Chapter 229 The First Piece of Iron in the Han Tribe (Please vote and subscribe)
"Ah? It can only be used once?" Dazui asked in surprise.
"Yes, that's why I said iron smelting is more difficult, ah!" Luo Chong sighed.
"Then what will we use to smelt iron in the future? Do we have to make a new furnace after smelting it once? That's really difficult."
"That's not necessary. When Dashu brings back the refractory clay, we can use the refractory clay to make a furnace that won't burn." Luo Chong explained.
"If that's the case, it's fine. Otherwise, it's too troublesome." Dazui nodded and began to speed up the speed of building the furnace. It didn't matter whether it looked good or not, as long as it was fast.
While Dazui was building the furnace, Luo Chong also smashed some limestone and charcoal with a hammer, smashed them into powder, mixed them with iron oxide crystals, and made mud. Finally, he rolled them into mud balls the size of ping-pong balls, and then put them aside to dry for later use.
It took a whole day to prepare for these things. When it was time to finish work in the evening, Du Er also brought the stones back with his men. Luo Chong checked them and found that they were all stones that met his standards. Everything was ready, so he could start smelting iron.
The next morning, the first iron smelting activity of the Han tribe began, directed by Luo Chong himself, and cooperated with five or six members of the metallurgical group.
Luo Chong first asked them to burn some branches in the furnace to dry the furnace thoroughly and preheat the furnace. After the furnace was completely dry, they immediately began to pour half a furnace of charcoal into it, and at the same time, the three leather bag press-type blowers installed below began to blow air into the furnace. After
the charcoal inside was completely ignited, the dried iron ore balls were put into the furnace, and then covered with a layer of charcoal. The next step was to keep blowing air into the furnace.
This work was very physically demanding and very boring. Luo Chong arranged two three-person teams to take turns blowing air.
The flames in the furnace were blown by the wind, burning vigorously, and the red flames shot out high. The charcoal in the furnace was also consumed quickly, and it was half lower after a while. Luo Chong began to let Da Zui continue to add charcoal, and repeated it over and over again.
The charcoal was poured in basket by basket, and then consumed quickly. When the color of the furnace turned white, Luo Chong asked several people to stop, and then began to dismantle the furnace with an axe and a copper shovel.
Yes, because Da Zui was more careful at the beginning, the furnace was not directly burned, but now if you want to take out the iron blocks inside, you have to dismantle the furnace and then take out the smelted iron blocks from the top of the furnace.
Da Zui took a short axe and started from the top of the furnace, cracking the furnace wall layer by layer, and then pushed down the broken furnace wall with a shovel.
The thick clay furnace wall fell to the ground, and the inner wall had turned into a semi-melted red, and the inner wall of the furnace had begun to melt.
After knocking off a layer of the furnace wall, the height of the furnace was lowered a little, exposing the red-hot charcoal inside. Then, the excess charcoal was removed with a shovel, and a large piece of irregular red substance soon appeared in the furnace, which was a mixture of smelted iron and impurities.
Luo Chong personally took out the irregular sponge-like iron block with copper tongs, and then placed it on a flat cobblestone prepared in advance, using the cobblestone as an anvil, and then two tribesmen carrying hammers kept hammering the iron block.
After the initial hammering, the slag attached to the iron block was smashed off, leaving only a cooled iron block with a dark metallic luster.
The following steps also repeated this action. Luo Chong kept picking out iron blocks from the furnace, and then two tribesmen carrying hammers smashed away impurities such as slag. This lasted for about half an hour, and all the iron blocks in this furnace were found. The
sponge-like iron blocks collected together were piled together, and the total weight of large and small was estimated to be about 30 kilograms. This was the first batch of pig iron smelted by the Han tribe, but this was only the first step.
In the following time, Luo Chong asked Da Zui to pour charcoal into the remaining furnace again, and then asked the three previous blowers to continue blowing.
Luo Chong was not idle either. He put pieces of irregular iron into the furnace, and after they were red hot, he clamped them out with pliers and asked the two tribesmen carrying hammers to keep hammering until they were smashed into a compact iron block.
Then put it in the furnace to burn again, then take it out and beat it. After beating it several times, use an axe to smash the iron block into two pieces, fold it in half and continue beating it. At the same time, sprinkle some borax between the two layers of iron blocks as a cleaning agent, so that the two layers of iron blocks can be tightly fused together. Otherwise,
it is very likely that after beating for a long time, the two layers of iron blocks folded in half will still not be able to be fused. The role of borax is very important. When borax comes into contact with metal, it will remove the oxide on the surface of the metal through a chemical reaction, making the contact surface cleaner, so that the two pieces of metal can be tightly fused.
And Luo Chong actually has a piece of borax in his hand. It was bought from the hands of the cave tribe at the trade fair this spring. When Luo Chong saw the stone for the first time, he recognized it as borax, so he exchanged it for pottery.
That time, he also bought a piece of graphite with the borax. Although it has not been used yet, it has been collected by Luo Chong.
Under the joint efforts of several people, the iron block was constantly burned and beaten. This process is the famous hundred-fold steel making process in the Western Han Dynasty in history.
Because of the continuous folding and forging, not only can the impurities in the iron be knocked out, but also because it is often burned in charcoal, the hundred-fold steel is constantly infiltrated with carbon elements, so as to obtain steel with a relatively high carbon content.
Of course, if we use the current scientific definition, such hundred-fold steel is not actually steel, because it is beaten out after all. Even if it is forged many times, it will still have uneven places. This alone has a huge impact on the characteristics of steel.
But Luo Chong just wanted to use this hundred-fold steel to make a few steel chisels and hammers. There is no need to make such a high standard, so it is still quite fast to make.
The production of steel chisels is the simplest, that is, a piece of iron is knocked into an iron bar, and then one end is knocked into a pointed head. After preliminary grinding, the steel chisel is placed in the furnace to burn red, and then taken out and sunk in cold water for quenching. The hardness of such a steel chisel will be greatly increased, and it will definitely be no problem to use it to chisel stones.
In this way, several people spent a day to make several steel chisels of different shapes, some with pointed ends for carving grooves, and some with flat ends for chiseling stones. Finally, they used the remaining iron to make three hammers. At the same time, they also left two pieces of iron weighing about four or five pounds. They haven't decided what to make them for the time being.
(End of this chapter)
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