Chapter 266 The First Iron Tool
Although Zhuang Mengdie and Zhou Dachui didn't know what the "iron" their leader was talking about, when they saw their leader laughing loudly, they knew that this time, they might have found something good!
Seeing this, everyone shouted in unison...
"Congratulations, Chief!"
Amid the congratulations from the crowd, Zhou Xu's laughter subsided slightly, and he looked at the iron ingot in his hand again.
"Anyway, first melt all the ores sent here into iron ingots."
After briefly explaining the task, Zhou Xu turned around and went back to his residence, where he sat at his desk and fell into deep thought.
He now had a dilemma in his mind, and the question was "whether or not to establish a forging department in Huangshan Village."
There is no need to explain the value of iron. In the field of weapons and even a large number of tools, iron is a superior substitute for copper.
It is no exaggeration to say that with the discovery of iron ore, most bronze artifacts could be directly eliminated.
But the problem now is that the iron ore is produced deep in the mountains.
In this era, the efficiency of ore mining is not high. After mining, the ore has to be carried out from the depths of the mountains in baskets, and then transported to Black Moon Village for smelting and forging. The manpower required here is extremely huge, which is by no means comparable to the mines in Salt Lake Village.
The easiest way to save this amount of manpower is to establish a forging department on the other side of the mountains.
When the time comes, we can open a mine and dig out the ore. There will be no need to go through so much trouble to send it to Black Moon Village. The smelting and forging can be completed inside the mountains.
But this will cause a problem.
That is to use Black Moon Village as the base camp. The mountains are too far away, and the saying 'the mountains are high and the emperor is far away' is really appropriate here.
Under this premise, once iron is forged, it can basically completely suppress copper in terms of weapons level.
Although he did not think Shi Lei would rebel, but from the perspective of a ruler, setting up a forging department in a place that was beyond his reach and allowing that place to have the ability to forge iron tools on its own was a dangerous move no matter how you looked at it.
In the future, when the roads in the mountains are opened up and the mobility efficiency is further improved, he will consider this matter, but it is absolutely not possible now!
Rather than taking this risk, he would rather choose to put in a little more effort, which is safer.
In this way, the forging and repair of various metal tools are all under the control of Black Moon Village. Even though the Huangshan Village is far away, they dare not act rashly.
In addition, as the population grows, the grain output from the few fields in Huangshan Village will soon not be enough for them to be self-sufficient. At that time, the supply of food will have to rely on the Black Moon Village, which will be able to directly control it.
However, given the efficiency of iron ore mining and transportation there, it would not be easy to carry out large-scale updates and iterations of metal tools in a short period of time.
Fortunately, Zhou Xu was not in a hurry.
Now, with the help of bronze weapons, he is able to run rampant in this area, so there is no need to rush.
Nothing happened that night. Early the next morning, Zhou Xu, who had sorted out his thoughts, came to the forging department again.
This batch of iron ore was all picked up by the villagers over there near the mine. The quantity was small, and after all of it was melted, only four iron ingots were produced, which did not take much effort on the forging department.
There are four iron ingots, each weighing one pound. Now it depends on what their leader will forge with these four iron ingots.
Zhou Xu had really thought about this issue carefully.
The first thing that came to his mind was definitely the spear that Zhou Dachui had shown before, but he quickly rejected it.
Only the spear head of the spear needs to be cast in iron, which saves materials relatively. However, since only a small amount of iron can be forged at present, casting a spear does not seem to be cost-effective. In the complex mountain environment, the spear cannot be used at all.
Thinking of this, Zhou Xu immediately said...
"Battle sword! Forge a battle sword for me, but the length cannot be the same as the original copper sword. The toughness of iron is better than copper, so the length of the battle sword can be increased. Just follow the length of the battle sword designed at the beginning."
At the beginning, because the normal length of copper swords was not tough enough, they were specially shortened. However, as long as iron was available, this problem could be solved to a large extent.
Now that their leader had spoken, Zhou Dachui, as the leader of the forging department, naturally had no doubts. While signaling his assistant to melt the iron ingot, he quickly took out the first version of the sword mold and ran over.
It takes a lot of work to make a mold. Although the mold was basically unusable at the beginning due to the toughness of the metal, Zhou Dachui couldn't just throw it away.
I thought that it would definitely come in handy after this problem is solved.
And this day has undoubtedly come!
With the help of the bellows, the temperature in the forging furnace continued to rise, and the four iron ingots placed in the furnace were quickly melted.
Grasping the time well and making sure that the iron ingot had been melted, Zhou Dachui quickly took it out and poured the liquid iron into the mold.
The subsequent processes of hammering, forging, grinding and sharpening will undoubtedly take more time.
Not to mention that this was the first iron sword he had made, and it was for their leader, so Zhou Dachui dared not be vague, he had to hammer it out carefully? Zhou Xu couldn't just watch here the whole time, during which time he went to the equipment department, and after briefly confirming the manufacturing progress of bicycles and tricycles, he asked the equipment department to make a few more bellows.
Now that the Iron Age has begun here, ordinary forging furnaces will soon be of no use, and they will have to be equipped with bellows.
As for Zhou Dachui, it took him three days to present the iron sword to him.
Regardless of the plain wooden scabbard, Zhou Xu exerted force and pulled out a sharp blade. Under the shining spring sun, it actually made him feel dazzled.
Zhou Xu did not do much research on cold weapons, but he did have some general ideas.
What was he looking for when he made this sword? Of course, it was to be strong and durable, and able to withstand frequent chopping and weapon collisions.
With this idea in mind, the first thing that came to Zhou Xu's mind was the big machete with a thick blade!
The copper swords they are using now have a blade length of only 40 centimeters due to the insufficient toughness of the material. Although it is a one-handed sword, the length is undoubtedly a bit short.
Now, excluding the handle, the blade length of this newly forged machete has reached 60 cm. Including the handle, the total length of the knife can reach 80 cm.
The back of the knife is thick, the blade is curved and has a tip. At the same time, blood grooves are specially added to the blade on both sides to facilitate bleeding the enemy during a fight.
There is no doubt that this is exactly the sword Zhou Xu wanted!
(End of this chapter)
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