The next day, Liu Xin got up early in the morning and practiced with Fang Yue for an hour. Now he was stuck at the bottleneck of a super-class general and couldn't get over it. He was only 21 years old now and was not in a hurry. Training with the soldiers could enhance their loyalty.

Spend.

When he came to the blast furnace, he saw that the furnace was burning normally, but the coal consumption was a little fast. Yesterday, merchant ships brought three more cargoes of stone coal. Liu Xin rode a horse to the river 30 miles south of Iron Castle and saw hundreds of people washing and sorting coal here.

Gangue, once a cart of coal has been washed, a carriage will transport it to the desulfurization cellar. Today, one cellar is ready to be ignited, and the desulfurized coal in the second cellar will also be transported to the iron castle.

In the afternoon, Liu Xin saw that all the stone coal in the first cellar had been evacuated. A war horse came galloping from the direction of the iron castle. The man ran directly to Liu Xin and told him that the ironmaking shaft furnace was producing iron!

Generally, it takes three to five days for an iron-making shaft furnace to produce iron, and some even take more than seven days. Liu Xin returned to the Iron Fort Ironmaking Workshop and saw three craftsmen dancing happily.

"Sir, the iron is out!" the older craftsman said happily to Liu Xin.

"Okay, each of you three will be rewarded with 100,000 yuan, all craftsmen will be rewarded with 50,000 yuan, and the workers will be rewarded with 10,000 yuan!" Liu Xin also said happily.

Liu Xin came to the taphole and saw hot red molten iron flowing out of the taphole and falling into a mold slot. This mold was a 50-pound iron ingot, which cost 500 yuan in the market.

"Sir, our shaft furnace is producing iron too fast. In just one day, it took just a cup of tea to turn into an iron ingot. It is simply unimaginable..." The master craftsman said to Liu Xin that they had learned more.

The ability, role and status of high-efficiency iron-making also increased accordingly.

"Increase the proportion of iron ore investment! The three of you will summarize what proportion of iron ore and stone coal has the highest iron yield. These will take a long time to summarize.

Also pay attention to the ash and slag conditions in the furnace, this is the key to the success of our new ironmaking shaft furnace." Liu Xin ordered.

If the slagging effect is not good, his blast furnace will have to be scrapped in a few days. Looking at the molten iron flowing out of the tap hole, Liu Xin was curious why it was not directly made into a weapon mold, which would make it easier to make weapons.

"Sir, if this molten iron is directly cast into weapons, it will be too soft and cannot be used at all, including agricultural tools." A craftsman explained to Liu Xin.

"That's right, the steel will definitely not work without quenching..." Quenching only became popular in the Tang Dynasty. In the Han Dynasty, iron ingots were reforged. Although the craftsmen at this time did not know the principle, they knew that the iron ingots could only continue to burn in the fire.

It can only be used after red forging, otherwise it will be too soft.

"Maybe we can give it a try!" Liu Xin thought. He asked people to make a knife mold, and then made the coal into powder. The key to turning the iron into steel is to add carbon and cool down. Liu Xin knew the principle.

But if you want to forge a good weapon, you have to try countless times.

On June 2, the iron-making shaft furnace produced 5 pounds of iron per day, which was more than 140 times higher than that of an ordinary shaft furnace in Jixian County. As time goes by, the iron-producing rate of the iron-making shaft furnace will become higher and higher. Taphole

There has been no blockage and everything is running well.

The craftsman sent a short knife [mold]. Liu Xin had already asked people to make the coal powder as fine as possible, divide it into several parts and place them in specially made troughs. When the molten iron in the mold had just formed, the craftsman opened the mold and clamped it with large iron pliers.

He picked up the red dagger and put the blade into the coal trough. All the pulverized coal was instantly ignited by the red dagger, and the fire instantly rose to a height of more than ten feet.

When the fire was extinguished, the craftsman put the blade into the second pulverized coal trough again. This time the fire was much smaller than the last time. By the fifth pulverized coal trough, the fire could no longer burn, so the dagger was placed there to cool naturally.

Everyone is waiting for the quality of this short knife.

A quarter of an hour later, the dagger had naturally cooled down to a certain level. After cooling with water, the craftsman took a wooden stake and tried it. The result was that although the blade was not sharpened, it could be felt that it was much harder than an ordinary iron ingot, but the hardness was still worse for this weapon.

It’s so far!

One failure was nothing. Liu Xin had many different quenching methods in his mind. He asked the craftsmen to try them one by one, including how to reduce the temperature with air cooling, how many times to add charcoal powder, how much to add at one time, various methods of water cooling, and finally

Secondary quenching, etc.

Liu Xin only knew the principles and general outlines of weapon forging, but that was enough. He asked the craftsmen to try various possibilities. The quenching was too fast and the knife was too brittle. The quenching was slow and the hardness was not enough. The principle knew that Liu Xin would get what he wanted sooner or later.

result.

Three days passed, and after remaking hundreds of daggers, Liu Xin finally got the three results he wanted.

Quench with charcoal powder once, then use air cooling and water spray for three breaths, and then put it in water to cool. The made knife can already catch up with ordinary knife blades. If it is used to transport agricultural tools, it is more than enough, both in terms of steel and toughness.

good.

The second step is to air-cool the blade first to prevent the charcoal powder from burning. Then it is red-hot and then quenched with air for a second time. The third step is to air-cool the blade, and then add water mist to cool it. Although this kind of tempering forging is more troublesome, it is the weapon that is forged.

Just enough to forge 20 weapons.

The third method is to add charcoal powder multiple times, air-cool the furnace and then forge it. Three times forging the blade has a fifty-forging effect, which is enough for elite soldiers to use.

After giving all the craftsmen a detailed study on the quenching requirements, Liu Xin even arranged for more than 20 blacksmiths to specifically experiment with how to quench iron tools. Soon Iron Fort produced a batch of construction tools that were urgently needed in Xiandu County. Half a month later, a large number of them were produced.

Farm tools were also forged. After these farm tools were distributed to farmers in Xiandu County, various high-quality machetes and axes appeared on the market one after another, and the prices became cheaper and cheaper.

Liu Xin was obsessed with ironware manufacturing in the iron castle. The performance of the first blast furnace was excellent. There was no coal coking and blocking the tap hole. There were no problems with the slag discharge of the new shaft furnace. Slowly, the output of this blast furnace stabilized.

With a daily production capacity of 20,000 kilograms, the second ironmaking shaft furnace was already being manufactured at this time.

In addition to the construction ironware, farm tools, various iron pots, shovels and other ironware used by Xiandu County collectively, the various ironware produced every day can also bring him an income of more than 500,000 yuan. At the same time, Xiandu County began to accumulate various quality ironware.

Weapons and armor, gradually the 30,000 regular soldiers began to use the same weapons, and the 40,000 auxiliary soldiers who were originally insufficient in weapons also began to replenish their weapons.

Iron Castle produces a large number of low- to medium-quality iron tools, which greatly improves the productivity of the entire Xiandu County. The prisoners who were originally digging the river at a slow pace increased their work efficiency several times because they had better tools.

During the construction of Pingzihe City, a large number of iron tools and nails appeared, making the construction of wooden houses easier. And large ships departing from Pingzihe City brought a large number of iron products to Lvyin Township.
Chapter completed!