"Compared with the best white charcoal, raw coal is still slightly inferior after being cooked, but in addition to being durable and resistant to burning, the skeleton does not fall apart, and the iron produced is used to cast arrows, machines, swords, guns, spears, halberds, armor, iron leaves, etc. , are much superior to the iron smelted from raw coal, not to mention the casting of plows, hoes and other items. If you want to cast the good swords used by the commanders, you have to use high-quality white charcoal..."
Zhuang Shouxin was originally a master craftsman in charge of construction projects under the command of the Salt and Iron Envoy. During the first invasion of the south by the Red Husbands, he fled Bianliang with his family and went south. After arriving in Chushan, he worked in the workshop.
After the establishment of the Chushan camp, the Changshiyuan and the Zhouyuan were combined. The Gongcao was the core department of Chushan, with Xu Wuliang as the military officer. However, Shi Zhen and Su Laochang paid great attention to this area of affairs.
The Gongcao is under the jurisdiction of the construction, craftsmanship, official animal husbandry, and mining supervisory courtyards, which are headed by Yu Chengzhen, Zhuang Shouxin, Xu Sheng and others respectively.
The mining and smelting of coal and iron, as well as the casting of weapons and armor, etc., belong to the Craftsmanship Institute.
Xu Huai's secret letter was sent back to Chushan. Zhuang Shanxin took his son Zhuang Yong, son-in-law Shen Lian and others to move into Shibaliwu to verify the method of coal refining.
Xu Huai returned to Chushan. Zhuang Shanxin and his son-in-law not only watched the kiln workers test-fire many batches of cooked coal in small batches, but also trial-produced a batch of weapons and armor. They came to the preliminary conclusion that this method can be used. Can be of great use.
Although there are still some differences between raw coal and fine white charcoal after being cooked, most of the iron tools used today do not have such stringent requirements for iron quality.
After being smelted, raw coal only melts into lumps, has long-lasting resistance to burning, and has the advantage that the skeleton does not fall apart, which determines the vast majority of iron castings. There are hundreds of advantages and no disadvantages in replacing charcoal with simmered coal.
As for high-quality weapons, the requirements for iron and charcoal are extremely high. This can be done by setting up a small-scale manufacturing institute to take sole responsibility.
"This is really a great thing. The newly built furnace will come in handy!" Xu Wuliang said very excitedly when he heard the result.
Xu Huai was busy with military affairs and spent most of his time leading troops in battles in recent years.
After the banditry in Tongbai Mountain, Xu Wujiang, Xu Wuliang, Xu Sheng and Liu Qiong'er initially stayed in Tongbai Mountain to manage Zhufengtang, Yuhuangling, Shituoling and Xiema Mountain; the second northern expedition to Yan failed. , Xu Huainan returned to Tongbai Mountain and established Chushan County. The political affairs were mainly handled by Su Laochang, Xu Wukun, Cheng Yi, Tang Tiande and Xu Wujiang.
At that time, the management of Zhufengtang and Yuhuangling was expanded to the entire western section of Nanling and Beiling areas of Tongbai Mountain. Su Laochang, Xu Wujiang and others were also in a hurry. It was not until Shi Zhen went south to become the county magistrate that many matters were sorted out. come over.
Take the Shibaliwu Iron Works as an example. Two years after Zhufengtang took over, the monthly output of iron materials from the three small furnaces stabilized at around 10,000 kilograms.
After Shi Zhen took office as county magistrate, he continued to recruit young laborers from the refugees to fill the Shibaliwu Iron Mine. Zhuang Shouxin also started to sort out the iron ore mining and smelting processes, widen the roads between the mining area and the iron field, and improve the miners and craftsmen. The workers' food and accommodation environment was improved, and river water transportation was used as much as possible. In just one year, the monthly iron production of Shibaliwu was stabilized to more than 30,000 kilograms.
Although the iron smelting industry in Jianghuai, Jinghu and other places has developed greatly in the past century, and the total output has exceeded that of the north, when it comes to iron smelting, the master is still in Cizhou, Hebei, which has good mines. Cizhou's iron smelting industry is still mainly government-run. The current bottle-shaped blast furnace built by Cizhou Railway Supervision can smelt two to three thousand kilograms of pig iron in one furnace, and can produce two million kilograms of good iron a year to supply the needs of Bianliang.
At present, the bottle-shaped blast furnace has not spread to the Jianghuai area; the small-scale furnaces built before the Shibaliwu Iron Works are even worse than those in the Jianghuai Jinghu area.
Cizhou has fallen to the enemy. In order to ensure that the bottle-shaped blast furnace can be passed down, and at the same time, in the hope of further reducing the cost of ironmaking in Chushan, Zhuang Shouxin, with the support of Shi Zhen, started trial-making bottle-shaped blast furnaces in Shibaliwu a few years ago.
blast furnace.
The blast furnace was completed in early March, and several furnaces of pig iron have been tested. It is expected to achieve the goal of producing two thousand kilograms of pig iron per day. This bottle-shaped blast furnace alone can triple the production capacity of the Shibaliwu Ironyard, but
Xu Huai didn't have time to take a look in person.
The Shibaliwu Iron Yard is very close to the mine. In the early years, it was built close to a creek to facilitate water collection.
Initially, in order to open up more sloping fields in the upper stream valley for irrigation and to facilitate the transportation of ore by boat and raft between the iron yard and the mine, during the Zhufengtang period, Xu Wuliang and Xu Wujiang spent 20,000 to 30,000 yuan to build a road.
A stone weir nearly one foot high raises the water level in the upper reaches of the stream.
The stone weir intercepts the upper stream of the stream and creates a narrow and small mountain lake with clear water and sparkling waves.
The new blast furnace was built next to the stone weir, like a giant bottle with a narrow mouth and a wide belly more than two feet high.
A keel waterwheel is framed under the stone weir. The water flows out from the overflow port of the stone weir. The impact keel slowly rotates with the waterwheel, and the bellows on the left side of the blast furnace is pushed to operate through a connecting wooden rod as thick as a fist.
"Is this the water drain?" Xu Huai walked to the blast furnace and watched the water wheel and the bellows operating in conjunction, and asked Zhuang Shouxin curiously.
"This furnace can smelt two thousand kilograms of iron a day, and the traditional mules and horses are used to blow the wind, but the wind power is no longer comparable. Cizhou iron smelting can still be ranked first in Jianghuai today, mainly by using the terrain to create water drainage and blowing!" Zhuang Shouxin said, "
When Jieshuai first came to Chushan, he built a large cofferdam at Yuhuangling and used waterwheels to draw water from the Jinsha Valley to leach the gold sand. He worked day and night to save people and effort. Of course, Shibaliwu cannot lag behind others.
!”
When mining placer gold in Jinshagou, Xu Huai first sawed open giant trees and spread the creek bottom mud on top of the creek to rinse with water. Xu Wuliang, Cheng Yi and others took charge of the county government and gradually switched to water trucks to collect water and mine gold every month.
Only then did it stabilize above 10,000 guan.
Of course, the large-scale construction of stream cofferdams in Tongbai Mountain not only reclaims the valley slopes along the coast for farming, but also objectively significantly reduces the summer flood disasters of the main tributaries of the Huai River such as the Baijian River. It also builds water mills in Tongbai Mountain.
Hydraulic equipment such as water hammers provide great convenience.
Chushan wanted to use bottle-shaped blast furnaces to significantly increase pig iron production and use water drainage to improve the performance of blast facilities. This was a necessary condition - the iron yards in the Jianghuai Plain area had gentle rivers, but there was no condition for building water drainage.
"It is extremely convenient to build a blast furnace in Tongbai Mountain and use water to make iron. At this time, it is confirmed that cooked coal can replace charcoal. I estimate that with the existing manpower, we can build another bottle-shaped blast furnace. By then, ten
The daily iron production of Baliwu Iron Field is expected to exceed 5,000 kilograms," Zhuang Shouxin said confidently, "The water flow intercepted by this stone weir is strong enough to operate two water rows..."
"After deducting the time spent on recuperation, the Shibaliwu Iron Works produces more than 1.5 million kilograms of iron per year. This is a figure that was unimaginable in the past!" Xu Wuliang said with excitement, "Although Tongbai Mountain and Nanyang,
In Suizhou and other places, transportation is inconvenient, but as long as the pig iron produced at the Shibaliwu iron yard is cheap enough, even if the pig iron is transported directly out of the mountains by mules and horses for sale, it will crush the iron yards in Nanyang and Xiangyang..."
The price of iron was low at that time. Even after the fall of Bianliang, the demand for weapons and armor casting surged in Xiangyang, which caused the price of iron to rise a lot, but it was still only more than 40 yuan per catty.
In the past, 30,000 kilograms of iron was produced at the Shibaliwu Ironyard every month, which cost less than a thousand guan. It was shipped directly to Nanyang for sale, and the profit was even meager. It was mainly forged into weapons and equipment in Huaiyuan and then sold.
Enough profit to support so many miners and craftsmen - making ordinary ironware that cannot be sold at a high price, even if it is shipped to Nanyang and sold, it may not be possible to recover the cost.
However, no matter how cheap the iron materials are, as long as the labor consumption is small enough and the output scale is large enough, the profit from direct sales will still be astonishing.
If Shibaliwu's annual pig iron output can be expanded to 1.5 million kilograms, the direct output will be as high as 50,000 to 60,000 kilograms. However, only pig iron is produced from coal and iron mines and eventually sold out of the mountains.
, it will be able to accommodate three to four thousand more young and strong laborers for Chushan.
More importantly, in addition to the further expansion of the Shibaliwu Iron Mine, Shibaliwu is not the only mine in Tongbai Mountain that is suitable for building bottle-shaped blast furnaces.
In fact, the scale of Chushan's iron smelting industry will ultimately be limited by the demand from Nanyang, Xiangyang, Jinghu and other places.
Thinking of this, Shi Zhen, Su Laochang, Xu Wuliang, and Zhuang Shouxin all couldn't wait to start building the second bottle-shaped blast furnace.
"The molten iron is drawn from the blast furnace, why not directly fry it into refined iron and then transport it out of the mountain for sale?" Xu Huai asked thoughtfully.
The iron ore fire enters the furnace for smelting, and the molten iron is drawn out from the bottom of the furnace and cooled into iron ingots, which are pig iron.
In the early years, when smelting technology was underdeveloped, iron tools such as knives, plows, and axes were cast directly into molds, which were brittle and easy to break.
Later, in order to improve the performance of ironware, casting was changed to forging, and the block refining method, the hundred refining method, the stir-frying method, and the pot refining method were invented.
At that time, the cooking method was mainly based on frying and refining.
That is, put the pig iron into a pot to re-melt it, mix it with iron ore powder, and stir it with willow branches to remove the slag, you can get refined iron with better performance; further frying, you can also get soft wrought iron.
Using wrought iron and refined iron as raw materials, and then repeatedly heating and forging them into shape, the resulting ironware has much better properties than those made directly from pig iron.
However, at that time, the smelting of pig iron and the further frying of pig iron into refined iron and wrought iron were completely separate.
In Xu Huai's opinion, pig iron smelting and frying can be completely merged together. Wouldn't this save the process of re-melting pig iron?
He thought carefully and found that the reason why predecessors did not think of this was mainly because ironware production was not yet large-scale.
The bottle-shaped blast furnace technology was previously only mastered by officials and supervisors in Cizhou. Other places had small smelting furnaces, and the scale of iron yards and ironworks was also extremely limited, so there was no need for continuous production.
The problem is that if Chushan wants to engage in large-scale iron smelting, it must break through the shackles of tradition as much as possible.
"..." Zhuang Shouxin asked Xu Huai to stare at him for a long time before he suddenly came back to his senses, clapped his thigh and shouted, "Jie Shuai is really a great talent. You can definitely try this method..."
