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Chapter 503: Chapter 500: Steel Dagger

“`

The last heating.

When Bi Fang took the steel bar out of the blast furnace, his entire body was shaking.

From exhaustion or excitement?

Or both?

It was hard to tell. At the moment of harvest, all the hardships turned into the sweetest fruit, a mix of flavors all in one.

The dazzling metal before his eyes could no longer be called iron, but steel!

Stronger, harder, and sharper!!!

Taking a deep breath, Bi Fang steadied himself from the dizziness caused by overexertion. The familiar wooden handle was gripped firmly in his hand, power building from a focal point, dropping from high above, and striking heavily upon the steel bar.

No more black iron scales fell off; all impurities had been artificially removed to the utmost limit.

Under the forceful hammering, the bright orange steel was gradually compressed, deformed, and stretched into a flat, elongated shape.

The embryonic form of a dagger was slowly taking shape.

But steel was far more challenging to forge than iron.

Whether it was hardness, toughness, or ultimate sharpness, steel far surpassed iron. The same was true for hammering. Bi Fang was very cautious, fearing that a single misstrike would demand starting all over again.

There wasn’t enough time for Bi Fang to do that. The sun had risen high, around 9 am Moyo time, out for food and rest, leaving him possibly less than six hours of forging time.

It really felt like the tension of participating in a sword-breaking competition.

“To make a usable dagger today, I’m not going to sharpen the edge. Without a sharpening machine, I would need to grind it with a whetstone, and hell knows when that would end.”

“So I plan to make a double-edged dagger, not needing sharpening, but with a pointy tip capable of thrusting, which counts as practical. Moreover, our steel is, after all, the most ordinary steel, with no one knowing how strong it really is; not sharpening it will also allow thickness to make up for strength.”

Sharpening the edge would inevitably make it thinner, and Bi Fang wasn’t very confident in the strength of the blade he had forged, worrying that it would easily chip.

Heating, hammering, heating, hammering.

The sun rose from the east, shifted toward the south, and began moving westward.

After finishing mushroom and rabbit soup, Bi Fang soaked his hands in a puddle of water for a while, regaining some energy, and took the red-hot dagger out of the forge.

Yes, a dagger.

After nearly six days of effort, the form of the dagger finally appeared at noon on the last day.

The long and narrow iron handle would ultimately be glued to a wooden handle. The slim blade extended over twenty centimeters, resembling a bayonet but too thin—clearly still unrefined with a thick spine.

Bi Fang switched the large hammer for a smaller one that was better for controlling the force and started to hammer the steel evenly and meticulously.

The brilliant furnace fire made Bi Fang’s face glow red. From the early hours of yesterday until now, the charcoal inside the blast furnace hadn’t stopped burning, adding fervor to the sultry rainforest.

[Swordsmith!]

[Since when did LOL release an Old Fang hero, Wild Hunter, who moonlights as a swordsmith, best suited for jungle position!]

[I think it’s good]

[These muscles, I call him the sexiest man—is that okay?]

[I also think it’s good]

[A petition of ten thousand! If they release a skin, I’ll buy them all!]

The hard steel bar was stretched once more, from slender to narrow, extending from the spine to the sides, becoming even sharper at the tip. No one doubted that such a thrust could pierce through an entire human body.

This is metal steel!

What are wooden spears, bone spears compared to metal steel? They’re nothing!

At three in the afternoon, the light was still good, and the dagger had once again transformed, truly taking on the appearance of a blade.

Bi Fang held the dagger upright and crouched to examine each side’s lines.

The shape wasn’t exaggerated, similar to the double-edged daggers ordinarily seen, but this had been completely hand-forged from nothing!

From any angle, Bi Fang had reached the limits of what handcrafting could achieve—the spine was straight and uniform, the blade edges that fanned outward were even and smooth, the tip sharp and stylish. Anyone seeing it would have to praise it as a sharp blade.

[Damn, just two hours away and it’s changed so much]

[It feels like I need it, sob sob sob]

[Achievement Unlocked: The Hard Way]

[Achievement Unlocked: Qilin Arm]

[Ah, three hours until the livestream ends, who knows how long we’ll have to wait next time]

[It’s mid-June now; it’s got to be at least July, right?]

Bi Fang clamped the steel dagger with wooden tongs for the last heating. Meanwhile, he added a large amount of sand under the furnace bridge. This step was so quick that the audience didn’t quite see it clearly, only seeing Bi Fang stuffing some strange grey matter in again.

Then came the final step.

“`

Quenching.

This time, Bi Fang removed the blower, otherwise the heating temperature would be too high.

“Steel heat treatment generally includes four basic processes: annealing, normalizing, quenching, and tempering. These are also known as the ‘four fires’ of overall heat treatment. Among them, quenching and tempering are closely related and are often used in conjunction, with neither being dispensable.”

“I won’t go into detail about annealing and normalizing since we won’t be using them next, mainly tempering and quenching. Many people have probably heard of quenching, which is typically the image of red-hot metal being plunged into water, hissing and steaming.”

[You often see it on TV]

[I’ve seen it]

[The tears of engineering materials, this course is too difficult, the Iron-Carbon Phase Diagram and Alloy Phase Diagram]

[I can’t listen anymore, I’m going insane]

“Hahaha, engineering materials are indeed difficult.” Bi Fang had a headache from studying it himself, and not all his knowledge was from the System— many things he had learned on his own.

“The heat treatment process of heating metal to austenitize it and then cooling it in an appropriate way to obtain martensite or bainite structure is what we call quenching. The most common methods are water cooling, oil cooling, air cooling, and water cooling is exactly what you just said, a quick plunge into the water for rapid temperature reduction.”

“We don’t have that much oil to choose from, so we are only left with water cooling and air cooling, and different cooling materials can cause different property changes.”

“To reduce the brittleness of steel, tempered steel is heated to an appropriate temperature above room temperature but below 710°C for a long time, followed by cooling. That process is tempering.”

Bi Fang opened the lid of the furnace and carefully observed the color of the dagger.

“This is the last step in dagger production. First, we need to heat the dagger to redness. Remember, it can only become red. You must not let it turn white, which is the orange-yellow stage. A knife that turns white is very prone to deformation, and it is also too brittle. For the specific temperature, you can look up heat color charts for steel online.”

Seizing the right moment, Bi Fang clamped the red-hot dagger from the furnace. He held it by the blade, taking it to the water basin. When he dipped the blade, he did not plunge it in fully but let the edge enter the water. The contact between the high temperature and cold water immediately burst into flames.

[Holy shit, it can catch fire?]

[Can water catch fire?]

[Under high temperature, water can decompose into hydrogen and oxygen, and then ignite in high temperatures. That’s why sprinkling water into a well-lit furnace can actually help fuel the fire.]

[What nonsense, sprinkling water to fuel the fire? The heat consumed is more than the heat produced, right?]

[You’re wrong, delete it. Quenching burns because it’s not water but oil. Water dripped into the furnace burns because water and carbon produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide at high temperatures, known as water gas. Read more books, act less like a fool.]

[Which first-rate account is this? Look closely, is this damn thing oil?]

[Why not ask the magical Old Fang?]

Bi Fang, however, had no time to answer. The timing and rhythm of quenching had to be just right. After immersing the blade edge in water for no more than two or three seconds, he flipped it to another side, causing another burst of flame.

Under the drone’s camera, the audience saw a layer of oxide peel off the surface of the blade, it was still a brownish yellow.

“Aside from water quenching, you can also use oil cooling, and waste engine oil will do. I don’t think anyone would dare to use diesel or gasoline for quenching, right?”

“As for the oil quenching process, it’s basically the same as water quenching. Heat to redness and immerse directly. When the waste engine oil stops bubbling, use a stone, or sandpaper to grind off the iron oxide from the quenched knife, and then it’s ready for tempering.”

Afterward, Bi Fang repeated this process until there was no more discoloration, then he sent the dagger back into the furnace for temporing.

It was only then that the audience realized that Bi Fang no longer put the blade into the flames; instead, he opened the fire pit, slid a piece of withered tree leaf into the sand pit, and when it turned brownish without blackening or igniting, he directly buried the dagger in the sand under the furnace bridge.

Then, he sprinkled some water on the charcoal fire on the furnace bridge to extinguish it, producing billowing steam.

What the hell?

Only now did Bi Fang see the audience’s arguments. He scrolled through the barrage of comments and laughed, “The burning is lacquer, not wrong there, but all your explanations are incorrect. It isn’t simply a matter of water decomposing due to high temperatures. It involves high-temperature vaporization of water reacting with the hot iron to form triiron tetraoxide and hydrogen gas. The high-temperature hydrogen reacts with oxygen in the air and ignites immediately.”

“Did you just see that layer peeling off? That is the triiron tetraoxide.”

Audience: “…”

So all that arguing was for nothing?

[I told you high temperatures couldn’t just decompose water!]

[Give it a rest, hindsight hero.]

[Bullshit!]

[So what was Old Fang just now doing to put out the fire in the furnace?]

“Tempering, of course. Regardless of the quenching method used, you must temper afterward to stabilize the steel and enhance its toughness. I used the Sand-roasting Method.”

Bi Fang sat on the ground and poked the sand under the furnace bridge with a tree stick.

“The temperature for tempering doesn’t need to be that high, but it’s hard to determine precisely. The best way is to heat the sand. When you feel it’s about right, throw in a not-so-withered tree leaf, or a piece of paper. When it turns brownish but doesn’t blacken or ignite, that means the temperature is appropriate for tempering.”

Bi Fang poked out the tree leaf he had just thrown in, and sure enough, it was brownish on the surface but not blackened or burned.

“At this point, bury the knife in the sand, let the dummy and the blade edge cool together, and when tempering is done, you have a final dagger. Of course, it still needs a bit of sharpening.”

After saying this, Bi Fang felt his whole body relax, collapsing on the ground as every muscle cried out.

So tired.@@novelbin@@

But finally, it was completed.

Steel Dagger!