Europa Universalis 1867: Start by inheriting an armory

Heat waves rose from the open furnace, causing the light to twist and bend. To Richard, the steel beams in the workshop looked like an English longbow, and the figures of the workers wielding steel spikes were also stretched and deformed.

Richard's forehead was already covered in sweat, which he kept wiping with a handkerchief.

The workers held long shovels and steel picks in their hands, their dark work clothes soaked with sweat and clinging to their backs like a second skin.

The molten iron, like lava, almost overflowed from the edges, gathering at the bottom of the furnace into a rolling, dazzling sea of ​​iron.

Workers gathered around the material stacking platform, shoveling the material balls into the furnace dish one by one.

Those pellets were not ordinary ore. Richard had them use a crusher to break nickel silicate and chromite into small pieces, mix them with limestone and anthracite powder in a certain proportion, and then use a small amount of clay to bind them into round and solid pellets.

The ratio of chromium to nickel was approximately one to two. Richard had calculated it many times, and this was the ideal ratio in the days before electric arc furnaces.

As the pellets fall into the furnace, nickel silicate and chromite begin to decompose at high temperatures, releasing nickel and chromium from their oxides.

"Increase the power of the blower," Richard said.

The worker turned the valve, and the impeller of the steam blower began to rotate faster. The airflow rushed in from the bottom of the regenerator, carrying the residual heat recovered from the top of the furnace, and slowly pushed the temperature inside the furnace up to 1,600 degrees Celsius.

Nickel has a weaker affinity for oxygen than chromium. At a high temperature of 1,600 degrees Celsius, in the reducing atmosphere formed by carbon monoxide produced by the incomplete combustion of coal and pulverized coal in the heat storage chamber filled by the blower, nickel is the first to be reduced from nickel silicate.

They surged and spread inside the furnace, then condensed and dripped into the molten iron churning at the bottom of the furnace, like raindrops falling into a lake, silently merging into it.

"Add alkaline residue," Richard then ordered.

Workers dragged several iron buckets from the material platform. The buckets contained scraps and waste left over from the grinding process of dolomite bricks, which were then ground into fine powder.

The powders are alkaline, and they act like magnets to attract impurities such as silicon and magnesium in the ore, pulling these impurities out of the molten metal.

The slag flows slowly on the surface of the molten iron, forming a dark crust, like the crust of baked cheese.

Gradually, chromium was also reduced from the ore. It condensed on the inner wall and the edge of the furnace dish, and then dripped down the slope, falling drop by drop into the churning molten iron.

The molten iron inside the furnace was bubbling, constantly absorbing the chromium and nickel that had been released from the ore.

Workers use long-handled steel spades to stir the material at the furnace opening, making the balls of material more evenly distributed and easier to contact the molten iron surface at the bottom.

Their arms trembled slightly, an uncontrollable shudder caused by the muscles working for a long time under the heat radiation of 1,600 degrees Celsius, but their hands did not loosen even a little.

After a while, the reaction inside the furnace gradually subsided.

Workers used steel picks to remove the slag from the furnace opening. The dark gray, hard slag fell to the ground, splashing up a small patch of dust. Only the molten metal with an iridescent sheen remained in the furnace.

Richard rubbed his temples; it was time to draw the steel.

The workers then opened the taphole at the bottom of the furnace, and molten steel gushed out, pouring into the mold along the casting trough.

In an instant, sparks flew, the liquid level slowly rose, leaving rings of ripples like tree rings on the edge of the mold.

Soon, the mold was filled with water.

The worker tapped the outer wall of the mold with a steel hammer, producing a crisp sound.

They patiently waited for the molten steel to cool and solidify in the mold, and then used iron hooks to lift the mold cover.

Inside lay several bright silver steel ingots, their surfaces not smooth, marked by indentations left during solidification and shrinkage.

The workers used pliers to grip the edge of the steel ingot, removed it from the mold, and placed it on the ground.

bang.

It made a muffled sound.

Richard squatted down and looked at the steel ingot.

It didn't look like ordinary steel; it looked more like silverware from a banquet. He reached out and tapped the edge of the ingot with his knuckles. His bones strained against it, and pain immediately shot through him.

Then he turned and went to find Siemens.

Siemens stood at the office door, holding a notebook and taking notes.

Richard walked over and placed the sample he was holding on the table in front of Siemens. It was freshly cut from the edge of a large steel ingot, and the cross-section showed a bright, delicate crystalline structure.

"Did it work?" Siemens asked somewhat nervously.

"Whether it will work or not..." Richard wiped his sweat and pushed the steel ingot towards Siemens. "It's up to you to decide."

Siemens lowered his head, stared at the alloy that had just been introduced to the world, and nodded.

He walked to the worktable, bent down, opened a drawer under the table, and took out a mahogany box.

The box was only slightly thinner than a novel, and its surface was waxed. He placed the box on the table, pushed open the brass clasp, and lifted the lid.

The deep green velvet lining resembles old moss, and is inlaid with ten different minerals, from talc to diamond, each of which has been polished into small pieces of the same size and shape.

This is a Mohs hardness tester, a scale for mineralogy, borrowed from Sir Ramsay.

From one to ten, from the softest talc to the hardest diamond, each mineral is arranged in order of its hardness.

“If we do it right,” Richard said cautiously, “its hardness should be close to eight.”

"Hmm..." Siemens replied thoughtfully, his finger hovering above the mahogany box, finally choosing quartz, with a hardness of seven.

The two men carried the steel ingot sample into the workshop.

The workers cleared a flat surface and fixed the steel ingot sample onto the fixture.

Siemens held the quartz crystal between his fingers like he was holding a pen, with his joints slightly bent and his wrist relaxed.

He pressed the quartz against the surface of the steel ingot, making sure the tip of the quartz contacted the flat surface of the ingot, and then pushed it forward forcefully.

As the quartz glided across the surface of the steel ingot, the feel made him frown. It wasn't the usual roughness he experienced during quartz experiments; instead, it felt like ice skates on ice—so smooth that the quartz tip couldn't grip the iron at all.

Wow.

A white mark was left on the surface of the steel ingot. Richard gasped. Could it be a scratch? If so, it meant that the hardness of this steel ingot was much less than seven.

Siemens paused for a moment, then took out a magnifying glass from his pocket, held it up to his eyes, and brought it close to the white mark.

He frowned slightly, then extended his thumb and gently rubbed it against the mark.

The white mark disappeared in the blink of an eye. He chuckled and looked up at Richard.

"It's quartz powder." Siemens put the magnifying glass aside. "Left behind by the steel ingots."

Richard breathed a sigh of relief, feeling a chill run down his back.