The problem is that all the wood is owned by the army, and the carpenters have no wood at their disposal. How can they invent and improve tools?

The foundation of tool invention and improvement, free disposal of materials, enough free time, low survival pressure, and a certain reward system are all indispensable.

But now in the military, the pressure to survive is not high, the craftsmen are free, and there is a reward system, but there is a lack of materials that can be freely used.

Li Mengxi was thinking about how to improve the system of the blacksmith camp. The first thing he thought of was to give the blacksmiths three to five kilograms of iron each month. These three to five kilograms of iron were privately owned by the blacksmiths, and they could do anything.

When I think about it again, forging is not the same as carpentry. Carpenters can make things directly if they have wood. If you want to make things with iron, you need a stove and firewood.

Thinking of this again, Li Mengxi felt more and more the importance of some small iron-making furnaces.

You can build more shared small blacksmith furnaces. These small blacksmith furnaces heat quickly and consume less, which is conducive to the small amount of iron smelting needs for research and development activities.

Considering that the iron-making furnace also requires firewood, and if it is a shared small blacksmith furnace for research and development, the blacksmiths have to pay for the firewood themselves, then it is possible that the blacksmith originally wanted to build something, but

As soon as I thought about burning the stove and wasting firewood, I gave up the idea.

This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! There is no doubt that this disadvantage drives invention.

Therefore, for a small shared iron-making furnace, all the firewood is paid for by the government. I think there are only a few small furnaces. Even if it is burned again, how much firewood can be burned?

What you get in exchange is endless creation.

Here, the knife forger finally finished the blade.

Li Mengxi came over and asked, "Is the knife ready? The next step is to quench it?"

The knifemaker opened his mouth and said, "...it will be quenched for a while and needs to be put in the fire cabinet first."

Li Mengxi was stunned, "Um, why is this?"

The craftsman explained patiently, "This is how it has been passed down from the elders. It is said to be annealing."

Li Mengxi frowned, "What does annealing mean?"

When asked, the knifemaker scratched his head and scratched his head, and he was obsessed with finding out the truth behind all phenomena. This is Li Mengxi, but ordinary craftsmen can only know what is going on.

Li Mengxi couldn't find out what happened, so he had to let the craftsmen do their work first.

After that, I saw the craftsman holding the shaped knife strip with tongs and burning it on the fire for a while, adding heat again, and then put the red-hot knife strip into the fire cabinet.

The fire cabinet is something similar to a barbecue rack. Other craftsmen first poured a layer of semi-transparent charcoal blocks into the fire cabinet. After putting the knife strips in, some charcoal blocks were poured in to cover the entire knife strips.

This made Li Mengxi confused. Not only did he not understand, he was also greatly confused.

In this so-called annealing process, the newly forged blade is heated red and then placed in a pile of charcoal that is about to burn out. Why is this?

Li Mengxi vaguely felt that it might be carburization.

Otherwise, it cannot be explained why the knife was reburied with charcoal.

The normalizing process lasted for a long time. After that, when the charcoal in the fire cabinet was burned out and the charcoal in the fire cabinet was completely extinguished, the knifemaker stepped forward and carefully touched the exposed handle of the knife.

The handle of the knife was almost cold, so I pulled it out.

Li Mengxi stepped forward and asked, "Why not use new charcoal? Can't new charcoal burn longer? Why use the charcoal that will be burned in?"

The knifemaker stood there with the blade in hand and thought awkwardly for a while, then smiled awkwardly and said, "I don't know. This has been passed down from our ancestors. It's best to use the last charcoal to normalize the fire."

"...Okay." Li Mengxi could only put down his questioning temporarily.

The so-called normalization is over, what’s next...

He followed the knifemaker to the stove. Seeing the blacksmith putting the knife strip he had just taken out of the fire cabinet onto the fire to heat it, Li Mengxi nodded and said, "The next step is to quench it, right?"

The knifemaker turned over the knife blade in his hand and opened his mouth again and again, "The last step is normalizing, and the quenching is still after."

Li Mengxi looked at the knifemaker in great surprise, why did he come out with a normal fire again, and what was this normal fire?

Resisting the urge to ask questions, Li Mengxi watched quietly.

After the knife maker slightly heated the knife strip to a reddish state, he then clamped the knife strip with tongs and placed it in a cabinet full of plant ash.

Oh, this is normalizing after annealing.

Just put the hot knife strip into a pile of plant ashes and leave it alone.

After waiting for a period of time, the knife strip cooled down. This time, the knife maker took the knife strip back and put it on the stove to heat it again.

Finally, this third time, it was finally quenched.

Li Mengxi ran to the water tank and took a look. There was clear water in the water tank.

It is said that quenching with urine or animal fat would be better.

In addition, during the Three Kingdoms period, the famous craftsman Pu Yuan took water from the center of the river to quench the water. This shows that the technology of quenching with urine or grease has not been widely popularized in the Han Dynasty.

Li Mengxi was very curious about the advantages of urine or grease quenching.

Just as he was thinking about it, the knifemaker came with a knife blade, and Li Mengxi quickly made way.

The shiny red knife blade was inserted into the water tank with a squeaking sound, and white smoke filled the air.

After the knife blade was put into the water, the knife maker immediately took it out again, inserted it into the water again, dipped it in the water for a while, and then brought it up again.

Dip and stop, if so for several times, quenching is completed.

After the quenching was completed and the blade cooled, the craftsman held the blade over and over, frowned and looked at it carefully, and tapped it twice with his fingers from time to time to determine the quality of the quenching.

From the expression of the knifemaker, Li Mengxi could not tell the result of the quenching. He asked, "Is this knife finished?"

The knifemaker shook his head, "No, it's not tempered properly. It's too brittle. It needs to be reheated."

"Backfire?" Li Mengxi raised his eyebrows.

If annealing and normalizing are not clear, tempering is not included in this list.

In the game "Mount and Blade", there are a large number of weapons such as "Tempered Scimitar" and "Tempered Two-Handed Sword". According to the note, "Tempered Scimitar" is second only to "Luxurious Scimitar".

Knife], [Tempered Scimitar] has an attack power two points higher than the next level [Sharp Scimitar].

In the game, tempered weapons are also much more expensive.

As a relatively hard-core game, the game has this setting. The tempered weapons may be much more powerful than ordinary weapons.

Li Mengxi quietly watched the swordsmith's subsequent actions. He saw that the swordsmith took the quenched blade back and heated it again. This time, the heating did not take long, and the knife was half red but not red. Then, the blacksmith put the blade on the fire again.

into the cabinet, and then shoveled some charcoal in to cover the knife strip.

It was the same this time, using burnt charcoal that was white and about to burn out.

After a period of time, without waiting for the charcoal to finish burning, the blacksmith took the knife out of the fire cabinet and left it outside to cool naturally.

After this step, the first cut of the thirty-forged ring is completed, and the rest is polishing and edged.

There is not much to look at when polishing. There is a shortage of professional sharpening tools in the army, so the blacksmiths are grinding away with uneven stones.

After watching the entire knife forging process, Li Mengxi was completely confused.

The four processes of forging are annealing, normalizing, quenching, and tempering. The one Li Mengxi is most familiar with is quenching.

According to Li Mengxi's guess, the quenched knife will become very hard. During the quenching process, iron probably does not undergo chemical changes with water, but only physical changes.

It changes from soft to extremely hard just through physical changes. From this, if we compare it to other substances, the same is true for carbon. They are also carbon. Graphite is very soft, while diamond is the hardest substance in nature. The same substance crystallizes in different ways.

, the hardness is very different.

It can be deduced from this that quenching is actually when high-temperature iron is put into cold water, the iron suddenly shrinks and the crystal structure changes.

The principle of quenching is roughly the same.

But after quenching, why is there a process of tempering? Quenching makes the iron extremely hard. According to the craftsmen, if it is quenched well, there is no need to temper it. But if it is not quenched well, the knife will be too hardened and must be tempered.

In steel, brittleness and hardness are positively correlated. The more carbon it contains, the harder and brittle the iron is.

If the tool is not quenched properly, it will be too hard and lack toughness, so it needs to be tempered. Naturally, the tempering step may be an adjustment step to reduce the hardness and improve the toughness.

Combined with the principle of quenching, quenching is the rapid cooling and contraction of iron to form crystals, while tempering is heating, which is probably the opposite of the principle of quenching. It heats and expands the iron, causing the formed crystals to be heated and melted.

Probably so.

Therefore, since tempering is an adjustment, what is an adjustment? It is not a big hammer, but a small hammer. Since it is an adjustment, the degree is much milder.

Therefore, for tempering, the heating temperature is not high, but tempering at medium to low temperature.

Just like when the knife maker finally tempers the knife, the knife burns half-red but not red. It can be seen at a glance that the temperature is much lower than in the previous steps.

Li Mengxi roughly understood the four fires of forging and the last two fires.

But Li Mengxi couldn't understand the first two types of fire.

Suddenly, the sky turned dark.

A thirty-forged ring head, excluding the iron smelting process and the entire forging and heat treatment process, took a full afternoon.

If you add in the iron smelting and subsequent polishing and sharpening steps, it will take almost two days.
Chapter completed!