Da Wei Chun

Chapter 101 The Legendary Sword
The spring rains are continuous, and there is a faint mist floating in the fields, as if covered with a layer of tulle.

Under a simple work shed, Li Song and several blacksmiths surrounded Li Chengzhi, looking at a horizontal knife in his hand, with wild eyes.

beautiful……

The body of the knife is silver and bright, and the whole body is covered with patterns. The layers are progressive like a ladder, and the veins are as delicate as silk weaving. The flowing clouds and flowing water are wonderful...

It's not that Li Song has never seen precious swords, nor has he never seen a sharp weapon with a blade covered with patterns. For example, the snowflake steel knife that Li Shixian wears is made of refined steel.

But compared with this knife, the blade is not as bright, and the patterns on it are a bit messy and rough, far from being so delicate and natural.

Li Chengzhi couldn't explain to him what iron carbide crystals are, which is the origin of this pattern on the knife body.

The pattern on the Bailian steel knife is forcibly formed by repeated forging, welding, and extrusion, and this pattern is naturally formed by carbon iron crystals, which of course looks much more symmetrical and delicate.

It's also luck.

Because what was brought in this time was a piece of smelting iron, which was far less useful than the mature iron materials collected before, so the smelted steel had too many impurities and was of poor quality.

Although it is also steel, it is a strip of steel that bends when it is broken, or shatters when it is dropped.

Li Chengzhi had anticipated this problem a long time ago and thought of a solution.

One is to repeatedly forge to remove impurities after casting. Although it is time-consuming and labor-intensive, it is dozens of times less labor-intensive than direct casting and smelting iron.

The second is sealed casting: after the impurities are removed by the floating method, the crucible is completely closed, so that the steel ingot will not be in contact with the air during the solidification process, and no oxidation reaction will occur.

The method is very simple and saves manpower, but it is a bit useless.

Because the ingot cannot be taken out without smashing the crucible, one furnace of steel needs a crucible...

Clay and clay are very convenient, and there is a lot of graphite, and smashed crucibles can be recovered and recast. Li Chengzhi naturally chose the second option.

The procedure is not complicated. After a brief introduction, a group of blacksmiths will understand.

Later, when the old blacksmith asked him how to deal with the scrap steel, Li Chengzhi said casually: smash it and add some firewood to it for re-smelting...

It happened that the old blacksmith had rotten bamboo boards at hand, so he put some in.It happened that there were two novices who summoned the wind to watch the fire. The old blacksmith forgot to stop, so they kept blowing the wind for a whole night...

In this way, a pot of Utz steel was refined by mistake?

That is, a few hundred years later, the embryo steel of the world-famous Damascus knife.

After Li Chengzhi found out, he was very curious...but only curious.

Of course he knows how to make Uzis steel, but at the moment, the price-performance ratio is not that high.

For Li Chengzhi, the casting method is simple and simple: the main thing is to control the temperature.

When melting the iron material, the furnace temperature should not be lower than 1000 and cannot be higher than 1200, and it should last for two hours. When the iron material is about to melt, the charcoal can be evenly dissolved in it.

When solidifying, the furnace temperature should be controlled at 700 to 900 degrees for at least three hours, so as to have enough time to form uniform carbon iron crystals in the steel ingot.

For people of this era, this is the most difficult thing, including the Indians who have practiced Utz steel, most of them rely on experience, and a small part depends on luck.

When you are unlucky, you have to practice five or six times, and it takes two or three days non-stop to get a pot of good steel.

Europeans have studied for two or three centuries, but have never copied Utz steel. This is the reason: they never thought that the carburizing link and iron-carbon crystals of Utz steel are completed at low temperature, let alone that it takes a constant time to complete the process. temperature control...

The reason why it is not simple is that one is wasting time and the other is wasting copper: even if Li Chengzhi wants to control the furnace temperature constantly, he can only use the method of inserting copper bars at the furnace mouth, and he cannot leave people. To observe carefully.

Once the copper bar is soft, it means that the temperature has reached more than [-].

If the copper bar is completely melted, it means that the temperature of the furnace is over a thousand...

A furnace needs at least two catties of copper, and if you are unlucky, it may cost six to seven catties, which is not very cost-effective.

The second is that if you want to really achieve the strength of a Damascus knife, you have to add some manganese into it.

This is the fundamental reason why the Damascus knife is said to be miraculous and unstoppable.

Think about it and know, in this era when it takes at least several months to make a real steel knife, what is the difference between a manganese-containing carbon steel knife and a magic weapon?
After Li Chengzhi picked out [-] catties of iron materials, he only found a few hundred catties of iron smelting suspected to contain manganese. If he wanted to make a large-scale production, he had to go there himself, at least to open a small manganese iron ore ore. Manganese ore came out.

So from the moment, the feasibility of mass production of Utz steel is not high.

He also just thought about making one or two Damascus knives besides steelmaking, to see if he can find some big households to collect IQ tax... If it pays off, he will continue to fight, these hundreds of catties of manganese ferromanganese, make hundreds of knives still ok...

……

Li Chengzhi held the knife in one hand, stretched out his fingers with the other, and gently touched the blade.

Some scrapers...not the edge, but the edge!

"Li Song, if this knife is sold, how many catties of copper can it be exchanged for?"

"Sell?" Li Song regained his composure, and frowned slightly, "It depends on how profitable it is..."

What does it mean to be beautiful?

Li Chengzhi glared at him, then shouted at the old blacksmith: "Bring a piece of iron!"

The old blacksmith responded urgently, bent his waist, and moved out from under his feet a piece of iron that was full of holes, like a sponge, about two or three centimeters thick.

This is a block of iron smelting, a layer of coal or charcoal, and then a layer of iron ore sealed and smelted raw iron.

Knowing that he was going to test the knife, everyone retreated a little.

Not afraid of being cut, but afraid of being accidentally injured by splashed iron slag: They have seen how terrifying Li Chengzhi's strength is.

I saw Li Chengzhi slashing down with a knife, and the light of the knife was like white practice, slashing fiercely on the iron block.

After the sound of "dong", Li Chengzhi put away the knife with a smile, and Li Song and others surrounded him again.

Seeing the piece of iron that had been cut in half with a single knife, the incisions were smooth and neat, and the eyeballs of several people protruded.

Looking at the knife in Li Chengzhi's hand again, let alone bent or broken, there was not even a hair-thin gap on the blade, and everyone gasped.

Even if it is a real hundred-refined steel knife, at least a few gaps should be left, right?
It is estimated that it is not small...

Didn't Li Song never see Li Sixian kill someone with that snowflake steel knife?

Once he slashed the enemy's armor with a single knife, and several mouths burst out immediately. The distressed Li Shixian scolded his mother...

Before they recovered, Li Chengzhi chuckled, put the blade on the iron block, and pulled back hard...

Like cutting meat, the iron block was cut open by Li Chengzhi like this?

Although it didn't cut through, at most it was cut by one or two cents (one cent is equal to one tenth of an inch), but the question is, no matter how soft it is, it is still iron, not tofu?
Li Chengzhi sneered slightly: What is this?
When I was a child, I saw a potmaker come to the village to mend pots... He took a manganese steel dagger, and cut the holes in the bottom of the pot neatly like cutting wood.

That's a cast iron skillet...

Li Song's scalp went numb.

He even forgot that it was Li Chengzhi standing in front of him. He stretched out his hand and snatched the knife into his hands. Then he held the handle with both hands, pressed it on the iron material, and pulled it hard...

That piece of iron was cut in half!
(End of this chapter)