Da Wei Chun

Chapter 250 Collecting IQ Tax
On the flat ground on one side of the gorge, there stands an iron-smelting furnace about the height of two people, thin at both ends and thick at the middle, like a big waist drum.

Half of the blast furnace is outside, which is used for blasting, slag extraction, and molten iron.The other half was surrounded by soil, and a high platform was built, flush with the furnace mouth, for blacksmiths to operate.

Overall it looks like half the size of a house.

This is a serious blast furnace, not like a crucible furnace, which only has a name.

It is more convenient to refine ore in this kind of blast furnace than in crucible.

First, the crucible furnace is small, and second, it is not easy to remove slag.

The process is also very simple: crush the ore - put it into the furnace - mix the catalyst and burn it with coke coal, and then burn out the molten iron.

Nine out of ten pieces of iron smelted in this way are pig iron.

Moreover, phosphorus and sulfur have been removed once, and the quality is much higher than the iron that Li Song and Hu Baozong bought from Gaoping Town.

The rest is naturally to remove carbon, or use wrought iron to smelt steel in a crucible furnace.

Looking back, in fact, the Chinese in the Western Han Dynasty already knew how to build large furnaces for smelting iron ore, but they were relatively bloated, at least five or six times the size of the current one.

But up to the Song Dynasty, blast furnace ironmaking technology was already very mature.Not only can the slag water (hot metal and slag) be separated, but it can even blow hot air (air heating).

In addition, the steel filling method that was quite mature in the Southern and Northern Dynasties basically reached the peak of human steelmaking technology. In the next 1000 years, until the popularization of industrial steelmaking, China's steelmaking technology basically did not evolve.

Including the large-scale steelmaking period after the founding of the People's Republic of China, whether it was the blast furnace or iron-making technology, and even Wang Mazi's technology of making kitchen knives and scissors, it was basically formed in the Song Dynasty.

Therefore, the armor-making technology of the Song Dynasty was quite advanced. When Song soldiers fought against the Iron Buddha of the Jin Kingdom, they sometimes had to wear three layers of infantry armor, but the total weight was only seventy to eighty catties.

The reason why the Song Dynasty was said to be cowardly is definitely not the fault of the people of the Song Dynasty. You should ask the Zhao family and the Huang family...

……

A group of blacksmiths surrounded the pool of molten iron underground, as if they had seen a miracle.

Never seen that iron ore can be refined with a handful of firewood?
No wonder Mr. Lang wanted to let the Baijia camp flee here even though he traveled thousands of miles away?

It turned out to be something good...

Seeing Li Chengzhi, Li Song and others, a group of blacksmiths quickly dispersed to make way.

Li Chengzhi walked up to him, looked intently, and his eyes bulged.

Although it has solidified, how can he admit his mistake: this is definitely a piece of iron smelting (primary iron material), not a sintered lump (slag).

Besides, if the furnace temperature is not enough, there will be no sintered lumps at all.

shouldn't be...

Li Chengzhi pinched his chin and looked at the old blacksmith suspiciously: "How did you make it? Besides the magnet, did you add other things to the furnace?"

He wondered if the old blacksmith threw a piece of quartz or limestone into it by chance.

If there is enough catalyst, and the furnace happens to be sealed, and the wood is burned into charcoal, the ore can indeed be refined.

Especially quartz, ordinary magnetite is often accompanied by quartz veins, it is normal for old blacksmiths to mistake it for iron ore.

The old blacksmith was even more confused.

He recalled carefully: "Nothing was added? It's just that the little old man randomly picked a few pieces from a pile of magnets and threw them into the furnace..."

Is it equivalent to asking Yu Blind?
Forget it, let's see for ourselves...

Li Chengzhi sighed secretly, and said again: "Where is the magnet, take me there!"

"Mr. Lang, please!" The old blacksmith led Li Chengzhi to the back of the blast furnace.

A small pile of stones, black and yellow, and some reflecting light.

He just glanced at it casually, and when he saw a pile of white or purple, green or yellow gravel mixed in it, Li Chengzhi was taken aback for a moment, and actually yelled "Ouch".

What quartz, this is fluorite.

Li Chengzhi wanted to slap himself twice.

I'm still a top student majoring in resource exploration engineering?
How can he have the face to say that this is his hometown in his previous life, a place where he has traveled every inch of land in his previous life?

Knowing that there is gold, copper, iron, coal, and clay in my hometown, how can I forget that there is also a fluorite mine?
It may also be because there is no such thing in Guanzhong, and it doesn't seem to be very useful, so I didn't expect it for a while.

In fact, there are still several uses of fluorite.

It can be used as catalyst and flux in steelmaking, the melting point of flux is lower than that of quartz, and it can also remove sulfur and phosphorus at the same time.

This function is actually optional. Although fluorite exists everywhere and has a huge reserve, most of it is buried below the surface, so at least it must be dug out first.

In comparison, wouldn't it be easier to get quartz sand wherever there is sand?
Li Chengzhi finds it strange that this thing can be used to etch glass...

Just imagine, if the colorful glass beads distributed to the soldiers had a pair of dragons, phoenixes and other divine beasts, or patterns of mountains and rivers, how would people in this era react?
Absolutely be robbed...

What's more, the green fluorite can still glow at night, and it can be bright for a whole night if it is exposed to the sun for more than ten minutes.

In addition to glowing when it absorbs a light source, this thing also glows when it heats up.

Li Chengzhi remembered that when he was a child, he picked up these two pieces and hid them in the quilt for a while, grinding them, and with the smell of burning and the flying of gravel, the scene where the quilt would be illuminated...

Then, he would be stabbed to death all night, and he could not sleep well.

And nine times out of ten, I have to be beaten by my old lady the next day...

Therefore, the so-called luminous pearl in ancient times is actually this thing.

Including the one that Sun Dianying dug out from Cixi's mouth and was auctioned for [-] million after the new century. The main ingredient is absolutely the same as the green gravel in Li Chengzhi's hand, all of which are calcium fluoride.

However, the ones dug out of the fluorite mine are sold by the ton, and a ton is only a few thousand yuan...

But who made that one a cultural relic?
The reason why this thing was so expensive in ancient times is actually the same reason that copper was also very expensive before the Tang Dynasty: very few were mined.

Moreover, the strength of fluorite is not high. As long as the wind and sand are a little bigger, it won't take long for the fluorite exposed on the ground to be less than half.

The missing half had already been blown to pieces by the wind and sand, turning into the kind of gravel in Li Chengzhi's hands.

If I took a piece of ordinary glass to shoot this thing, the fluorite was all broken, but the glass was fine.

Therefore, it can be found by people of this era, and there are very few pieces that are large enough to be polished into beads.

Even if one or two pieces can be found, with ancient technology, how to ensure its integrity during mining is the first hurdle, long-distance transportation is the second hurdle, and how to polish it is the third hurdle.

The most critical thing is the fourth level: this thing is so soft, the more times you play with it, the rougher the mirror surface will be, and the longer the time, let alone the night, it will not reflect much under the sun.

When several phases are superimposed, if there are few surviving ones, they will naturally become more expensive...

But it depends on human effort, Li Chengzhi thinks it is still possible to give it a try.

Don't talk too much, if you can carve out a hundred or so, you can probably buy half of Guanzhong...

Coupled with the glass beads etched with fluorite, such things are definitely priceless and rare treasures for both Han people and Xianbei people.

And this thing can also be used to fake: just find a stone and stick a layer of green fluorite powder on it, it will produce the effect of night pearl.

For example, those plastic handicrafts that can glow at night in later generations...

Thinking of this, Li Chengzhi even lost his mind about making iron swords and armor.

Instead of exercising weapons and armor in exchange for food, which is similar to giving people a handle, or using them as an enemy, why not use such things to collect IQ taxes?

Although there are many jewels and jades in Hu merchants, there is absolutely no such thing. How can it not be surprising to see it?
As for the Hu Merchant Association selling to the Western Regions, or to the Central Plains, or how long it takes to get through, Li Chengzhi can't care so much...

As soon as he said it, Li Chengzhi immediately called Li Song aside: "Send someone out to find...follow Heli Mountain to the east, at most seventy or eighty miles, you will definitely see gravel like my hand... ...let me know as soon as you find it..."

Seeing Li Chengzhi's faintly excited appearance, how could Li Song not know that Mr. Wang found the treasure?
While nodding, he asked suspiciously: "Mr., what is this?"

"I'll tell you in a while!"

Li Chengzhi lowered his voice involuntarily: "You just need to remember that if you use this thing well, it will definitely be more valuable than the Meteorite Iron Knife refined before..."

Li Song almost called out: "Shenbing?"

Li Chengzhi's face darkened.

The magic soldier is a bird feather?
The mind is full of knives, knives and guns, fighting and killing?

"How can there be so many magic soldiers... they are things like glazed beads..."

It turned out to be jewelry?
Although Li Song was still surprised, the expression on his face still involuntarily faded a bit.

In his opinion, no matter how peerless a treasure is, it will eventually have to be replaced with a sword...

Just after dispatching people, Li Chengzhi called Li Song over again: "In a few days, after things have settled down, let Li Liang or Huangfu Rang find a way to sneak into Jiuquan City to see if they can buy some mutton jade or Jiuquan jade." Jade is fine too."

Li Chengzhi felt that since he had decided to collect IQ tax, it would be better to charge more.

I also want to see if he can use fluorite powder to make a real luminous cup, that is, the one that can really glow at night.

Not the kind of Xibei in history books and poems: no history book or poem has ever said that the so-called luminous cup can emit light by itself without a light source.

Most of them are thin-bodied jade cups that look better when illuminated by the moon on nights like the fifteenth day.

If you think about it, you can know that this thing is so brittle. With the technology of the future, there is no way to use fluorite to mass-produce lenses, only to synthesize them, let alone use fluorite to grind wine glasses?
Thinking of this, Li Chengzhi naturally thought of glass lenses.

When making beads, because he didn't have all the materials at hand and didn't have enough time, he didn't try to see if he could make colorless glass.

But he understands the principle: it is nothing more than selecting quartz sand that does not contain metal elements for sintering, or removing the metal elements in the quartz sand.

Relatively speaking, the first method should be simpler.

As long as the colorless glass can be fired, all that remains is to polish it into a lens.

If he could really make this thing, Li Chengzhi would be able to wake up from his dreams with a smile: it is not a concept of whether he can sell money, but a telescope can be made...

(End of this chapter)