Time: Hu Biao and his party returned to Dou Gujun on the 15th day.
Location: In the Hongbai Mountains, close to the Hotan River, in a hidden river bend surrounded by mountains on three sides.
Different from the modern dimension, this place has long been a serious desert; during the Eastern Han Dynasty, the environment here, at least the environment on both sides of the Hotan River, was quite good.
Looking around, there are large areas of Populus euphratica, tamarisk, and reed marshes, and even wild ducks fly up from time to time in the reed marshes.
Small animals such as wild rabbits jumped out from it, and the fish swimming in the river were also clearly distinguishable.
After taking a look, everything is full of vitality.
To be honest! If it were a modern plane with such a quiet place and excellent scenery, there must be a lot of young ladies taking pictures here.
It's a pity that the team's head of equipment manufacturing, Lang Qing, has no idea about anything like this.
The only one in front of me was the small blast furnace that had just been successfully built on the riverside and had dried out the inside, with a capacity of one cubic meter.
Apart from this eventuality, the eyes can no longer tolerate anything else.
The reason for this is because the training of PLA veterans such as Fengrui and Lao Hei can be effective for a group of former slaves, and how strong is the effect?
To be honest under these circumstances, even Fengrui and others don't have much confidence.
So in order to improve the combat effectiveness of these people and allow them to play a role in subsequent missions, it seems that the only way to do this is to think about equipment.
In view of this, he commanded some natives some time ago.
Using layers of linen and natural glue made from rabbit skin, a total of ten layers were bonded together to create a cloth armor similar to later generations of cotton armor.
What can I say about this thing? It has pretty good defense against attacks like wolf-fang arrows.
If a layer of leather armor is added, the natives' bronze straight knives cannot be cut through with a single cut. In terms of protection, it is considered powerful in the entire Western Region.
The problem is that Lang Qing is still quite dissatisfied and wants to improve further.
And if you want to further upgrade your equipment, whether you are building various weapons or making powerful armor, it seems that you cannot do without iron, a basic material.
Because during the Eastern Han Dynasty, the indigenous people in the Western Regions had not yet mastered the iron-making technology.
So for a while, even if they had a large number of glass beads on hand, a treasure with astonishing purchasing power, they had no place to exchange for iron tools.
In the end, I had to think of a way to build an earthen blast furnace for smelting.
Back in the West City, they paid a sky-high price for three glass beads and bought two craftsmen who knew how to smelt bronze, just to prepare for this.
Bronze smelting and iron smelting both belong to metal processing, so you have some experience.
So after arriving here, except for the initial smelting of those bronze swords into various pots, pots, and farm tools, Lang Qing didn't care about anything else, and was busy with the matter of smelting iron...
Lang Qing first spent almost a day and after conducting on-site inspections in many places, he chose the address of the iron-making base here.
On the one hand, it's because it's well hidden.
As long as some sentries are arranged on the surrounding hills and a circle of logs five or six meters high is erected around the blast furnace, it can be ensured that the ironmaking methods they use will not be peeked into and learned by others.
You know, they didn't want to, and they didn't dare to let the barbarians in the Western Regions learn the iron-making technology so many years in advance, and it was still the iron-making technology of the earthen blast furnace.
Otherwise, in case the barbarians from the Western Regions upgrade their equipment in advance.
For our compatriots in the Central Plains region, this is a completely disastrous consequence.
On the other hand, after building the base here, it is completely possible to build some waterwheels based on some water level differences in the Hotan River and then use the water power.
Whether it is used to pull the bellows, raise the blast furnace temperature to a higher temperature, or drive the hydraulic forging hammer, it is an artifact that can greatly improve work efficiency...
****
After determining the location for the iron-making base, the next step is to build the iron-making furnace.
Thanks to Lang Qing who repeatedly studied and memorized a secret book before traveling through time. Specifically, it was "Advanced Experience in Several Local Methods of Ironmaking" produced by the Shaanxi Provincial People's Publishing House in 1958.
Because in the introduction, there are a total of five kinds of soil-based iron-making content, Lang Qing believes that one of them, the "Mizhi-type soil blast furnace iron-making method", is very consistent with the actual situation at hand.
The construction process of this kind of earthen blast furnace is very simple, and the cost is also extremely low.
Just use clay with relatively good viscosity and build a 5-meter-square earth platform first.
In order to ensure the strength and solidity of the iron-making furnace, during the construction of this earthen platform, it needs to be compacted with a hammer; with constant hammering, the overall height can be about 3 meters.
When the earth platform is built, the internal structure of the iron-making furnace is excavated directly on this foundation.
It is equivalent to saying that the entire inner space of the iron-making furnace can be dug out bit by bit.
After digging out a hollow space, a layer of stone was first built inside, and then a layer of refractory mud was added after it was beaten hard.
Finally, the various internal structures including vents, tapholes, combustion chambers, etc. are built with refractory bricks.
Finally, just use a low fire to dry the moist inside of the stove bit by bit. Lang Qing brought five craftsmen to work together, and it can be done in one day.
The only troublesome thing is the production of refractory mud and refractory bricks.
According to the information, there are instructions on the specific materials. They need to mix one-third of dried seed mud, coking coal powder, and broken porcelain powder, and mix evenly before making it.
In order to obtain these things that are actually very common in the modern plane, it took a lot of effort from Lang Qing.
After riding a horse and working around for two days, I finally got all the materials that could be replaced.
It is not until today that the earthen blast furnace has been completely built, and after a day and a night of small fires, the water vapor inside the furnace has also been dried.
Lang Qing made a rough calculation. Based on the internal volume of this blast furnace, it should be able to process one cubic meter of raw material at a time.
However, the specific iron extraction rate and the quality of the iron are still unknown.
In addition, for such an earthen blast furnace, Lang Qing also made some minor modifications based on the original data.
For example, a hydraulic bellows was added to the air inlet, which can increase the wind force and increase the temperature inside the furnace; a large pit in the shape of a crucible and made of refractory material was also added to the tap hole.
Everything is to achieve the next step at a higher furnace temperature, see if you can't directly get higher quality clamp pot steel instead of pig iron.
Otherwise, he is just a time traveler from the modern dimension. He has read so much information and bragged so much with others on the Internet.
After working so hard for such a long time, he just smelted some pig iron, didn't he want to lose face?
In short, after Langqing put in such a huge effort, whether it's a mule or a horse, everything depends on whether he can get a result when he turns on the furnace for the first time today.
Therefore, Brother Langqing didn't say anything on the surface, but he was panicking in his heart.
