Yuan Xi called Sun Li and rode out with a few guards. When they passed through the street, the people on both sides saw them and knelt down on both sides of the road.
After Xu Jie was reported to have been beheaded, Yuan Xi opened the granaries to release grain, which appeased the people in the city, and his prestige in the city also rose.
Yuan Xi thought to himself what a coincidence. If one really looked into Xu Jie's greed and cruelty, he would not be guilty of the death penalty. But it just so happened that his servant, Boss Zhu, was a spy planted by someone else.
Boss Zhu and a group of Xu family servants took Old Man Qian away, which was seen by all the neighbors. In addition, there was solid evidence of the crime, so Yuan Xi put the blame on Xu Jie and made this man who was courting death die a worthy death.
Yuan Xi rode all the way to the northern corner of Jicheng. There was a small river flowing through it, with dozens of houses on both sides. Thick smoke billowed out of the chimneys on the roofs, the sound of inflated air bags came one after another, and the clanging sound of iron forging was endless.
Jicheng specially set aside an area and built dozens of blacksmith shops, gathering experienced blacksmiths to train apprentices and verify and test different iron-smelting methods.
Yuan Xi jumped off his horse and walked into the largest blacksmith shop in the central area. He saw seven or eight people sweating profusely in front of the anvil, holding a hammer in one hand and holding a red-hot iron block with pliers in the other, hammering it again and again.
From the Spring and Autumn Period to the Western Han Dynasty, block-smelting carburized steel and cast iron softening techniques appeared.
The so-called block carburizing steel is made of cotton-like block iron as raw material, which is then hot carburized, with carbon penetrating from the surface to the inside, and then repeatedly forged to form carburized steel.
Using sponge-like blocks to make iron, or using carburizing of wrought iron to make steel, is easy to implement and became the earliest steelmaking method in my country. This is a leap forward in development between pig iron and steel.
If carburizing steel promoted the development of military weapons, then cast iron softening technology greatly advanced the application of agricultural tools.
Early cast iron was white iron with high carbon and low silicon content. Carbon existed in the iron in the form of iron carbide, which was brittle and hard and easily cracked during use. In order to increase its toughness, craftsmen invented the cast iron softening technique, which decarburized or toughened the white iron blanks at high temperatures.
It was also because of this technology that cast iron farm tools began to be widely used and promoted, greatly improving the level of agricultural production. However, there was no record of forging cast iron in Europe until the Middle Ages, and wooden plows were still used for farming.
The level of production tools directly determines productivity. The average yield of rice per mu in southern Song Dynasty was 350 kilograms, while the average yield of mixed crops in Britain at the same time was only more than 70 kilograms per mu. The difference between the two is already quite large, which is why later generations said that the Chinese have a talent for farming.
At this time, China's steelmaking technology had already taken the lead. It should be noted that before the 17th century, most parts of the world were still at the level of ironmaking technology and were still using block ironmaking. Except for some areas in Arabia, carburizing technology for steel was almost unseen.
Especially in Europe, steelmaking generally adopts the method of low-temperature smelting of wrought iron. The steel cannot be melted, the iron and slag are difficult to separate, the carbon cannot penetrate quickly, and the quality of the steel is extremely poor.
At that time, Rome was called Da Qin, and its mainstream weapon, the dagger, was a piece of smelted iron, so it would bend when stabbed, not to mention forging a long sword. Even if it was made, it would be of no practical use, so it needed to import a large amount of Eastern steel to make weapons.
In the Western Han Dynasty, China's steelmaking technology once again made a groundbreaking breakthrough.
Stir-fry steel method.
The cast iron parts are decarburized and then the formed iron plates are decarburized to become formed steel plates. The so-called steel frying means that the liquid or semi-liquid pig iron is constantly stirred during the smelting process, just like cooking. The liquid or semi-liquid pig iron is oxidized under the blast oxidation conditions to reduce the carbon, silicon and manganese content in the steel.
Most of the steel is low-carbon steel or wrought steel. There is also a method of first frying pig iron into wrought iron with a very low carbon content, and then using surface carburizing to increase the carbon content.
The Taiping Jing, a classic of the Eastern Han Dynasty, also recorded in detail the relevant content of steelmaking: "When there is an emergency, the craftsman will strike the smelting stone to find the iron inside, burn it to make it water, and then ask the skilled workers to forge it ten thousand times, and then it will become Moye."
The Taiping Jing is known as the Taoist classic. It contains not only doctrines but also techniques, including medicine, acupuncture, smelting and other practical techniques. While the lower-class people were exposed to it, they also promoted the spread of technology.
Yuan Xi's charity school is now developing very rapidly. One reason is that officials and craftsmen really need to acquire knowledge and improve their status. On the other hand, it is also because the knowledge of various schools of thought taught in the charity school is very similar to the all-encompassing feature of the Taiping Jing. Many people from all walks of life who privately believe in Yuan Xi's prophecies and true identity will secretly gather around Yuan Xi.
The reason why the steel-making method is called the time-marking technology is because the basis of the modern steel industry is the blast furnace, open hearth hearth and converter. The blast furnace was first invented in ancient China. The open hearth hearth and converter were also derived from the steel-making method. The Krupp crucible steel, which was used as high-quality artillery steel in the early days, was directly copied from the steel-making method.
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 two thousand years since China invented the steel-frying method, for various reasons, it has never stepped into that half-open door, which is a pity.
If you can't make a suitable furnace, the smelting temperature cannot be raised. The smelting temperature of steel requires more than 1,500 degrees, and the smelting temperature of porcelain requires more than 1,100 degrees.
The reason why the West imported Chinese porcelain was because the furnace temperature was not high enough and they could not burn it themselves. The blast furnace and bellows technology were all backward, which led to poor ceramic manufacturing and naturally even worse steel smelting.
China's steelmaking technology was ahead of the world for more than a thousand years, which enabled China's weapons forging technology to advance by leaps and bounds, and a large number of extremely practical weapons emerged.
The level of weapons determines the level of war and tactics. It is very doubtful how intense the battles can be or how invincible the tactics can be in a place where even steel cannot be produced.
However, another factor that promoted China's continuous improvement in iron and steel making was that the iron ore in China contained too many impurities. In order to solve the impurity problem, the working people of China tried every means to improve the iron and steel making process at every link.
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 absorb phosphorus and sulfur impurities. It was not until the end of the 19th century in the West that this method of adding alkaline substances to remove impurities was found.
An iron anchor from the Ming Dynasty was once unearthed in Quanzhou, weighing 750 kilograms. Testing showed that its phosphorus and sulfur content was two to three times lower than that of modern high-quality steel.
In contrast, the iron ore near the Mediterranean has a high sulfur content and very few impurities. However, in the past two thousand 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 there may be some gap with China, it was still much stronger 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. It is difficult to stay ahead of the times if we work in isolation.
The final step of the steelmaking process is to fold and forge the oxidized wrought iron or steel multiple times to further carburize it to make it into refined steel.
Of course, the frying steel method is not without its disadvantages. It is not easy to control the carbon content and the production is more time-consuming and labor-intensive, so the pouring steel method came into being.
"Seven Fates" by Zhang Xie of the Jin Dynasty: "It is melted beyond the sheep's head, forged beyond the forging, refined and smelted, thousands of openings and thousands of pourings, Fenglong stimulates the thorns, Feilian fans the charcoal."
Li Shan's note: "Bi means to stack it, and Guan means to cast it."
By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the prototype of the steel-pouring method had already appeared, and the culmination of steelmaking technology during this period was the ring-handled sword.
The ring-handled sword of this era is completely different from the mainstream weapons of later generations. From the perspective of later generations, the sword is more than 1.2 meters long and 3 centimeters wide, but the thickest part of the blade is 1 centimeter. In comparison, the thickest part of the Western heavy sword in later generations is only about 4 millimeters.
This is because a good ring-handled sword often requires dozens of layers of steel to be folded and forged repeatedly. Holding it in the hand, it feels more like an iron bar, but with the strength of the tempered steel, it is suitable for both horse and foot combat, and has the advantages of swinging, smashing, chopping, and stabbing through armor.
What blacksmiths are doing now is to try to make ring-handled swords without forging methods, and finally conduct strength comparison experiments to find the most suitable one.
Yuan Xi watched the blacksmiths hitting the iron blocks with hammers and couldn't help but feel moved. It was because of countless working people like this in China who overcame obstacles one after another with their own hands that they formed the torrent of the times and pushed forward the progress of history.
When the blacksmiths saw Yuan Xi and his men coming in, they immediately tried to salute him. Yuan Xi shouted, "It's okay. Just finish your work first!"
The room was extremely noisy, and Yuan Xi raised his voice to the maximum so that everyone could barely hear him. They quickly turned around and continued swinging their hammers.
Their movements were somewhat stiff and awkward because they were forging according to Yuan Xi's requirements, which was not quite the same as their previous habits.
Because the ring-handled sword they were making was made according to the improved steel-pouring method proposed by Yuan Xi, and some improvements were made in the direction of steel clamping. No one knew what the final effect would be.
Pouring steel, also known as the lump steel method or the raw and cooked steel method, is one of the most outstanding achievements of China's early steelmaking technology. It was invented in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and was not promoted or improved until the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
According to the memories of later generations, Yuan Xi asked the craftsmen to improve it using three different methods.
Pig iron sinking method, pig iron covering method, pig iron pouring method.
Different processes and different steel qualities will affect the quality of the final product, so we need to find the most suitable method.
At this time, a blacksmith had already made a prototype of a ring-handled sword. He clamped the red-hot sword blade with pliers, walked to a huge wooden barrel, and put it in.
There was a hissing sound, and the blacksmith lifted up the sword, which actually caught fire.
Everyone's attention was attracted to it. This was Yuan Xi's second new idea, the oil quenching method.
Unlike the water quenching method that had been invented at this time, the later oil quenching method 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 definitely better than water quenching. A truly good weapon must have both hardness and toughness, which can only be determined through subsequent tests.
However, by taking two approaches at the same time, Yuan Xi thought that he should be able to raise the quality of the ring-handled sword to a higher level.
As for how much higher, he had no idea, but as long as the sword could withstand a few more swings and blows than the previous one, it would decide the life or death of both the holder and the enemy on the battlefield.