As the old saying goes, a hundred times of steel can be turned into soft steel, which is wrought iron. A hundred times of steel can mean two things, one is the fine steel made by hundreds of refinements, and the other is the process of hundreds of steel refinements.

The pig iron is forged hundreds of times, and the forging is thorough enough, and finally the pig iron becomes soft wrought iron.

A small half pot of molten iron, just this small amount of molten iron, was poured for half a morning, and finally turned into wrought iron. The first piece of iron that was as big as a palm was only as big as the palm of a hand.

Li Mengxi understood somewhat. It turned out that the forging process was so wasteful. Looking at the fine iron slag beside the iron pier, it was estimated that half of the two kilograms of iron would be lost to mature iron.

The cost of making weapons is not the same as that of making agricultural tools. Farm tools don't take a long time to make, so there is less loss during the manufacturing process. Weapons require strength, so they must have good quality materials, and good quality materials need to be tempered many times, which leads to great losses.

Therefore, although three kilograms of farm tools and three kilograms of weapons are both three kilograms of iron, the weapons are a hundred times more expensive than the farm tools. Among them, the cost of labor, fuel, and iron loss are not comparable.

Li Mengxi originally thought that the 1,500 weapons contained about 3,000 to 4,000 kilograms of iron and could be remade into three to four thousand kilograms of iron. But now that he thought about it, it would be enough to make farm tools, but if he were to make weapons, he would have to lose more than half of the four thousand kilograms of iron.

, it would be good to get two thousand kilograms of weapons, but the cost is staggering.

It is very expensive. This is the process of hundreds of forging steel. Hundreds of forging steel is hammered and hammered. In the end, a large piece of iron is smelted, only a little is left, and the rest becomes iron oxide slag.

But if the steel filling method is different, the steel filling method does not require repeated hammering, so a lot of losses during forging are reduced. This shows the great value of the steel filling method.

The soft iron has become soft. The cooled wrought iron has been slightly sharpened. The iron inside will turn white. If you break it hard with your hand, it will move. If you can lightly hit the corner with a hammer, you will get a mark. This is obviously wrought iron.

I called a blacksmith to look at it and he also said it was wrought iron.

Next, test the method of carburizing wrought iron. Based on his own understanding, Li Mengxi believed that wrought iron should be carburized when the iron is cool and the fire is cool, so as to reduce the self-consumption of charcoal.

To this end, he summoned people to set up another stove. A small amount of charcoal was placed under the stove and a pile of charcoal was covered on top. After burning for a while, the fire faintly penetrated to the upper layer. When the charcoal fire on the top layer was no longer red,

Start carburizing.

According to the essentials "taught" by Li Mengxi, Guan Yu beat the wrought iron into thin sheets, and then placed them on the charcoal fire to heat. Without waiting for the iron sheets to get too hot, he immediately took them out, put them on the anvil, and beat them into a ball. When the iron was beaten into a ball, the iron

Let it cool again, then beat it into thin slices and put it on the fire to heat.

During the carburizing process, the charcoal fire will bring a charcoal and penetrate into the iron. The efficiency of charcoal fire carburizing should still be related to the flame. If the flame is intense, most of the charcoal will be burned before it can penetrate into the iron. Therefore, the fire

If it were smaller, more carbon could penetrate into the iron.

Furthermore, there is an experiment in junior high school physics class. Put a piece of paper in the flame of a candle. It can be clearly seen that the part in contact with the outer layer of the candle flame burns first. The closer to the center of the flame, the slower it burns.

This shows that the highest temperature of the flame is in the outer flame, while the center is far away from the oxygen and has a lower temperature.

Therefore, when heating iron in a charcoal fire, during the decarburization process of pig iron, the iron should be placed high in the flame and heated with an external flame. At a high flame, the charcoal will burn fully and the charcoal content will be less, which will reduce the infiltration of charcoal.

When iron is carburized, the wrought iron should be placed against the charcoal and heated in a flame. This is for more carburization.

It just so happens that the temperature of the wrought iron is slightly lower so that it is easier to carburize. It just so happens that the temperature in the flame is not high, so that the wrought iron will not be heated to a temperature that is too high, which is just right.

When Li Mengxi once again pointed out new forging techniques, Guan Yu was convinced and put the wrought iron pieces into the charcoal fire.

The process of decarburizing pig iron is quite clear. The pig iron is hammered until it becomes soft. However, because one does not know when the wrought iron will be carburized properly, the process can only be slowed down.

When the iron is hot, it is very soft, and it is difficult to judge whether it is soft or hard. Therefore, after every five or six rounds of carburization, Guan Yu stopped heating, hammered the iron into pieces, and left it to cool naturally. When the iron cooled,

Check the softness and hardness again.

Fortunately, the wrought iron pieces were small and cooled quickly, so the testing process did not drag on too slowly.

With the continuous three and five rounds of carburizing, the wrought iron is gradually becoming harder and no longer as soft as it was at the beginning.

Li Mengxi understood that, indeed, charcoal fire can slowly carburize.

After fifty or sixty rounds of carburizing, the wrought iron already made a tinkling sound when struck, and it was no longer easy to leave marks.

He called the knifesmith and asked him to check the quality of the iron. He picked up a small piece of iron as big as an egg and looked at it for a while, then struck it a few times with a hammer. After that, the blacksmith looked at Guan Yu and Li Mengxi in surprise.

"This iron is of good quality."

Wrought iron is infiltrated with carbon, and the carbon content is far less than that of pig iron, so it must be steel.

Li Mengxi thought to himself that this was steel. Although the process was clear and easy to control, it was too time-consuming. It took a whole morning to hammer a small piece of iron.

Li Mengxi said to the blacksmith, "Please help me beat this piece of iron into the shape of a knife."

Li Mengxi also drew the shape of a knife for the blacksmith. It was not a small ring-headed knife, but a sharp, thin knife similar to the Mongolian meat cutting knife, small and exquisite.

The knifemaker weighed the iron block and said, "It can be as long as a finger, and if it is longer, add more iron."

"That's enough. The length of your fingers is enough." Li Mengxi said.

Suddenly remembering something, Li Mengxi asked curiously, "Have you finished sharpening the thirty-forged ring head you made yesterday?"

The knifemaker hesitated and said, "I'll go take a look."

After a while, the blacksmith came back and brought back the dagger that had been sharpened but not yet polished.

The knife has not been completely ground, the handle has not been installed, and the sheath has not been fitted. There is still a gap between the knife and the knife being completely finished.

Li Mengxi made some calculations. Not counting the time for smelting iron, it would take a day to forge an ordinary knife. It would take half a day to grind, sharpen and polish the blade. I don't know how long it would take the carpenter to install the handle and assemble the scabbard, but I don't know how long it would take the carpenter.

, at least for about half an hour.

In other words, the most common tool requires several manpower and takes two days of work.

And if it is a hundred-forged steel knife, if the pig iron is directly forged and decarburized into steel, the success rate of the finished product will be low. I don’t know how many knives it takes to have a qualified steel product. If the iron is wrought first and then carburized, the working hours will be at least twice as long as ordinary ones.

Swords, and a lot of iron material was lost.

I hastily tied a hemp rope to the hilt of the sword, made it into a hilt, and then tried the sword. This ordinary ring-headed dagger forged by a swordsmith can cut a hemp rope as thick as a finger with one knife, and it can also break a wooden stick as thick as an egg with one knife.

Then poke the wooden stake with the knife, and the tip of the knife will penetrate.

When testing the limit, I took an old Huanshou knife and slashed at each other twice, and the result was that the blades were all broken.

This cannot be said to be due to poor skills of the knife maker. On the contrary, the quality of the knife made in a hurry is on the same level as the Dahan standard Huanshou knife, which shows that the skill of the knife maker in the camp is absolutely qualified.

Since the old Huanshou knife you can find is just as good as the new knife, this proves that the knife forging process of yesterday's knife makers, including the four processes of annealing, normalizing, quenching and tempering, is the mainstream forging technique of the Han Dynasty.
Chapter completed!