Chief Armaments Master of the Ming Dynasty

The so-called kitchen was nothing more than a larger, smoky mud shed.

A large iron pot sits on the earthen stove, bubbling with an indistinct gruel, with a few dried vegetable leaves floating in the air.

There was some firewood piled up next to the stove, and an old wooden barrel containing frozen, hard chunks of meat that were waiting to be processed, emitting a faint, fishy smell.

The cook was an old post station worker surnamed Wang. He was one-eyed and had a bad temper. He was assigned to this job because he had some difficulty walking.

He was lighting a fire in the stove; the firewood was damp, and the smoke was thick, making him cough.

"Uncle Wang, the firewood is a bit damp." Lin Fan squatted down, looking at the thick smoke billowing from the stove.

"Nonsense! Dry firewood is free! It's a miracle it even catches fire!" Uncle Wang retorted irritably, poking at the fire with a stick.

Lin Fan didn't say anything more, but his gaze fell on a chipped woodcutter's knife in the corner.

The knife was originally used to chop large pieces of firewood or bones. Now, the blade was rusted, and a sizable chip had broken off near the edge, with the edges curled up.

He walked over, picked up the knife, and weighed it in his hand.

A typical cast iron knife is porous, with a high and uneven carbon content, and is brittle.

This type of knife is prone to chipping or even breaking when cutting hard objects.

He remembered there was an abandoned small pit behind the kitchen, which seemed to have been used to pile up ashes or temporarily burn something.

"Uncle Wang, this knife is unusable. Let me see if I can salvage it," Lin Fan said.

Wang Bo lifted his blackened face from the smoke, glanced at him with his one eye, and looked utterly annoyed:

"Whatever! It's no big deal if you break it, it should have been thrown away long ago!" After saying that, he bent down to deal with the damn wet firewood again.

Lin Fan took the wood-chopping knife and walked to the back of the house.

There were still some unburnt charcoal slag and ashes in the small pit.

He squatted down, rummaged around, and found a few pieces of charcoal that were still relatively intact, along with some thin firewood and dry grass.

Without a blower, he could only rely on the most primitive methods.

He painstakingly struck two stones to create sparks, ignited the dry grass, carefully lit the tinder, and then slowly added charcoal.

Flames rose up, accompanied by wisps of blue smoke.

He held the chipped machete between two thick branches and stuck it into the fire, letting the flames evenly heat the blade.

This is not a standard heating furnace; the temperature is difficult to control.

He could only rely on his limited knowledge of metallurgy and a rough judgment of the color of the flame to grasp it.

The blade slowly turned red in the flames, dark red, bright red... He stared at the color, silently calculating the time, feeling the heat of the flames.

It should not be fired for too long, otherwise the grains will become coarse;

The temperature cannot be too low, otherwise impurities cannot be discharged and effective heat treatment cannot be carried out.

When the blade had turned a uniform orange-red color, he quickly pulled the knife out of the fire.

Since there was no professional quenching tank, he had already set his sights on the snow water that had accumulated in a broken ceramic basin next to him the night before.

laugh--!

The moment the crimson blade was immersed in the snow water, the dramatic temperature difference stirred up a large cloud of white steam and produced a sharp sound.

Lin Fan gripped the branch tightly, allowing the blade to be fully submerged in the water, while the back and rear of the blade were slightly raised.

He was attempting to perform "localized hardening," allowing the cutting edge, which requires the most hardness, to achieve high hardness, while maintaining relatively good toughness in other parts of the blade to prevent it from becoming too brittle and breaking.

The quenching time was very short; a few seconds later, he pulled the knife out.

The blade had turned bluish-black and was still steaming.

He examined the blade edge carefully. The chipped area had been exposed to high temperatures, and the edges seemed to have melted slightly, changing the shape somewhat. But the key was whether the hardness and toughness had been improved.

Next comes tempering.

He didn't have a tempering furnace with precise temperature control, so he could only use makeshift methods.

He placed the knife above the still-warm charcoal ash and used the radiant heat of the ash to perform low-temperature tempering, thereby eliminating some of the internal stress generated during quenching, appropriately reducing hardness, and increasing toughness.

This process requires more experience and intuition; he can only estimate the time as much as possible and observe the changes in the oxidation color of the blade.

After about the time it takes to brew a cup of tea, he felt it was about time, so he removed the knife from the ashes and let it cool naturally.

After the knife had completely cooled down, he picked up a sharp-edged flint and gently scratched the re-polished blade.

The sound was crisp, and the white mark left behind was very faint.

He found a piece of hard firewood that was half-dry and half-wet, gripped the knife handle tightly with both hands, and chopped it down with force.

Click!

The firewood split open with a sound, revealing a clean cut.

The blade did not vibrate, and there were no new chips on the edge; only the original nick remained, but it seemed less fragile.

Lin Fan let out a soft breath.

It was a success, or at least a partial success.

An extremely rudimentary heat treatment attempt, under extremely limited conditions, improved the performance of a nearly unusable woodcutter's knife.

In his time, this wouldn't even qualify as a basic lab procedure, but here, on this chilly early winter afternoon, it made his long-dormant professional heart beat faintly but clearly.

"What are you dawdling for? Firewood!" came Uncle Wang's impatient roar from the kitchen.

Lin Fan quickly took the processed wood-chopping knife back and dragged over a pile of thick firewood that would have required a lot of effort to chop.

He swung the knife and tried it out, finding it much easier to handle and his chopping efficiency significantly improved.

Although the nick is still there, the hardness and edge retention of the rest of the blade have improved a lot. At least it no longer chip or break when it comes into contact with hard surfaces.

Uncle Wang didn't pay much attention at first, until he noticed that Lin Fan was chopping wood faster than the others, and that the broken knife seemed quite "durable," so he took a second look.

He walked over, took the woodcutter's knife from Lin Fan's hand, weighed it in his hand, and then wiped the blade with his finger.

"Huh?" A hint of surprise flashed in Uncle Wang's single eye. "You... you've been fiddling with it? This piece of junk seems a bit more manageable now?"

"It's just... roasted over a fire and then quenched in water. That's what the older generation said," Lin Fan explained in the simplest terms, his head bowed.

"Toasted? Quenched?" Uncle Wang examined the blade, especially the area around the notch, and muttered, "It does have some skill... but it's just a wood-chopping knife."

He didn't ask any more questions, tossed the knife back to Lin Fan, and said, "Hurry up, the fire's waiting!"

Lin Fan took the knife and continued working.

I felt a little more at ease.

It seems that this approach is acceptable, or even ignored, in this environment.

It looks too "rustic" and too "ordinary," like an old farmer reheating a dull plowshare and pounding it again, so it doesn't attract much attention.

However, he still underestimated the observational skills of some people.

A few days later, Lin Fan was summoned by Li Zicheng, not to be given daily tasks, but to follow him to a more remote abandoned kiln area behind the post station.

There were piles of completely ruined stagecoach parts, rusted spearheads, and some old saddles that were completely unusable.

"Take a look at these."

Li Zicheng pointed to the pile of rubble and said, "Distribute which parts can still be repaired and used, and which parts can only be recycled for firewood."