Northern Dynasties

Chapter 249 Turkic Slave Forging
Dugu Xin rested at Longshou Yuanzhuang for one night, and set off again early the next morning without staying any longer.

Not long after Li Tai sent Dugu Xin away, before he had time to learn more about the specific operating conditions of Longshou Yuanzhuang, Li Hu's servant rode into the village and came to inform Li Tai that he could handle the handover of the workshop today.

Li Tai didn't hesitate about this, and he was ready to go out immediately.It can be imagined that Li Hu and his fellows yesterday were not friendly. Although Dugu Xin made peace, Li Tai was still not completely at ease. See Li Hu.

Li Hu was waiting on duty today in a fortress in the northwest of Chang'an City, on the south bank of the Wei River. After Li Tai arrived, he went straight out and explained: "The smelting and casting workshop is still in Xianyang on the north bank. If everything goes well, the handover should be clear today."

While speaking, Li Hu led a group of followers and went straight to the Weishui Ferry. He actually wanted to lead Li Tai to hand over the affairs in person. After Li Tai saw this, he quickly thanked him.

However, Li Hu waved his hand to express that you are welcome. When waiting for the ferry to come, he said: "I have a deep relationship with Hanoi Bus, and he cares for you very much. We did have some quarrels before, but now that they have been resolved Come on, there is no need to say any more. From now on, I hope that we can live in harmony, and if Li Lang doesn't know where to go when he enters and exits the capital, he might as well visit the house as a guest."

This attitude was much better than yesterday, Li Tai laughed and said yes after hearing the sound.

After a group of people and horses crossed the Weishui River, they rode their horses and galloped north for more than an hour. In the morning, they arrived at a plateau in Xianyang, southwest of Jingshui River.

The slope of this plateau is relatively gentle, and you can already see several blast furnaces standing on it from a distance, some of which are still billowing with thick smoke.

On the plateau was a garrison strong enough to accommodate thousands of soldiers. Around the garrison were stretches of cultivated land, mulberry forests, and orchards, among which were many felt tents and houses.

The area of ​​the entire platform is between two and three hundred hectares, which is a relatively typical layout of a large manor combining soldiers and farmers, and it obviously belongs to Li Hu's manor industry.These Beizhen military leaders, one counts as one, and everyone is a big landlord.

The smelting workshop was arranged in the northeast of the manor, near Jingshui. A group of people ascended from the southwest and had to go through the entire manor to get there.Li Tai also took this opportunity to observe the operating conditions of Li Hu's manor, and secretly judged how powerful Li Hu was.

There are nearly a thousand households in the plateau, including Han people and Hu subordinates.This amount is not too large, and Li Tai doesn't know if it is all of Li Hu's trilogy.

But last night he also heard from Dugu Xin that Li Hu, apart from his position and authority and family slaves, also has great prestige among the Hu tribes who moved inland and settled around Xianyang in the north of Weibei. The handsome chieftains only look after their horses.

In short, these veteran military leaders, in addition to their official status and prestige and favor among the township party, their official resumes also provided them with a lot of personnel accumulation.

However, this situation can only be maintained until the eve of the establishment of the Fubing system. When the complete Fubing system is established, the overall planning and control of the Hegemony will be greatly strengthened. will be gradually faded away.

There are many craftsmen in the workshop who are busy with different divisions of labor, some are filling the furnace, some are forging utensils, and there is a burnt and choking smell in the air.

The smelting and casting workshop on Li Tai's own Baishuizhuang is not small, and he is no stranger to the current production process, and he also has some comparative thoughts in his heart. stand up.

The workshop of Li Hu's house is not small. In addition to several blast furnaces that can be seen under the plateau, there are also various other smelting facilities for the production of different metal products.

The ancient smelting technology can be roughly divided into several methods or stages such as block smelting method, steel frying method and steel pouring method.

The block smelting method is the most basic and primitive smelting technology. The ore and charcoal interlayer are placed in the furnace for smelting to obtain solid sponge iron, which is then heated and forged to remove impurities and carburize at the same time, so as to obtain various iron product.

The advantage of this forging method is that it is simple, convenient and easy to operate, and does not require much advanced skills, experience and tools and materials.Many wilderness survival UPs in later generations often use this method to obtain iron products.

But the disadvantages of the block smelting method are also obvious. The temperature in the furnace does not reach the melting point of iron, and only solid sponge iron can be formed. There are too many impurities. Even after sufficient hammering, the quality is not too high, and the efficiency is very low. .The so-called [-]-year steelmaking process is considered a relatively high-end product produced by this process, and it is difficult to just listen to the name.

So when better smelting technology appeared, this relatively primitive method was naturally eliminated.

When the blower appeared, the temperature in the furnace during smelting was greatly increased, and the blast furnace was produced, which could directly melt the iron ore in the furnace into molten iron, and after cooling down, it could become pig iron with extremely high hardness.

The steel frying method is a more efficient and advanced smelting technology developed on the basis of blast furnace smelting.

A very critical factor affecting the performance and quality of iron products is the carbon content. High carbon content means pig iron, which is hard but brittle and can be cast but not forged.Wrought iron is refined from pig iron and has a lower carbon content, making it softer and more malleable, but not as hard as pig iron.

The steel frying method is to fully stir and fry the pig iron liquid flowing out of blast furnace smelting, and add iron ore powder and air to oxidize it to make it oxidative and decarburized, so as to obtain wrought iron with lower carbon content.

Pig iron is strong and castable, and wrought iron is tough and easy to forge, but in real life, especially weapons, it is often necessary to have both.

However, the molten iron in the blast furnace during the steel frying process is always in a state of high-temperature flow. In the ancient production environment that was entirely manual, it was difficult to precisely control the process of oxidation and decarburization.

Skilled and experienced craftsmen may be able to flexibly control and directly obtain high-quality products with just the right carbon content through frying steel, but in most cases this is not possible.

In order to make the carbon content in the iron and steel smelting process more precise and controllable, the steel pouring method was developed on the basis of the steel frying method.

What is directly smelted in the blast furnace is pig iron, which becomes wrought iron after frying and decarburization, and then the two are smelted together according to a certain ratio. On the iron, so it is named steel pouring method, and the steel with better performance is obtained after mutual melting, also known as Sutie.

Of course, this is only the smelting process of steel, and the specific casting and forging has a series of meticulous processes, and the technical details and key factors are more detailed, so Li Tai doesn't know much about it.

In the manor of Li Hu's family, there are various smelting and production, and different iron products are produced. In addition to various ordnance weapons, many agricultural tools are also produced.

Since Li Tai was not interested in seeing how the casting quality of Li Hu's hoes was, he asked impatiently after strolling around the workshop, "Excuse me, Lord Longxi, is there any skillful craftsman in the village who can make precious iron knives?"

"Su Tie Baodao?"

After Li Hu heard the words, he shook his head first, then turned to smile at Li Tai and said, "There is no such skilled craftsman in my village. If you know where to find such skillful craftsmen, Li Lang, please tell me and visit them together!"

Su Tie Dao is a weapon forged with steel pouring technology. It can be said to be the strongest weapon of the era and the crystallization of the most advanced smelting and forging technology when the steel pouring method has not yet been fully popularized.

In fact, the principle of forging is also very simple. It is to use wrought iron as the blade, and then use pig iron to carburize the blade to form steel. In this way, the blade is hard and sharp and indestructible, while the blade is firm and tough. Collocation, so as to obtain miraculous effect.

But knowing the principle is one thing, and being able to work it out is another. Li Tai also knows how to make artificial diamonds.The basic craftsmanship of Su Iron Knife is not a secret. There are many people in Kansai who know it, but few people can master the various matters that need to be paid attention to during the forging process.

Hearing Li Hu's answer, Li Tai also laughed a few times. Of course he knew where such a craftsman was, but Li Hu might not dare to visit with him.

Although there are no craftsmen who can forge Su iron knives, the smelting and forging level of these craftsmen in Li Hu Manor is also visible to the naked eye, which is superior to the craftsmanship of their own Baishuizhuang.Li Tai walked through several work sheds, and saw craftsmen carefully polishing the roughly forged armor.

There are more than [-] smelting craftsmen and tens of thousands of catties of iron materials deposited here by Dugu Xin. Several years have passed, and the iron materials have already been consumed, but most of the craftsmen are still living here, and many of them have already been here. married and had children.

When Li Hu summoned all these craftsmen here, Li Tai found that there were nearly a hundred of them who were similar in appearance and should be of the same family, but they were somewhat different from the kinds of Hu people he saw every day. Then he couldn't help pointing at these people and asked: "What kind of race are these Hu slaves? It looks strange."

Li Hu glanced at it casually and said: "This is the Ashina tribe of Mobei Jinshan, belonging to the hybrid slave tribe of Crawl. Although it is not known for its bravery, it can be regarded as a rare skill among miscellaneous beards."

When Li Tai heard this comment, he was immediately happy again.In fact, today's Turks have also gradually risen. Even after Rouran turned against the Western Wei Dynasty and married the Eastern Wei Dynasty, it was once regarded by the Western Wei Dynasty as a Mobei force with united front value.

It's just that there is no symbolic event in the rise of the Turks, and there is still a long way to go before completely replacing Rouran, the overlord of Mobei.

Li Tai did not expect that among the artisans presented to him by his father-in-law, there were nearly a hundred Turkic forging slaves, and he was full of expectations for the craftsmanship of these forging slaves.

　Sorry for the long wait, I will update a chapter today. . .The state of this month is really bad, and I feel very guilty. I will try my best to make up for the chapters of leave and owed changes until next month. . .

　　
　
(End of this chapter)