Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 295 The Method of Forging Steel
Yuan Xi called Sun Li, and rode out with a few guards. When passing by the street, the people on both sides saw him and bowed down on both sides of the road.

After Xu Jie was rumored to be the first to hang in the city, Yuan Xi opened a warehouse to release food, which calmed the hearts of the people in the city, and his prestige in the city also increased.

Yuan Xi thought it was a coincidence that Xu Jie's covetousness had to be investigated carefully, and the crime could not be punished by death, but his slave, Boss Zhu, was someone else's eyeliner.

Boss Zhu led a group of servants of the Xu family to take away Father Qian, all of them were seen by the neighbors in the neighborhood, and the evidence of the murder was solid, so Yuan Xi put the hat of conspiracy on Xu Jie's head by the way, let this A man who dies in a fancy way deserves his death.

Yuan Xi rode his horse all the way to the north corner of Jicheng. A small river flowed by. There were dozens of houses on both sides. Thick smoke billowed from the chimneys on the roofs.

Jicheng specially set aside a piece of land, built dozens of blacksmith shops, gathered experienced blacksmiths to train apprentices, and tested different ironmaking methods.

Yuan Xi jumped off his horse and walked into the largest blacksmith's shop in the center. He saw seven or eight people sweating profusely in front of the anvil, holding a hammer high in one hand, and holding a red-hot iron block with pliers in the other, beating with hammers.

From the Spring and Autumn Period to the Western Han Dynasty, block refining carburizing steel and cast iron softening techniques appeared.

The so-called block carburizing steel is made of cottony block iron as raw material, and then through thermal carburizing, carbon infiltrates from the surface to the inside, and then repeatedly forged to form carburizing steel.

Smelting iron with sponge-like lumps, or carburizing wrought iron for steelmaking is easy to implement and has become the earliest steelmaking method in my country. This is a leap forward between pig iron and steel.

If it is said that carburized steel has promoted the development of military weapons, then the softening of cast iron has greatly promoted the application of agricultural implements.

Early cast iron was white iron with high carbon and low silicon. Carbon exists in iron in the form of iron carbide, which is brittle and hard, and it is easy to crack when used. The white iron blank is decarburized or toughened at high temperature.

It is also because of this technology that pig iron farm tools began to be widely used and promoted, which greatly improved the level of agricultural production. However, there was no record of forging cast iron in Europe until the Middle Ages, and the plow was still used for plowing.

The level of production tools directly determines productivity. The average yield of rice in the south of the Song Dynasty was 350 catties per mu, while the average yield of mixed crops in the UK at the same time was only 70 catties per mu. The reason for talent.

At this time, China's steelmaking technology was already at the top. You must know that before the seventeenth century, most of the world was still at the level of ironmaking technology, and block ironmaking was still used. Except for certain areas in Arabia, the infiltration of steel Carbon technology is almost invisible.

Especially in Europe, steelmaking generally adopts the method of low-temperature smelting of wrought iron. Steel cannot be melted, iron and slag are not easy to separate, carbon cannot penetrate quickly, and the quality of steel is extremely poor.

At that time, Rome was called the Great Qin, and its mainstream weapon, the short sword, was a piece of iron, so it could be bent when stabbed, let alone forging a long sword, even if it was made, it would be useless, so it needed to import a large amount of oriental steel to make it. arms.

In the Western Han Dynasty, Huaxia's steelmaking technology once again made an epoch-making breakthrough.

Fried steel method.

Carry out decarburization treatment on iron castings, and then decarburize the formed iron plate into a formed steel plate. The so-called fried steel means that it is continuously stirred during the smelting process, just like stir-frying. Under this condition, the carbon, silicon, and manganese are oxidized to reduce their content in the steel.

Most of the fried steel is low-carbon steel or cooked steel. There is also a practice of first frying pig iron into wrought iron with very low carbon content, and then using surface carburizing to increase carbon.

In the Taiping Dao classic "Taiping Jing" in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the relevant content of frying steel was also recorded in detail. If you forge it ten thousand times, you will become Moye."

The Taiping Sutra is called the Taoist Yuandian. It contains not only teachings, but also alchemy, including medicine, acupuncture, smelting and other practical techniques. When the lower class people contacted it, they also promoted the spread of technology.

Yuan Xi's righteous school is developing extremely rapidly, partly because officials and craftsmen really need to acquire knowledge to improve their status, and on the other hand, it is also because the knowledge of hundreds of schools imparted in the free school is very similar to the all-encompassing Taiping Jing Many people from all walks of life who secretly believed in Yuan Xi's prophecy and the identity of the real person secretly joined Yuan Xi's surroundings.

The reason why the steel frying method is called a time-marking technology is because the foundation of the modern iron and steel industry is the blast furnace, open hearth furnace, and converter. The blast furnace was first invented in ancient China, and the open hearth furnace and converter were also born out of the steel frying method. The Krupp crucible steel of steel is directly copying the method of frying steel.

Without these three things, there would be no industrial revolution and no modern industrial civilization.

So some people say that the Chinese opened half of the door to the industrial revolution, and the Europeans opened the remaining half.

But unfortunately, in the nearly 2000 years since Huaxia invented the steel frying method, due to various reasons, it has not stepped into the half-open door, which is embarrassing.

If a suitable furnace cannot be made, the smelting temperature cannot be increased. The smelting of iron and steel requires more than [-] degrees, and the smelting of porcelain requires more than [-] degrees.

The reason why the west imports Chinese porcelain is because the furnace temperature is not enough to burn it by itself, and the technology of blast furnace and bellows is comprehensively backward, which leads to the failure of ceramic manufacturing, and of course the iron and steel smelting.

Huaxia's steelmaking technology has led the world for more than 1000 years, which has allowed Huaxia's weapon forging technology to advance by leaps and bounds, and a large number of extremely practical weapons have emerged.

The level of weapons determines the level of warfare and tactics. It is very doubtful how intense the battle can be and how invincible tactics can be produced in a place where steel cannot be tempered.

However, another factor that promotes China's continuous improvement in iron and steelmaking is that there are too many impurities in the iron ore in China. In order to solve the problem of impurities, the working people in China have tried every means to improve iron and steelmaking in every link. steel craft.

As early as the Warring States period, the technology of adding alkaline lime to molten iron to remove impurities appeared. Lime can promote the precipitation of slag and adsorb phosphorus and sulfur impurities.At the end of the [-]th century in the West, this method of adding alkaline substances to remove impurities was found.

An iron anchor of the Ming Dynasty was once unearthed in Quanzhou, weighing up to 750 kilograms. After testing, the phosphorus and sulfur content is two or three times lower than that of modern high-quality steel.

In contrast, the iron ore near the Mediterranean has a high sulfur content and few impurities. However, in the past 2000 years, the West has not found a way to remove sulfur, resulting in no progress in steelmaking technology.

Of course, the steelmaking technology in the Arab region at that time was not low. Although it may be somewhat different from China, it is still much better than the West. As for the reason, it is said that the Silk Road promoted cultural and technological exchanges between China and the Arab region.

Therefore, communication is the driving force for progress, and it is difficult to stay ahead of the times by working behind closed doors.

The final step of the fried steel method is to fold and forge the oxidized wrought iron or steel multiple times, and after further carburizing, it becomes a hundred-smelting steel.

Of course, the method of frying steel is not without disadvantages. It is not easy to control the carbon content, and the production is more time-consuming and labor-intensive, so the method of pouring steel came into being.

"Seven Lives" written by Zhang Xie of the Jin Dynasty: "The more the sheep's head is sold, the more the protactite (鍱) will be forged, and it will be refined and strong, and it will be filled with thousands of irrigations, plump and strong, and fly cheap."

Li Shan's note: "To devise means to stack it, and to irrigate it means to cast it."

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the embryonic form of the steel filling method had already appeared. The master of steelmaking technology in this period was the Huan Shou Dao.

The Huan Shou Knife of this world is completely different from the mainstream weapons of later generations. From the perspective of later generations, the knife is more than 1.2 meters long and three centimeters wide, but the thickest part of the blade reaches one centimeter. Next, the thickest blades of Western epee swords in later generations are only about four millimeters.

This is because a good ring-sword often requires dozens of layers of steel to be repeatedly folded and forged. It looks like an iron bar in the hand, but with the support of the strength of Bailian Steel, it has It is suitable for both horse and foot combat, and has the advantages of swinging, smashing, cutting, and piercing armor.

What blacksmiths are doing now is to try to make ring-shoulders without forging, and finally conduct strength comparison experiments to find the most suitable one.

Yuan Xi watched the blacksmiths beating the iron blocks with hammers and hammers, and couldn't help feeling a little moved. There are countless such working people in China, who overcame obstacles one by one with their hands, and gathered into the torrent of the times, driving history process.

Seeing Yuan Xi bringing everyone in, a group of blacksmiths immediately wanted to salute, Yuan Xi said loudly: "It's okay, you guys finish the fight first!"

The room was extremely noisy, Yuan Xi raised his voice to the loudest so that everyone could barely hear him, turned around quickly, and continued to swing the hammer.

Their movements are a bit awkward, because forging according to Yuan Xi's requirements is not quite the same as their previous habits.

Because the ring head knife they are making is made according to the improved steel pouring method proposed by Yuan Xi, and some improvements in the direction of steel clamping have been adopted. No one has any idea what the final effect will be.

Steel filling, also known as group steel method or raw-cooked method, is one of the most outstanding achievements in early Chinese steelmaking technology. It was invented at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty and was only popularized and perfected during the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

According to the memory of later generations, Yuan Xi asked craftsmen to use three methods to improve.

The pig iron sinking method, the pig iron changing covering method, and the pig iron pouring method.

Different processes and different steel qualities will affect the quality of the final product, so it is necessary to find the most suitable method.

At this time, a blacksmith had already punched out the prototype of the ring head knife. He clamped the red sword body with iron tongs, walked to a huge wooden barrel, and put it in.

Hearing a hissing sound, the blacksmith lifted the blade up, and it caught fire.

Everyone's eyes couldn't help being drawn to it. This was Yuan Xi's second new idea, the oil quenching method.

Different from the water quenching method that had been invented at this time, the oil quenching method of later generations can make the sword more tough, while the water quenching method has higher rigidity.

Of course, depending on the quality of steel, it cannot be said that oil quenching is necessarily better than water quenching. A really good weapon must have both hardness and toughness, which can only be seen through subsequent tests.

However, with a combination of two approaches, Yuan Xi thought to himself that he should be able to improve the quality of the Huan Shou Dao to a higher level.

As for how much higher, he has no idea, but as long as the knife can withstand a few more swings and slashes than the previous knife, it will determine the life and death of both the holder and the enemy on the battlefield.

(End of this chapter)