Chapter 131 Smelting

[What the hell?! ]

After silently cursing in his heart, Zhou Xu quickened his pace and went over to pick up the stone that was shining with metallic luster in the sun.

[No mistake, this should be metal ore! ]

Zhou Xu really didn't expect that there was a mine next to his initial camp! But think about it, they were busy solving the problem of food and clothing every day. In this era without any testing methods, who would have nothing to do to dig stones for fun? Now this digging has made him dig up a treasure! While signaling the quarrying team to increase the intensity and continue mining, Zhou Xu asked someone to find two empty backpacks and let Zhang Xiaoshan and Li Shitou, who were his followers, carry them, and then they started looking for ore in the quarry.

After searching, I found that there are quite a lot of them.

The quarrying team had already dug up a lot of metal ore without knowing it.

At this moment, they are all piled in one place, waiting for the transport team to arrive.

After all, in their eyes, stones are just stones, nothing special.

Zhou Xu was lucky enough. After some effort, he filled the two backpacks. After that, he said something to Zhou Chongshan and Li Ce and rushed back to the Black Moon Camp ahead of time.

He didn't know much about various metal ores, but he was a player who liked to play civilization development games, and mining and forging were inevitable in such games.

Therefore, he still has some basic knowledge.

For example, he can now use high temperatures to refine metal ores and remove impurities.

This was not a difficult task for Zhou Xu, who had coal ore and furnaces.

In fact, the coal ore he discovered earlier finally came in handy. Before that, it was basically used for making fire and cooking.

Of course, before starting to refine, he asked people to crush all the metal ores that were brought back.

This practice does not come from any professional knowledge, but from common sense, that is, things with small particles are easier to burn.

The tribesmen who received the order quickly got busy.

Zhou Xu himself was not idle either. Although the kilns in their tribe had always been used to fire pottery, as long as the temperature was high enough, they could also be used to refine metal ores.

At this moment, Zhou Xu was busy lighting the furnace and starting to increase the temperature.

If you want to refine metal ore, you can't just light a fire. It requires sufficient temperature.

And this temperature requires time to change.

In addition, he also needs a suitable container for these ores.

The most suitable thing right now is probably pottery...

After all, their pottery was fired in this kiln at high temperatures, which also proves its high-temperature resistance.

While making these preparations, Zhou Xu also called a member of the equipment department over and asked him to make a mold for him out of clay.

Although at this moment he was still unable to determine what kind of metal the discovered metal ore was, Zhou Xu was accustomed to looking ten steps ahead before taking one step.

With the premise of being able to successfully extract useful metals and start casting metal tools, Zhou Xu had just been thinking for a while about how to cast this metal tool.

Before traveling through time, he had watched some videos while eating when he had nothing to do, and there were still a small number of them that contained related content.

Therefore, Zhou Xu sorted out his thoughts and came up with the following two solutions...

The first method is the more typical forging method, which is also what he sees most in his videos. The metal is first refined to make metal ingots, and then the metal ingots are softened by burning them, and then they are hammered one by one to beat the metal ingot into the shape you want.

This method is time-consuming and labor-intensive, but the metal utensils forged through repeated hammering will definitely be stronger.

As for the second method, it is a lazy method, which is to make a mold first, burn the metal into liquid, then pour the liquid metal into the mold, wait for it to cool and take shape, and finally polish it a little, and it is finished.

Compared with the first method, the strength and quality of the second method is likely to be worse, but it is more practical.

People like them who want to arm a large army attach great importance to whether this thing can be mass-produced and the efficiency of mass production.

For example, the combination bow that Zhuang Mengdie made before with great fanfare, isn’t that good?

That's good, of course. Considering the current historical context, Zhou Xu couldn't find any fault with his performance. It could even be said that he performed above average.

But this thing cannot be mass-produced. It is too difficult to make manually and it takes a lot of time.

On the contrary, the performance of an ordinary bamboo bow made of adhesive is definitely inferior to that of the combination bow, but Zhou Xu wants to save trouble and be efficient! This is a weapon that can be used to arm the troops, while Zhuang Mengdie's combination bow can only be used to arm his generals.

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At this moment, Zhou Xu, who asked the equipment department members to dig the mold, naturally planned to use the second method.

As for what the first mold was made of, it was actually a hammer...

If you want to carry out forging work, you must have a tool, that is, a forging hammer.

So Zhou Xu had already decided that the first metal tool of the tribe should be a hammer.

The shape of the hammer itself is not complicated, and the member of the equipment department is specifically responsible for making pottery. Now, following Zhou Xu's instructions, they are very efficient and quickly made a decent mold.

In this midsummer weather, the molds dry quickly. By the time the molds are completely dry, the tribal members on the other side have almost processed the ores.

"Chief, we have smashed all those stones as you wished."

As he was speaking, a tribal member ran up to Zhou Xu holding a clay basin filled with crushed ore.

Zhou Xu took a look at the gravel and nodded with satisfaction. Then he simply used the pottery basin as a container, placed it in the kiln that had already been heated up, and began refining.

To put it simply, the refining process is to seal the furnace and wait. When the temperature reaches a certain level, the ore is burned into liquid and the impurities in it are naturally extracted.

However, this wait took a long time. After two confirmations, the metal ore in the kiln had been burned into liquid.

Without time to think, Zhou Xu quickly called people over, used wooden sticks to carefully lift the basin out, and then poured the liquid inside into the mold.

During this process, thick smoke continued to come out of the mold, but Zhou Xu ignored it and asked the tribal members to continue pouring water into it. Since he had no experience in this area, he simply poured until the liquid metal overflowed from the hole.

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(End of this chapter)