Chapter 38 Opening the Bronze Age (Please collect and recommend)
Rome was not built in a day. Although the scale of the building planned by Luo Chong is not even comparable to that of the Colosseum, he can only do it step by step.
After a dreamless night, Luo Chong resumed his daily morning exercises at dawn the next day. Moreover, because he had obtained enough salt and food, his physical training became more diligent.
After experiencing this cannibal incident, Luo Chong has fully understood this world. There are not only threats from wild beasts, but also threats from humans.
Although there is no large-scale war here, small-scale local disputes are inevitable. This is not an ambition, but just for survival and self-protection.
With the current state of the Han tribe, Luo Chong can't put any ideas into practice.
After the morning exercise, the tribesmen came out. There are a lot of things to do today, and they need to get a lot of things. There are not enough people, so Luo Chong completely stopped the work of collecting food.
After the tribesmen had breakfast, they all went to the entrance of the cave and waited for Luo Chong to assign tasks.
The lame man was assigned to make pottery today. The children continued to cut grass and tied it into bundles according to Luo Chong's demonstration, so that it would be easier to store and carry.
Big Mouth, Monkey, Da Mao and Er Mao went to the back mountain and cut down all the saplings of the man-eating tree that were suitable for making spears.
The women were divided into two teams. One team with more people went to the valley where Luo Chong went to collect sisal, which is the giant aloe vera. At least 100 leaves must be cut from each plant. That thing will grow new leaves next year, and Luo Chong is not worried at all.
It is just expected that the amount of sisal collected will be a lot, so Luo Chong asked the wooden pig to lead six blue antelopes and carry several large baskets to transport it.
Another small collection team also went to the jungle, but what they had to do was to scrape the bark of the ash tree.
The ash tree is named because it attracts wax beetles. The wax beetles suck the sap of the ash tree and then excrete white secretions on the bark, which is white wax. It is the main raw material used by the ancients to make candles, so the two words "candle" are both written with the character "worm" on the side.
Modern candles are made of paraffin, which is extracted from petroleum. In ancient times, there was no such thing. In addition to beeswax, there was wax.
Luo Chong asked them to collect wax not for making candles, but to use it to make molds for casting bronze.
The remaining men were all coolies, and Luo Chong arranged them to cut trees. They did not have the oil saw of Guang Tou Qiang, so it was really cool to cut trees with stone axes.
First, cut some trees that were about the same thickness as the legs, and leave the trunks for building animal sheds. All the branches were chopped into firewood. Luo Chong needed a lot of charcoal for copper smelting. Therefore, more firewood must be stored. As long as the copper smelting is on the right track in the future, there will only be a shortage of charcoal, and there will definitely be no shortage of charcoal.
The cut trees were pulled back by blue antelopes. If they couldn't pull them, they would ask the baby macaques for help. They couldn't let them eat for nothing.
The tribesmen didn't understand this. They thought that they should store food in autumn, but Luo Chong told them that the food they stored now would not be eaten until the beginning of next spring, especially fish. Although 100 people would not eat all the fish in a river to extinction, even if it was not so serious, it would take one or two months to restore the current size of the fish population.
You should know that many of the fish caught during this period have fish eggs in their stomachs. These fish eggs were caught before they became small fish. The number of fish in this river will be affected in the future, so let those fish rest and recuperate first.
When all the tribesmen went out to work, Luo Chong was also working. He was busier than others.
First, burn charcoal, make a few large piles of firewood, paste mud on the outside, leave a few vents on the top and bottom, light the firewood from the holes left above, and when the fire burns to the holes below, seal all the holes, let the firewood simmer in the absence of oxygen, and turn into charcoal after it extinguishes and cools naturally.
Then he used the old soil and anthill soil he brought back to grind them into fine powder, mix them evenly, and make mud. He then made several crucibles and spoons to purify and make alloys. He
then used the mixed refractory clay to make a mold, which looked like a flat plate with rows of small grids on it. Each grid was the same size, so that copper and tin plates like chocolate plates could be cast.
At that time, according to the needs, the copper-tin ratio can be adjusted arbitrarily to make tools for different purposes. The amount needed is like breaking chocolate.
Bronze alloys have been widely used since before historical records. Its low melting point and easy casting characteristics also make it the earliest metal mastered by humans. It can be traced back to the Xia and Shang dynasties. It is widely used in weapons, farm tools, tools, cooking utensils, musical instruments, and ritual vessels. The peak of development was in the late Qin and early Han dynasties. It was not until the Han Dynasty that a large number of them were eliminated with the mature technology of refining steel. Bronze
is a copper-tin alloy. Some will also add lead, but Luo Chong does not add that thing. First, he does not have it, and second, lead is also poisonous. If it is used to make tools, it is okay, but if it is used to make cooking utensils, it will not work. The
effects of bronze synthesized with different copper-tin ratios are also very different, but Luo Chong does not need to experiment again. The ancients had already played with bronze thousands of years ago, and some of the techniques cannot be surpassed even in modern times.
Different uses have different ratios. For casting bells and tripods, the ratio of copper to tin is 6 to 1; for casting axes or hammers, the ratio is 5 to 1; for casting halberds and halberds, the ratio of copper to tin is 4 to 1; the ratio of bronze swords is 3 to 1; the ratio of arrowheads, that is, arrowheads, is 5 to 2; the ratio of bronze mirrors is 1 to 1.
In summary, the higher the copper content, the softer the bronze, the more resistant it is to be beaten, and the yellower the color is. Therefore, there is a saying of "golden halberds and iron horses" in ancient poems, because bronze is golden, and the ancients also called it gold.
In ancient times, sometimes the emperor rewarded his ministers with a reward of ten thousand taels of gold. In fact, the reward was that
the higher the copper and tin content, the harder the bronze, the lighter the color, and even white, but this kind of bronze was more brittle. If it was hit hard or two bronze swords were chopped against each other, it would directly break.
Therefore, bronze was never used to make knives, but only to make stabbing weapons such as spears, guns, swords, halberds, and halberds. They can only stab, not chop, and they will break if chopped. Therefore, the movies in which people chop against each other with bronze swords are pure nonsense.
It is precisely because of this fatal flaw that bronze weapons will be completely eliminated by steel weapons.
With charcoal and molds, Luo Chong began to make a smelting furnace. Ordinary clay plus some pottery slag or brick dust, and some broken grass mixed into mud, built into a cylindrical earthen furnace with a diameter of more than 40 centimeters. Although it is not very good, it can only be made for the time being. After all, it is not a large-scale smelting, so there is no need to make a whole blast furnace.
Luo Chong made 4 such furnaces, and they can be fired together when the time comes, which can save a lot of time.
Because there are no metal tools now, it is impossible to make a wooden push-pull bellows. I can only make a few simple push-type leather bag blowers with the snake skin of a python. Now I can make do with what I can make, and when I have the tools in the future, I will upgrade the equipment.
Luo Chong took the blower and tried it under the pottery kiln, and the effect was quite good.
The lame man didn't know what Luo Chong was doing, but just by looking at the molds and blowers, he felt that this was something more advanced than firing pottery, and he was looking forward to what new things the leader would come up with this time.
Luo Chong's preparations were done, and the world's first set of the most primitive smelting equipment was also completed. He just had to wait for the charcoal to be burned and the furnace to be dried tomorrow before he could start working.
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Um, Qingshu is here to ask for votes, or collections, or comments. The new book period before it is put on the shelves is very important. Thank you for your support.
(End of this chapter)
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