Chapter 107 A strange knife in a quarter of an hour

Of course, Chen Ying, the landlord, did not plan to develop all the more than 50,000 mu of land into cultivated land, but planned to build a heavy industrial zone in Changancheng with two-thirds of it.

Because of Yang Rong's land in Laohuaili, Chen Ying's carriage workshop has been expanded, and the production capacity has been greatly improved, especially the way of assembly line operation, the whole factory has used more than 130 craftsmen, responsible for the quality of more than 600 apprentices, and has been able to manufacture more than 600 wheels and its supporting carriages every month.

Although Chen Ying now maintains the production capacity of producing twelve carriages per month, it can bring 30,000 yuan of income to the East Palace.

In this world, there are no eternal friends, only eternal interests. Chen Ying formed a strong alliance of interests with Donggong for all his properties.

Because of the benefits of the four-wheeled carriage, when he learned that Chen Ying was planning to build a steel plant, Li Jiancheng supported it without reservation. Li Jiancheng was worried that the development of the steel plant would make others jealous, and Chen Ying had no way to expand production capacity, so the crown princess even launched a lady's diplomacy, talking about Yu Wenshi and his wife Shouguang County Lord, and asked Yu Wenshi to give Chen Ying the land in Yuhe almost for nothing.

However, Li Jiancheng can't keep calm, if it is really as Chen Ying said, this blast furnace can produce more than 10,000 catties of steel, and the profit alone is as much as 300 yuan, and it will exceed 10,000 yuan in a month, the key is that this steel is different from the carriage, the carriage is a necessity, but steel is different, this is a necessity for people's production and life, and it controls Datang's steel production capacity, for Datang, it is simply the lifeblood of Datang.

Coke steelmaking is different from charcoal steelmaking, coke heats up quickly, and in just one hour, you can see from the observation hole on the side that the iron ore has turned red and shiny, turning orange red, and gradually liquid molten iron appears at the bottom of the furnace.

Li Jiancheng watched the shiny red molten iron appear in the furnace, and danced excitedly: "The iron is out, the iron is out!" ”

Chen Ying smiled bitterly: "Your Royal Highness the Prince, it's still early, if all the nearly 30,000 catties of iron ore in this furnace are melted down, it will take at least four hours." It's still early......"

"It's only four hours, and this palace can afford to wait!"

Li Jiancheng looked at the molten iron churning in the observation hole with great interest, as if this was the most wonderful scene in the world.

Steel is a very scarce resource for the Tang Dynasty, because the early Tang Dynasty almost no month without war, almost all of the steel was used in the military field, such as the common people use money, wormwood, Lu sickle, push sickle, wok, hook sickle, mowing grass, chopping wood for wedges, etc. The tools selected for threshing and cleaning have flail, stone climbing phosphorus, fan car, etc. These agricultural tools must have been made of steel more efficiently, but because there were too few steel resources, in the field of production, farmers had to use wooden woks (pickaxes), iron or stone wedges, and some people did not even have iron axes, and still used primitive stone axes invented by the Stone Age.

Take the price of steel in this era as an example, in later generations, one acre of rice is enough to exchange for one ton of steel, in this era, two acres of rice, can only be exchanged for one pound of steel, which is removed from the difference between the annual amount, the difference between the two is equivalent to more than 2,000 times.

And Chen Ying grew up in the era of cheap steel and serious overcapacity of steel in later generations, and he couldn't understand Datang's need for steel at all.

For the next four hours, Li Jiancheng sat in the pavilion next to the blast furnace. No matter how hard Chen Ying persuaded him, Li Jiancheng had the same attitude: "If you don't see the molten steel come out, the palace won't go anywhere!" ”

Chen Ying had a lot of things to do at this time, the originally planned attack on Chinese New Year's Eve, the troops had begun to approach the direction of Tongguan, as the commander-in-chief of the battle of Hangu Pass this time, Chen Ying could not sit in Chang'an City and command remotely.

However, after all, the Yuhe Iron and Steel Plant is newly built, in which metallurgy is a very dangerous industry, or the equipment itself fails, or the operation is wrong, and an explosion accident is likely to occur. Once the blast furnace explodes, more than 20,000 tons of molten steel, the huge shock wave will easily move this steel plant, which covers an area of more than 1,300 acres, to the ground in an instant.

Even if there is no problem with the blast furnace, but in the condensation process, as long as the mold is not completely dried and contains water, the high-temperature liquid molten steel will explode with the water, and the blast furnace will emit huge heat, just like a gunpowder explosion. (Lao Cheng's major is metallurgy, so if people play steelmaking, they must be cautious, otherwise it is likely that the steel will not be smelted, but the person will be killed.) ）

How dare Chen Ying rest assured that Li Jiancheng is here, if there is really any problem, Chen Ying will simply wipe his neck and commit suicide.

However, due to Li Jiancheng's presence, if the craftsmen and craftsmen don't know the performance, they are really stupid, Li Jiancheng has been staring at it for a whole day now, whether it is the craftsmen or craftsmen present, they are all like spinning tops, spinning non-stop.

Ancient steelmaking is just a difficult process to grasp, and the finished product is mainly iron and medium and low carbon steel, and shit luck can meet a piece or two of high-carbon steel - the probability is similar to winning the lottery.

Generally speaking, the lower the carbon content of steel products, the softer, and the higher the brittle, harder. Medium and low carbon steel is soft, used to make swords is not sharp, the ancients also regarded it as "wrought iron", only the toughness, hardness, and strength of high-carbon steel meet the needs of making weapons, and the ancients thought that it was "steel".

The carbon content determines the hardness and softness of the steel. Thus it is manifested by being struck by a forging hammer. An experienced metro craftsman can tell if it's a piece of soft iron. It can still make swords, swords, and steel.

When Chen Ying was smelting the furnace, he had already calculated the ratio of iron to charcoal using the fortifications, which means that as long as the molten iron was smelted within twelve hours, it could definitely be turned into steel, not iron. There are just some subtle elements, and Chen Ying has no way to grasp them, these calculation methods, Chen Ying has already handed over to Ge Tong, Wei Meng, Yan Shihu and others, and finally waited for the furnace to open, Li Jiancheng looked at the gate of the blast furnace nervously.

Looking at the semi-solidified substance like jelly flowing out of the gate, these orange and red pole "jelly" slowly flowed into the mold, and then under the drive of the rolling shaft, slowly flowed into the distance, the distance is a huge cooling pool, or the dark red billets enter the cooling pool one by one, the high-temperature billet and cold water, carried out a encounter between ice and fire, and the entire cooling pool has become a foggy, like a fairyland on earth.

When the billet enters the cooling pool, there is naturally cold water to cool it down quickly, and of course, the billet coming out of the cooling pool has become a billet glowing with a blue glow.

Li Jiancheng couldn't wait to rush to the edge of the cooling pool and asked Wei Meng, "How is it?" ”

Chen Ying didn't need to take a hammer and pound it like Wei Meng, he could judge from the color of the steel surface that this was a very good piece of high-carbon steel.

Every time Wei Meng's hammer struck on the billet, sparks sputtered. But I can't knock out how deep the imprint. The iron billet was tough and hard. Apparently it is a good pure steel!

"This, this is the real Baosteel!" Wei Meng knelt down excitedly to Li Jiancheng and Chen Ying, kowtowing again and again, his voice trembling: "His Royal Highness the Prince, the general Hongfu Qitian." The Lord is really the Southern Dipper Star Monarch descending to earth! The first furnace of steelmaking produces steel. I haven't seen Wei pound iron for 20 years! ”

Chen Ying said disapprovingly: "Steelmaking, you need to understand the principle of steelmaking, the more carbon is contained in molten iron, the softer the iron, the higher the carbon content, the harder the iron, and the more brittle it will be." You just need to control the temperature, control the ratio of iron ore to charcoal, and I can guarantee that you will have steel in every furnace, not iron. Of course, according to my ratio, if you continue to burn for another hour, the viscous molten steel will become like soy sauce, and the final steel will come out of soft steel, and if you burn it for another two hours, or even longer, then only iron will come out. ”

Ge Tong said suspiciously: "General, what's going on?" ”

"Charcoal burns!" Chen Ying knew that they might not be able to understand the oxidation reaction when they were told at this time, but he taught them in such a superficial way. Chen Ying thought for a while and said: "The smaller the carbon, the worse the iron quality, so we must control the ratio of carbon to iron today, this is the most important issue!" ”

Wei Meng and Ge Tong suddenly realized: "I see! ”

Wei Meng unconsciously asked his son Wei Qiang to prepare a special mold, which was about six feet long, and could almost be regarded as a stick. When a mold of molten steel is connected, this piece of mold is not like other molds, each piece is worth 100 catties, but equivalent to about 20 catties. Quite a fifth of other molds.

This piece of mold was not cooled with water, but waited for the orange-red billet to just darken, Wei Meng took a big hammer and put it with his son Wei Qiang under the precision forging hammer to beat.

At this time, the surroundings were already like a fairyland, and there was fog everywhere, and the water vapor met the cold air, and turned into snowflakes, and it began to fall one after another.

Li Jiancheng looked at the billets piled up on the hill one by one, and a heartfelt smile appeared on his face.

More than 10,000 catties of steel, it sounds like a lot, in fact, there is really not much, if it is 10,000 catties of grain, it can fill a warehouse, but this more than 10,000 catties of steel is just more than 100 pieces of 100 catties of steel billets.

At this time, Ge Tong also counted all the condensed steel billets: "His Royal Highness the Prince of Qiqi, General, this furnace has produced a total of one hundred and twenty-three pieces, about 12,000 catties, and forty-six pieces of pig iron, a total of about 4,600 catties!" ”

Chen Ying frowned, this result made him very dissatisfied, he was seriously thinking about which link went wrong.

According to the iron ore he invested, this furnace steel should not be 16,600 catties of iron, but 20,000 catties, which is nearly 3,040 catties, what is the problem?

However, at this time, the iron rod under Wei Meng's hand gradually took shape. I saw that this handle has a graceful arc, about six feet long, about four fingers wide, about one finger thick on the back, and the cloud pattern on the knife surface is faintly visible, such as flowing water, such as a star, the cold light is shining, and the sword is rushing into the sky.

Li Jiancheng's eyes were straight: "In just a quarter of an hour, you created a Mo knife?" ”

"His Royal Highness the Prince, that's not how the accounts are calculated!" Chen Ying explained: "If you use a billet to directly forge a Mo knife, let alone a quarter of an hour, I'm afraid you won't be able to build one in an hour, and now Master Wei is just taking advantage of the temperature of the blast furnace that has not retreated." ”

Chen Ying felt the need to explain to Li Jiancheng what the so-called 100 steels were all about.