Li Mengxi carefully calculated, and roughly speaking, the time it took to create an iron bar, drill holes in the iron bar, and divide it into armor pieces was comparable to the time it took to make a ten-ring ring.

In other words, the labor of five or six pieces of armor is equivalent to the labor of forging a low-level short sword.

A set of armor, the lowest armor, costs at least two to three hundred armor pieces. In terms of weight, a set of armor consumes as much iron as a few swords, but it consumes as much labor as a hundred swords.

Putting it all together, a set of armor costs at least fifty ordinary swords, which is shockingly expensive.

After a long time, the tempering was completed. The craftsman took out the tempered nail plate. After it cooled naturally, Li Mengxi tried it with his hands. With a little force, the nail plate first deformed, then clicked and broke again.

He took the broken armor piece and frowned and looked at it carefully. It was not a problem with the forging. The armor craftsman was very skilled and the armor pieces were neat and thick. The problem was only in the heat treatment. It was because the heat treatment was not handled properly.

However, Li Mengxi could not understand why the sword could be quenched and tempered to achieve a state of both strength and softness, but why the armor could not.

With deep doubts, he summoned all the master craftsmen in the craft camp to discuss it.

The craftsmen were indeed experienced. The craftsmen who were used to working with iron quickly gave Li Mengxi the answer.

The craftsmen all agreed that the reason was that the armor was too thin. The sword was ten times thicker and heavier than the armor. Therefore, the sword was quenched to make it better and worse. The sword's skin was strong and could be carried, but the armor was not good. The armor was too thin.

, if the quenching is slightly incorrect, it will become crispy.

That is to say, theoretically speaking, the performance of nail plates can indeed be greatly improved through heat treatment. However, the difficulty of heat treatment of nail plates is too high, too difficult, and the success rate is too low.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! The sword is quenched, 12% per 100%, and the armor piece is quenched, 23% per 100%, the yield is really low.

Therefore, based on comprehensive cost-effectiveness considerations, the nail plate will not be quenched after hot forging.

Although he knew the key to this, Li Mengxi clearly knew that in addition to steel and forging, there are also additional processing factors that affect the performance of the armor. The additional processing can greatly improve the performance of the armor. To give it up is to give up a piece of armor.

Great defensive power.

The difficulty in quenching the nail plate is that the yield rate is too low. The reason for the low yield rate is that the nail plate is too thin, and because it is too thin, the quenching temperature must be controlled to the micron level.

It is surprisingly difficult to mass-produce quenched nail plates, but Li Mengxi just has a solution.

The solution is—big industrial technology.

The nail pieces made by craftsmen with their own hands must not be exactly the same in thickness and size, but must be different. The nail pieces are so thin, even the slightest difference will have a huge impact.

Using large-scale industrial technology, craftsmen create a nail plate with a thickness of one millimeter. For a finished product that is forged by hand, the data of the nail plate must be discrete. The thickness of the hand-forged nail plate will fluctuate as a function around 1.0 mm. The thickness of the nail plate

The thickness will be 0.99, 0.98, 1.01, 1.02...etc.

According to such a discrete model, when there is enough data, there will be enough nail plates with exactly the same thickness, size, and weight.

Using this method, the craftsmen create one hundred thousand armor pieces. Among these one hundred thousand armor pieces, one hundred armor pieces that are extremely similar in thickness, weight, and size will surely be found.

Then, after there are a large number of armor pieces of the same specifications, build a fire tank that is 100 meters long and of the same depth from beginning to end, then spread the same thickness of carbon powder in the fire tank, and light the fire at the same time to burn the armor pieces of the same specifications.

Put it in and heat it for the same amount of time.

Then, a master craftsman took out the armor pieces from the fire tank from time to time for quenching and spot checks. When he saw that the heat was right, he gave an order and a hundred assistants guarding the fire tank simultaneously picked up the armor pieces and put them into the water.

Quenching.

Relying on this [human flesh industrialization] method to accurately control the temperature of quenching nail plates, it has become possible to mass-produce high-performance quenched nail plates.

This is the first method, large-scale industrialization. The prerequisite for using this method is that there must be a sufficient number of armor pieces, at least on the order of 100,000, before there are enough forged armor pieces with similar specifications.

There is a second method. When forged by hand, the armor pieces have great errors and it is difficult to have consistent specifications. However, with the casting method, hundreds or thousands of almost identical armor pieces can be cast.

But at the same time, there is a problem. The cast armor pieces have a loose structure and are too fragile.

Therefore, the question is, if mass-cast armor plates are quenched with high quality, can they equal the defensive power of forged armor plates?

If the two can tie up, it will make a lot of money.

It is known that the forging of armor plates is time-consuming and laborious. The man-hours used to forge five or six armor plates is equivalent to forging a short sword.

As for the casting method, one person can cast thousands of armor pieces in half a day.

If the cast armor pieces have a defense power close to that of forging after advanced heat treatment, it means that the armor stomach output can be increased dozens of times while maintaining defense power.

This is the second method.

There is a third method, in addition to increasing strength through heat treatment, cold forging can also be used.

Cold forging is to use a hammer to hit the thick armor pieces hundreds or thousands of times to make the thick armor pieces thin and hard. This can increase the defense by several percent.

Cold forging armor seems to be much simpler than quenching. Quenching is extremely technically difficult, while cold forging only consumes man-hours.

Cold-forged armor has a great reputation, and the cold-forged armor of Xixia made even the divine arm crossbows of the Song Dynasty quite difficult.

Cold forging armor technology, its more technical details, Li Mengxi is unknown.

Cold forged nails, as the name suggests, are forged nails without heating.

Using the controlled variable method as an analysis, how many variables can there be in cold forging armor?

The steel material of the nail plate is a variable, the shape of the nail plate is a variable, the thickness of the nail plate is a variable, the forging hammer is a variable, I can't think of anything else, it's gone.

Armor plate steel can be divided into wrought iron, steel and pig iron. According to Li Mengxi's understanding of iron, pig iron is too brittle and cannot be used for cold forging, but what if it can be used. So we have to give it a try.

Regarding the shape of the nail flakes, whether it is easier to make long nails or short nails, I don’t know which one is more efficient in production.

The thickness of the nail flakes depends on how thick the nail flakes are.

As for hammers, hammers have shapes, materials, and sizes.

Is a flat hammer better for cold forging or a round-head hammer? I don’t know. Anyway, from the pressure point of view, the round-head hammer has greater pressure, and perhaps the forging efficiency is higher.

In terms of material, the hammer is made of only copper and iron. The copper hammer is too soft and may not be suitable for forging, but it may have miraculous effects. As for hammers, there are wrought iron, pig iron, steel hammers, and different hammers.

The hardness is different. From common sense, the harder the hammer, the better. But in case this is not the case, you have to give it a try.

Li Mengxi passed on the cold forging method to armorers. According to the variables of the cold forging method, various hammers with different materials, shapes, and sizes had to be prepared.

You have to prepare various types of nail pieces including material, shape, length, thickness.

Let the craftsmen prepare the tools first.

For nail plates, in addition to yield and production efficiency, there is another major issue, that is, what shape of nail plate has the strongest defense? Is the bigger the nail, the stronger the defense, or the smaller the stronger?

Is the longer the stronger the defense, or the shorter the stronger?

I don’t know about the armor pieces yet, but anyway, as for the siege ladder, the longer the steps of the siege ladder are, the easier it is to be broken.

If the defensive power of armor plates is the same as that of siege ladders, then the shorter the armor plates are, the better. But I don’t know whether the armor plates are the same. I have to give it a try.

Li Mengxi thought for a while and was able to design a preliminary test plan for the shape of the nail plates, but then he realized that the difficulty of testing the strength of the nail plates lies in the strength of the nail plates themselves.

Another previous test was to test the strength of paper. The method used was to drop clay pellets from different heights, and control the kinetic energy of the clay pellets when they fell by controlling the height of the free fall, so as to accurately measure the strength data of different papers.

Paper can be tested in this way, but nails are another matter. The strength of nails is too great and cannot be easily destroyed by humans.

As for the nail plate, if you use clay balls to test it, no matter how high the clay ball is placed, it will not break the nail plate. At least you have to use an armor-piercing awl to pierce it hard.

Referring to the paper strength test method, manpower is an uncontrollable variable, so human interference factors should be eliminated as much as possible.

In the same way, manpower must be eliminated for the testing of nail plates. The problem is that the strength of the nail plates is too high, and it is difficult to cause damage even with an armor piercing awl, so special tools must be used.

Li Mengxi conceived a tool in his mind. This tool has a platform below on which the armor pieces can be placed. At the same time, a large iron awl is hung on the top, which can accurately and gradually increase the height of the iron awl, and can also make it

Each fall can land on a point.

There is a tool that perfectly meets the need - the guillotine.

It was the kind of guillotine that cut off the head of Louis XVI. It had a door frame with a big ax hanging on it. The executioner was pulling the rope on one side. When the rope was loosened, there was a kacha sound and the ax fell down.

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The guillotine's precision, power, and adjustability fully meet the testing requirements.

Li Mengxi immediately went to make a guillotine, because it was to test the armor. The guillotine beheading ax was equivalent to the enemy's weapon. On the battlefield, the types of damage the armor suffered were nothing more than slashes from swords, stabs from crossbows and spears.

blows, and blows with blunt objects.

Therefore, the guillotine must have an iron ball, an ax blade, and a large iron awl to meet the testing needs.
Chapter completed!