelting each other, which is also known as the iron.

Of course, this is only the smelting process of steel, and there are a series of meticulous processes for specific casting and forging, in which the technical details and key factors are more detailed, and Li Tai does not know deeply.

In the manor of Li Hu's family, all kinds of smelting and production are carried out at the same time, producing different iron products, in addition to various ordnance and weapons, there are also many agricultural tools are also produced.

Li Taizi was not interested in seeing the quality of Li Hu's hoe casting, and after a circle in the workshop, he asked a little impatiently: "May I ask Longxi Gong, is there a skilled craftsman in the village who can make iron treasure knives?" ”

"Su Tiebao Knife?"

After hearing this, Li Hu first shook his head, and then smiled at Li Tai and said: "There is no such skilled worker in my village, Li Lang, if you know where to find such a skilled craftsman, please also let me know and visit together!" ”

The iron knife is a weapon forged by steel filling technology, and it can also be said to be the strongest weapon of the era when the steel filling method has not yet been fully popularized, and it is the crystallization of the most advanced smelting and forging technology.

In fact, the principle of forging is also very simple, that is, use wrought iron as a knife base, and then use pig iron to pour the edge carburized into steel, so that the blade is hard and sharp, indestructible, and the blade is both firm and tough, and the different metal properties are cleverly matched to obtain miraculous results.

But it's one thing to know the principle, it's another thing to be able to make it, and Li Tai also knows how to make artificial diamonds. The basic craftsmanship of the Sutetsu knife is not a secret, and there is no shortage of people in Kansai who know it, but few people can master the various matters that need to be paid attention to in the forging process.

Hearing Li Hu's answer, Li Tai also laughed twice, of course he knew where there was such a craftsman, but Li Hu might not dare to visit with him.

Although there are no craftsmen who can forge the Su Iron Knife, the smelting and forging level of these craftsmen in Li Hu Manor is also visible to the naked eye is higher than that of their own Baishuizhuang. Li Tai walked through several sheds and saw craftsmen carefully polishing the armor that had been roughly forged.

There are more than 300 smelting and casting craftsmen and tens of thousands of catties of iron materials placed here, and several years have passed, and the iron materials have long been exhausted, but most of the craftsmen are still living here, and many have married wives and children here.

When Li Hu summoned all these craftsmen here, Li Tai found that there were nearly 100 Hu people with similar appearances and should be of the same race, but they were a little different from the various kinds of Hu he saw in his daily life, so he couldn't help but point to these people and ask: "What kind of Hu slaves are these Hu slaves?" It's a bit of a look. ”

Li Hu casually glanced at it and said, "This is the Ashina clan of Jinshan in Mobei, belonging to the creeping mongrel slave department. Although it is not known for its bravery, it can be regarded as a rare skill among the miscellaneous people. ”

When Li Tai heard this comment, he was immediately happy again. In fact, today's Turks have gradually risen, and even after Rouran made enemies with the Western Wei and married the Eastern Wei, they were once regarded by the Western Wei as a Mobei force with united front value.

It's just that the rise of the Turks has no landmark event to be called after all, and there is still a gap between completely replacing Rouran, the overlord of Mobei.

Li Tai didn't expect that among these craftsmen given to him by his father-in-law, there were actually nearly 100 Turkic forging slaves, and his heart was full of expectations for the craftsmanship of these forging slaves.