Cultivation of Immortals Begins with Drilling Wood To Make Fire

  Chapter 45 [Casting Ding]

  Fang Chang walked to the side, put down the pannier, and stopped to watch.

   Clusters of bright green stones are distributed randomly on the ground. They are high-grade malachite. Occasionally, dark blue azurite can be seen dotted among them, but the number is relatively small.

  Stone bluestone is azurite, and the color is really beautiful.

  As far as Fang Chang knows, malachite and azurite are the two most commonly used pigments at this time, and they are often ground into fine powder for sale.

  When painting, these two natural, soft, noble and gorgeous, beautiful and uncommon colors can render majestic works with distinct textures, with unlimited tension.

  The most important thing is that the price is still moderate, and it is very popular among literati.

  Holding a stone axe, Fang Chang was beating around to check, mining a piece of ore from time to time and throwing it into the basket behind his back.

  Malachite and azurite are both easy to smelt. Fang Chang found that color of pure ore, smashed it down and put it in the basket on his back. He didn't step lightly until the basket tipped, and returned to the fairy cliff.

  After going back and forth like this many times, a small ore mountain was piled up on the open space.

  The copper ore here is of good quality, and it is easy to collect in the shallow surface layer. What's even more rare is that this is a copper-tin associated mine.

  There are not only copper mines such as malachite and azurite in the vicinity, but also brown translucent cassiterite, all of which are mined. The high-quality parts are hand-picked and transported to Xianqi Cliff for stacking.

  During this rough excavation process, natural copper and natural silver were also found occasionally, and these were all taken to the cliff and stored together in thatched sheds.

  Tin is very important for copper smelting. Fortunately, tin-copper associated ores are very common, just like here.

  Tin is mixed with copper to make an alloy, which is bronze. It has high strength, low melting point, good casting performance, very wear-resistant and very stable, and is a material with excellent performance.

  For human beings, it once opened a new chapter in civilization.

  Another common copper alloy, brass, is a copper-zinc alloy. This is impossible this time, unless Fang Chang finds a zinc mine in Yunzhong Mountain one day.

   Similarly, under the premise that no iron ore is found, if you want to use metals, copper alloys are the best choice, and copper smelting is much simpler than iron smelting.

  Fang Chang was very strong, and he mined a lot of ore before stopping.

  ...

  …

   Dinner is bamboo rat.

   This delicious small animal caught in the bamboo forest, washed and peeled, cut into pieces, blanch and change the water, add wild onion and **** and simmer over low heat.

  Add salt, add small pieces of bamboo shoots and peeled chestnuts, and stew for a while, the aroma will fill the whole thatched cottage, even echoing in the open space on the cliff.

  Fang Chang lifted the lid of the bamboo pot and smelled it.

   Really fragrant.

  A few round plant roots, roasted in the fire until charred, soft and delicious after breaking apart, this is the staple food tonight.

  The stewed bamboo rat meat is tender, soft and delicious, the chestnut is delicate and sweet, and the bamboo shoots are sweet and crisp.

   What a treat.

  Fang Chang swept these away, and then washed the dishes and clay pots.

  This earthenware pot is actually not very suitable for pots. It is too brittle and not strong enough, and due to firing problems, there may be hidden wounds inside.

   A few days ago, a pot cracked, not only dousing the fire pit, but also dropping a pot of meat into the ash pit, which made people very uncomfortable.

  Perhaps the tripod should be cast first rather than the sword.

  After all, casting swords and casting tripods requires melting copper into alloys after smelting copper and tin, which requires a higher temperature brought by a large furnace.

   Even casting swords is more difficult, because casting swords requires careful adjustment to find the most suitable alloy ratio.

  Large-sized furnaces are not difficult, except that the shape of the furnace requires more experiments, and casting tripods requires more fuel and raw materials.

   But myself, do you still lack strength and time?

  As a practitioner, I have plenty of strength and never lack time, and improving cooking conditions can greatly improve the quality of life, which is far more than a hard sword that cannot be eaten.

  At present, there are no conditions to make pots, and bronze is not suitable for making pots. In this case, a tripod is a very suitable cooking utensil. Not only is it strong and thick, but the legs of the tripod also provide natural support.

  In addition, it is not picky about the performance of materials, so it is a good choice for practicing hands.

  Thinking of this, Fang Chang decided to cast the tripod first, not the sword.

  The tripod he was going to cast didn't need to be too big, it was enough for one or two people to cook. Fang Chang secretly laughed, maybe he could "cook a tripod" in a short time.

  …

  Fang Chang had accumulated quite a lot of ore, and the fuel he had saved before could not be used up, so he started building the furnace directly the next day.

  The stove first needs to be large, if it is made of clay, it will be too laborious.

   After thinking about it, Fang Chang used the bricks that had been fired before and built a stove without adhesives. It was as tall as a person, with a small mouth and a big belly.

Coat the inside with thick mud, leave an outlet at the bottom, put copper ore and charcoal together, ignite, and as the furnace temperature continues to rise, copper ore decomposes when heated, and together with charcoal, complex reactions occur in a closed environment, leaving Lower copper.

  The temperature of the charcoal is higher, and eventually the copper is melted, turning into red copper juice, which flows outside along the outflow port, and is drawn into a row of small pits on the ground by Fang Chang with a prepared grooved drainage rod, where it cools down and becomes copper ingots.

   Constantly input charcoal and ore.

  Fang Chang didn't turn off the fire until he had consumed most of the charcoal in the brick pool in the thatched shed, exhausted all the ore that he carried on his back yesterday, and put away batches of still hot copper blocks on the ground with his bare hands.

  The furnace temperature is sufficient, the quality of charcoal is good, and the ore grade is also high. This smelting was very successful.

  After cooling down, these copper blocks shone darkly, like slag, because charcoal, ashes, and even soil were mixed in it, not the purple-red color of pure copper.

  The tin used as an ingredient is easy to smelt. Fang Chang just used the small stove that was used to burn lime and bricks to quickly smelt a batch of tin ingots, and then put them on the stove to melt and purify them in clay pots.

  It is the most troublesome to make copper and tin into alloys.

  This still requires a high temperature capable of melting pure copper. Fortunately, the large furnace for smelting copper juice can meet this condition.

   But first, he used his own clay pots for cooking, filled these slag-like copper ingots, put them into the depths of the large furnace, and heated them at high temperature.

  During this process, Fang Chang kept reaching into the fire and shaking the clay pot until the pure copper was refined and poured into the preset pit to become a pure copper ingot.

  Not in a hurry to melt the alloy, Fang Chang thought about it first, and began to dig a pit not far from the side of the furnace, using sand and stone slabs to make the pouring shape.

  Ding ears, tripod feet, other than that are bare panels, without patterns or carvings.

  In theory, pottery can also be used, but Fang Chang just used clay mixed with sand to make a pouring model and buried it in the soil.

Then the big furnace was lit, and the pure copper ingots and tin nuggets shining purple-red light were put into the clay pot together. The burning furnace melted the copper, and the tin nuggets put in together gradually mix.

  Fang Chang deliberately left some time, waiting for the copper and tin to fully mix.

   Then he was not afraid of fire, he reached into the stove, took out the clay pot, and placed it on the ground. The bronze did not deform during the cooling process.

  After the clay pot cooled down, Fang Chang pinched the bronze inside with great force, feeling that the proportion was slightly brittle.

   Tried many times in a row, adding more water to the noodles, adding more water to the noodles, and then a satisfactory bronze alloy was prepared, and put into several jars, and fired into copper juice.

  Next, is the final casting.

  (end of this chapter)