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Chapter 501: Chapter 498 Iron? Steel!

For the entire morning, Bi Fang was busy as a bee.

He not only had to lengthen the chimney but also had to make a bellows.

The finally completed bellows resembled a large sealed gourd, with the fan blades situated where the gourd would hold water.

Only the long rod connected to the fan blades and the very bottom part were left empty.

“Leaving the bottom empty allows us to conveniently change the blades if they get damaged. Furthermore, the bellows will ultimately be placed on the ground, effectively using the earth as a seal.”

Bi Fang brought over three pieces of wood, inserting two in front of the blast furnace and setting the third on top of them, securing it all with hemp ropes.

Bi Fang carved a small hole in the middle of the branch that spanned across the top, into which he inserted the long rod attached to the fan blades, allowing it to rotate freely under constraint.

“We can smear some animal fat inside the pit to help lubricate it, and next, we’ll make a bowstring, similar to how the Bow Drill Method creates fire.”

He took out a hemp rope, wrapped it around the long rod, and then tied both ends to another branch. Grasping the branch, Bi Fang pulled it back and forth, and the rope immediately began to rotate the long rod, which in turn stirred the airflow with the fan blades.

All the airflow was confined within the bellows, blowing out from the sole outlet and into the interior of the blast furnace, instantly intensifying the blaze even more!

[What we’re seeing now is Boss Fang’s personal performance of Moon Reflected on Erquan!]

[Old Fang in ancient times must have been a master craftsman!]

[Everything’s going smoothly!]

[With such skills, if sent back to primitive society, one could absolutely dominate and maybe even open ten harems!]

[The power of ten harems? Terrifying indeed!]

[At least he’d be a fire worship priest, in charge of fire and the tribe’s goods. ]

[It’s a physical turbine!]

Bi Fang made a curved spout and fitted it onto the mouth of the bellows, blowing directly onto the burning charcoal. The flames surged out from the top of the furnace mouth, almost half a meter high, and one could feel the intense heat just by looking at it.

Looking down from above the furnace cover, the fire’s glow was so dazzling that the eye couldn’t bear it, certainly exceeding one thousand degrees.

That afternoon, after eating, Bi Fang placed the previously smelted ingots into a newly made ceramic bowl, sprinkled some wood ash on top, and set it right in the middle of the furnace bridge.

Success or failure all depended on this attempt.

With a chimney over three meters high, charcoal, and a bellows, even the ancient Iron Smelting process wasn’t more sophisticated than this.

A usable Iron Knife?

Having reached this point, Bi Fang was no longer satisfied with just making an iron blade; he wanted steel!

Steel!?

Bi Fang displayed his ambition to his audience.

The audience felt a real shock; seeing Bi Fang produce iron had already made him seem godlike, and now he was planning to forge steel?

It appeared the pedestal of his deity had just grown higher.

In the eyes of ordinary people, iron and steel were almost two different things, with forging difficulty beyond comparison.

Of course, it didn’t matter to them since they couldn’t do it anyway.

“Is anyone here educated in engineering materials?”

Bi Fang sat on the ground, pulling the branch in his hand, continuously pumping air.

“The iron we come into contact with the most isn’t the industrial pure iron on the left side of the Iron-Carbon Phase Diagram, but rather industrial pig iron, also known as hypoeutectic white cast iron, with a carbon content between 2.1% and 4.3%, while ‘steel’ refers to an iron-carbon alloy with a carbon content ranging from 0.02% to 2.06%.”

“Depending on our needs, adding different alloy elements allows us to make alloy steel and stainless steel. So, steelmaking is about letting the excess carbon in pig iron react with oxygen at high temperatures and getting rid of it!”

Forget industrial pig iron; the piece Bi Fang had was so impure that calling it iron ore wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

It was iron riddled with impurities.

Modern steelmaking methods involve oxidizing pig iron in its liquid state to produce steel, known as liquid steelmaking, which requires temperatures around 1600 degrees Celsius.

Such high temperatures were unattainable in ancient times; they could only use lower-temperature techniques, such as carburizing block steel and the Steel Frying Method.

“During the Western Han Dynasty, thanks to improvements in bellows technology, flame temperatures could consistently reach over 1200 degrees Celsius, and decarburizing pig iron also needed to occur at such high temperatures.”

“Although I have a blast furnace, a bellows, and charcoal, they are all quite rudimentary and can’t quite achieve that level of heat. But the temperature definitely exceeds one thousand degrees, so I want to try making Hundred-refined Steel.”

Hundred-refined Steel wasn’t a mysterious technology; it merely involved repeatedly heating and forging the iron to remove carbon and impurities, eventually producing what is known as Hundred-refined Steel.

The simplest method to transform iron into steel, yet it’s also the most physically demanding.

“Of course, I’m not sure if it will succeed. We can only leave it to chance.”

Even if the steel forging fails, it won’t affect Bi Fang’s ability to make an Iron Knife; the process is all about removing impurities to obtain better iron.

“It’s a pity we don’t have iron ore, otherwise we could try the Steel Frying Method.”

The Steel Frying Method, an important technology invented by the Huaxia People.

But this technology almost seemed like a cheat for the ancient Huaxia, who monopolized it for over a thousand years.

“During the Han Dynasty, the military reversal against the Xiongnu wasn’t just due to the speed gap being closed by superior horses, but more importantly, the weapons were much more advanced than those of the Xiongnu. Steel was far too advanced for that era.”

For every five Xiongnu soldiers, they matched only one Han soldier. Why? Because their weapons were blunt and their crossbows inferior.

Now it’s said that they barely attain the sophistication of the Han, yet still, three of them match only one.

These were the original words of Chen Tang recorded in the “Book of Han.”

It implies that the reason five Xiongnu soldiers were only a match for one Han soldier was due to inferior equipment.

Forget copper; even raw iron was nothing but dross compared to Hundred-refined Steel, not to mention that the material largely used by the Xiongnu at the time was understood to be bones of cattle and sheep.

How could they possibly compete?

There’s a Gundam across the street!

“So many experts in the history of chemistry are still very curious why Huaxia, not the first to discover iron and about a thousand years later than the civilizations in the Mesopotamian region in using iron, was able to evolve so much in just two hundred years, and the most fundamental reason is still unclear.”

[It’s aliens!]

[Huaxia is a majestic lion of the East!]

[Asian people are really smart, at least when it comes to mathematics]

[We are hardworking and brave!]

“Hundred-refined steel was a method before the Steel Frying Method, which involves repeatedly heating, folding, and hammering the iron to react with the oxygen in the air, reducing the carbon content and making the composition of the steel more uniform and dense, reducing impurities and thus improving the quality of the steel.”

Bi Fang switched hands to operate the bellows while stirring the bright orange iron mass in the furnace with a stick, increasing the oxygen contact.

“But not all pig iron could ultimately be turned into steel. Besides the smelting skills involved, it also greatly depends on the quality of the iron itself, which could contain a variety of elements, such as sulfur and manganese. With the same skills, the results could be good or not so good.”

“That’s why when we read stories like those of Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, we often see sword castings fail, which may reflect the reality of ancient metallurgy. But ancient people would interpret it as divine punishment or such.”

Whether it’s the ancient people or ordinary folks in society, they basically don’t understand the different carbon content in iron and steel, only that they are different to use.

Such is empiricism.

The audience in front of the screen also seemed greatly enlightened.@@novelbin@@

[I learned this before, but I’ve forgotten all the specifics]

[This is legit knowledge, like being back in the classroom]

How much steel could Bi Fang make from this bit of iron?

The ancients had already given the answer.

In the “Weighing Heavy and Light” section of the Xiahou Yang’s Mathematical Manual, written during the Jin and Sui dynasties, there are two arithmetic problems.

The first question: Now there are 6281 jin of pig iron for refining into yellow iron, with a loss of 5 liang per jin. How much yellow iron can be obtained?

Answer: 4318 jin and 3 liang of yellow iron.

The second question: Now there are 4318 jin and 3 liang of yellow iron to be refined into steel, with a loss of 3 liang per jin. How much steel can be obtained?

Answer: 3508 jin, 8 liang, 10 zhu, and 5 lei of steel.

In ancient times 1 jin was 16 liang, and yellow iron meant refined iron.

From 6281 jin of pig iron to about 3508.5 jin of steel.

More than half is lost.

The impurities in the iron Bi Fang was handling were more, so the loss was even greater, but after calculating, it turned out to be just the right weight for a steel dagger!

Whether it was fate playing tricks or something else, Bi Fang, who originally thought twenty cakes for a knife was a deal, got reality-checked, and indeed, he could only end up with one steel knife.

Of course, that was not certain yet.

The work involved in making hundred-refined steel, both its huge volume and its high intensity of labor, might be incomparable to other trades, no?

For this purpose, Bi Fang had prepared several stone hammers, all lined up beside him, ready to go all out.

If you’re going to do it, you have to do it to the best.

Push it to the limit.

He removed the furnace cover, clamped out a pottery bowl, and poured the iron mass that had become a solid piece the size of a fist onto a stone slab. Bi Fang hefted a stone hammer.

The muscles in his forearm twisted together like steel cables, and transparent sweat squeezed out of his pores, flowing like streams over mountain rocks.

Strength traveled from the ground through his thighs to his waist, finally reaching his overhead arm, before coming down hard!

Pong!

Sparks scattered in all directions.

The dazzling flames ejected a blinding light, the high heat distorted the air, and waves of heat billowed out.

In the midst of the violent explosion, a fragment of iron whizzed past Richard’s ear, raising white hair and spinning into the wall brick.

The explosion turned the surrounding lawn into scorched earth, the broken water pipe spurted out water, and almost immediately the high temperature turned it into steam, the metal casing of the transformer blew apart instantly, and sparks shot up like a fountain to the height of a person.

Richard stood stunned at a distance, unclear whether he was more scared or astonished.

Jerret, hearing the commotion inside the house, ran out and saw the twisted car blazing like a fireball and also saw Richard standing stiff as wood. He patted Richard up and down, frantically asking what had happened.

When Richard was led into the house, he could no longer remember. He lay with wide eyes staring at the newly installed light on the ceiling.

The bright white daylight glared painfully, filling the eyes with bloodshot veins, as though the world had turned a crimson red.

A young man wearing a mask rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was hallucinating, and walked into the restroom at the station, locking the door behind him.

Inside, someone was already waiting for him. Upon seeing the new arrival, he handed over an old leather case.

The young man muttered as he took the leather case: “Can’t even afford a proper case?”

Upon opening the leather case, the dazzling pattern intoxicated him. He touched it with his hand, feeling the fine scales and thin leather, flawless.

After making sure there was no issue, the young man closed the lid: “How come there’s new stock all of a sudden? Lucky I didn’t leave.”

The man who brought the case laughed: “You guys manage that? Take as much as you get, that was the deal you agreed to.”

The young man tugged at the corners of his mouth, knowing he had said too much but indifferent. He pulled out his phone and swiped a few times: “Look at the number.”

“One third of the market price?” The man was not very satisfied with the number, even for illicit goods that seemed too low.

“The python skin has a bit too much damage. Or perhaps you can find someone else. If you agree, I’ll transfer it; if not, take your case and leave.”

“Fine, it’s yours.”