Chapter 297 It's a bit like the most primitive blast furnace
Compared with burning ore, firing clay does not require extreme high temperatures. It only requires charcoal and firewood to be mixed together and burned to achieve a low-temperature smoldering environment of 700 degrees. It only takes four hours for the low-temperature ceramics to be fired.
This kind of low-temperature smoldering pottery is the craft of the potters of the Ross tribe. It is also the process of annealing glassware. After all, the main ingredient of glassware and pottery is silica.
A brand new bonfire quickly rose up, and it was brighter than other bonfires.
Because what is being roasted in the core of the flame is a brand new stove, which is changing from wet soil to a hard clay stove.
This furnace can be built higher, with more refractory ores stacked in the inner chamber, the clay furnace wall made thicker, the hole for the bladder blower to be inserted, and a hole specially drilled to receive the molten iron.
In this way, a small blast furnace of the pre-Qin level is completed. It looks simple, but its performance is indeed excellent. That kind of blast furnace can already smelt molten pig iron.
Of course, the new furnace owned by Kawei is more primitive. It is not a blast furnace at all. No matter how the air is supplied, it cannot breed a stable high-temperature environment of 1200°C. It reaches the limit of 1100°C, and it is impossible to melt pig iron at this temperature.
, can only produce tin bronze water.
Rurik was very tired. Although the wooden corrugation had been built, he just couldn't stand the strong smell of fresh pine trees. Before the smell dissipated, he still rested in the longboat, as did most of the other children.
Compared with those who are fastidious, a large group of Rus warriors are not so particular about their accommodation environment. They just make their beds beside the campfire and sleep comfortably. Before they go to bed, many people run to the river and wash themselves with river water.
Their bodies were covered in sweat. Of course, soap was used in this scrubbing. They gave themselves a perfect cleansing.
Even some people who brought a change of clothes gave their dirty clothes to the Coven women and asked them to wash them for them. Here, the women of the Iron Squirrel tribe, although they are weak, are now actually responsible for all the builders
logistics work.
They are the ones who cook and carve up fish, they are the ones who collect firewood, and they are still the ones who wash clothes. This division of labor really supports the construction of settlements, but these tribal women are not so willing. They are very willing to give to their tribesmen
Washing clothes, but the thought of having to wash clothes for Russian soldiers always makes them feel disgusted. They can say that Rurik is a person worthy of respect and trust, but other Russians are questionable.
Rurik fell asleep hiding on the boat, and few people in the entire construction site were awake.
There are some people who are wandering around. They just get up to go to the toilet.
It was entirely because of the strong expectations in his heart that Kawei kept his spirit high and kept staring at the burning bonfire. The smell of the burned earth felt like a strange fragrance to him.
Invisible to the naked eye, dramatic chemical changes are taking place in the furnace.
In the inner bore, a high-temperature environment has formed. Of course, it is impossible to melt iron, let alone the chromium contained in it. But the silicate content of 31% in the ore has melted and began to penetrate into the clay, and finally
It merges with the pottery clay and becomes the existence of a high-temperature substance.
After all, unable to resist the fatigue, Kawei fell asleep in a daze.
The sky was getting blue, and some women who got up early had the task of cooking. Their noise suddenly woke up Kawei.
The young and promising blacksmith got up and saw with joy that his furnace was completed!
Even though it had been smoked to a dark black color, after violently wiping off some of the carbonized ash on the surface with a linen cloth, Kawei saw exactly the color he expected.
In fact, these clays have been burned into "green bricks", which seem to have a light bluish gray color. There are already a large number of glass crystals inside, and the whole thing is integrated into one.
The furnace was still hot. Through the touch of the long iron tongs, Kawei was delighted to notice that the ore in the chamber had completed its transformation into refractory bricks.
This also proves another extremely important thing: local ores can be processed using traditional methods.
Kawei was completely confident. Seeing Rurik's cautious attitude, he was a little worried. Until now, his worries have disappeared.
A young man was yelling excitedly, and his continuous roar woke up many people.
Rurik was also woken up.
"Damn it! You can't let anyone have a rest so early in the morning?!"
He held his little head with his left hand, took Saipolava's arm away from his neck, and pulled out the right arm held by Carlotta.
Rurik sat up straight and poked his little head out of the colorfully decorated shield mounted on the side of the ship. He saw a shaggy-headed guy jumping excitedly around the dark stove, like a sarcastic figure.
The wizards are dancing.
"Oh, it's you! Kawei! You succeeded?!" Rurik staggered and quickly jumped off the long ship that was deliberately stranded.
He quickly came up with the answer, the answer he longed for most.
The excited Kawei no longer cared about Rurik's dignity. He put his excited hands on the boy's shoulders, shook it wildly and said: "The furnace is successful! We can smelt now! We will win a big victory!"
Kawei's excited look was actually a little scary. Rurik hurriedly broke away and responded with an excited smile: "Calm down for me. Since you succeeded, you can smelt it for me. I want to see the sponge iron as soon as possible."
There are iron ingots! It would be great if you could forge an ax for me."
"Okay!" Kawei said no more. As a man of action, he took action immediately.
A great smelting began, but no one paid attention to it at first.
After all, it is iron smelting, which is the job of the blacksmith. Ordinary Russian warriors do not care about this matter. What they are most passionate about is fighting and plundering the enemy's wealth to enrich themselves. By then, what kind of iron tools will not be readily available?
People who are good at plundering cannot feel the hardship of blacksmithing, nor can they feel the joy of smelting.
Kawei was really fascinated by the sense of accomplishment when he saw the ordinary ore turned into a tool in his hand.
It was like seeing your own child born.
Kawei first put red-hot charcoal in the furnace, and then threw in a large number of branches.
This is the first step in smelting, which is "warming the furnace".
Out of experience, he wanted to preheat the furnace to a relatively high temperature environment. He quickly brought the leather blower he carried and aimed the blower at the air inlet at the lower end of the furnace. While he began to work hard to control it, the top of the furnace also
A very raging flame burst out, like a roaring fire dragon!
Rurik and his young men watched with great interest. Everyone stopped to watch and thought about giving the blacksmith some help.
Perhaps the current situation fully demonstrates people's worship of flames from the depths of their souls!
A powerful force in the dark is encouraging Rurik to add more firewood to the already burning furnace.
The clay stove has become a fiery existence. It has been baked by Kawei for a long time. Its hard clay shell is hot enough to cook wheat cakes easily. A piece of fresh meat is put on it and it is cooked quickly.
Even in his own blacksmith shop, Kawei did not dare to touch the stove with his bare hands. It was so hot that he simply touched it, and the skin on his fingers was instantly burnt to white, which is called cooked.
Based on this reason, Kawei prepared some fresh fish for experiment.
He stood on the temporary support that was assembled around the stove using readily available wood. He picked up the fish with wooden sticks and observed the process of blanching the fish to determine whether the stove was qualified.
His skills were obviously weaker than those of his father Klavasen. If the old blacksmith were standing here, he could just stand next to the furnace and feel the heat, then look at the color of the flames emitting from the top of the furnace, and immediately estimate the temperature.
Kawei felt that the time was ripe, and immediately threw a large amount of ore into it.
The ore hit the burning charcoal, and for a moment it was like a flaming dragon. Rurik knew that he could not provide effective help to Kawei now. He and his friends were just spectators, admiring the process of throwing the ore which was like adding fuel to the fire.
The only ones who can really help are the young blacksmith Kamne and the ten other blacksmith apprentices.
At this point, smelting has reached its most critical moment.
Kawei and Klavason had long realized in their daily work that only by making the furnace hotter could they complete the smelting better. These were just their experiences until Rurik threw out
His magical "atom theory".
With strong arm muscles developed from long hours of blacksmithing and rowing, Kawei can control his leather bag blower very well. A large number of charcoal blocks are constantly being thrown into the furnace by his blacksmith apprentices, and he blows the blower with all his strength.
Every time the gas blew fiercely, the stove also spewed out a large amount of red flames.
What a long process! Rurik tried his best to keep watching with interest, but he had to say that the whole smelting process was becoming a bit boring.
Until Rurik noticed that the flames spurting out were no longer red, but bright yellow!
"The real high-temperature flame should be blue! They use current technical equipment to achieve blue flame, but at most they can only achieve white flame. If they create a special yellow flame that is close to white flame, doesn't it mean that the furnace temperature is already very high?
!”
Rurik is no longer just a spectator.
He walked into Kawei, stood very close to the stove, and saw Kamne who was smiling at him reluctantly, and Kawei who had thrown away his linen shirt, and his bare arms were full of tendons and covered with hot sweat.
Kawei seemed to be in a deserted state. He was doing his work with his head down, as if he was tireless.
Rurik coughed twice to attract his attention.
"The flames are almost white! Kawei."
"Really?" Kawei raised his head slightly and glanced at the flames spurting out, "It's yellow. Rurik, I don't know what kind of white flames there are."
"No! Only when the highest temperature is reached, the real white flame will be born. When the white flame is reached, most of the iron ore will be completely melted, and you can cast iron objects just like smelting and casting bronze."
Rurik's words were understood by Kawei as a very kind outlook.
People can't imagine things they haven't seen. Kawei has never seen the so-called "real white flame", let alone what it means.
"Just like this, can the ore inside be turned into sponge iron?" Rurik asked again.
"It's definitely possible, it just takes time. You know..." Kawei shook his head vigorously, and a lot of sweat from his hair was thrown directly onto Rurik's face.
Rurik even reached out and dipped his hand and licked it again, feeling the strong delicious taste. Looking at this man fighting hard, he was happy to have such a doer under his command, but regretted that there were too few doers.
"How much longer do you need?!"
It was such a sharp question that Kawei ignored his fatigue: "I think that when the sun reaches the sky, the work will come to an end. You know, my lord, there are unique substances in these ores."
"Okay, please continue."
What else could be done? Rurik could only sit aside and wait.
It seems to be just a one-man show for Kawei, a strong man. Could it be that a smelting exercise is going to tire him out?
No! You are not fighting alone! Not alone!
Rurik sat up suddenly, and after a while, he called over a dozen mercenaries he could find who were working hard to cut wood.
Kawei, who was already showing signs of fatigue, initially did not hope that the mercenaries who did not understand and probably did not despise the iron smelting would participate in his great work, but the pain of weakening his arms finally affected his mind.
More than a dozen mercenaries began to demonstrate their power. They frantically manipulated the blowers. The skin bulged and deflated, and the gushing flames surged to the extreme. It was as if the furnace was a dragon egg, and a young fire dragon was about to fly into the blue sky.
Kawei was able to take a breather. He drank directly from the clean river water and washed his hair with the river water.
He sat on the wood next to Rurik, put his hands on his knees, and the look of his violent breathing was really heart-wrenching.
"You know what? Rurik, I feel like my chest is going to explode."
"Your lungs are in pain." Rurik replied calmly, seemingly not caring about Kawei.
"Yes, it's really painful. Maybe I put too much ore in, and my ambition was too great. I just wanted to smelt more in one go. I almost risked my life for this."
"Your work will be fruitful. Now tell you, what do you think of your stove?!"
"It's so good." Kawei became happy and his pain was relieved a lot.
Rurik's face still changed color and he stared at the stove: "What I just said was not just a wishful thinking. Kawei, I think we should build a bigger and taller stove! We need to use brand-new bladder blowers and install at least eight of them.
, let a group of strong men control it. In this way, the temperature reached by the furnace can completely melt the ore."
Kawei could never forget this idea the first time he heard it. "You...forget it. I won't question it anymore. I just want to ask if we can create it. Rurik, you must have obtained Thor."
With your blessing, if you think it's okay, we should build a bigger furnace."
A bigger furnace? Rurik chuckled: "That's called a blast furnace. The furnace will need a lot of modifications. I tell you! By then the charcoal will be mixed with sponge iron and become something like liquid bronze. You
It is possible to cast them, but there is too much carbon in them. Now that you have read my elemental table, you should understand that it is precisely because there is too much carbon that the iron ore can be completely melted. Objects cast in this way are definitely not suitable for weapons.
, but it can be used as a tool.”
Kawei heard that it was almost a fantasy, but then he came across the "Table of Elements" and a brand-new theory to explain the world. Since many theories were completely consistent with the reality, he trusted this theory more and more, so he began to believe in it.
He chose to believe Rurik's explanation.
The idea is that as long as a larger furnace is built, has a better structure to lock the temperature, and more air is injected, the iron ore can be melted in the form of alloy substances.
Rurik actually noticed that based on the existing materials, he could make a blast furnace, because Kawei's towering furnace already looked a bit like a blast furnace.
All he really lacked was a high-efficiency blower to pump oxygen. As for the blower, he thought of something.
A pair of blue eyes couldn't help but see the river that was very close at hand. The summer floods caused by melting ice made the river flow fast.
An electric blower is also a fan! As long as it can drive a bearing to rotate wildly, its driving force can be an electric motor or, of course, a waterwheel!
Water wheel?! That's not...
When I thought about the fact that the Milanese at the end of the 14th century began to use water power on a large scale for moving and forging, they quickly created a group of "iron can" warriors. Thinking of this, Rurik felt that he needed to recreate it. In the final analysis, the water wheel
The technology is not complicated, it is just a mechanical transmission mechanism with several wooden shafts and wooden gears. Because it does not require high mechanical strength, it does not even require an advanced bearing system and has a very high tolerance for mechanical structure tolerances. Now, stay
Rick has already come up with the idea of building a water tanker to alleviate the labor shortage dilemma of Elon-Olawa Fort, and quietly regards it as an urgent project in the development plan.