bookrandom Chapter 170 The Prototype of Pig Iron
Chapter 170 The Prototype of Pig Iron
Lin Baiyan immediately turned around and returned to the pottery furnace, and saw the situation inside the iron furnace through a pottery tube.
When the pottery furnace was being built, Lin Baiyan specially left a circular opening in the furnace wall and then installed a pottery pipe about one meter long on it so that he could observe the situation inside the iron furnace from a distance.
Looking further inside, the impurities inside the pottery furnace had already formed a liquid state. Lin Baiyan quickly took out a wooden stick and opened up the two gaps at the bottom of the pottery furnace that had been filled with yellow clay. Then he used the wooden stick to poke around inside the furnace.
Slowly, the impurities inside the pottery furnace flowed out like a babbling brook. After most of the impurities had been cleared away, Lin Baiyan threw yellow clay into the hole to fill the gap.
After burning for about an hour, Lin Baiyan felt that the time was about right and signaled Xiong Fei to stop pushing the bellows.
After the fire inside the pottery kiln went out and the temperature gradually decreased, Lin Baiyan knocked open one side of the kiln and pulled out the solidified lumps inside.
Xiong Fei looked at the dark, unrecognizable rock and scratched his head. "Priest, is this iron?"
Lin Baiyan shook his head. "I'm not sure either. We'll have to break it open and see."
This was his first time smelting iron, and he was just feeling his way across the river.
After the stone cooled down, Lin Baiyan used a stone hammer to break the heated stone, revealing its internal structure.
The outside of the stone was probably covered with impurities from iron smelting. Lin Baiyan stepped forward and poked at it a few times with a wooden stick. Only the innermost part had some hard lumps that looked like iron.
Lin Baiyan was overjoyed. He stepped forward, picked out a finger-sized piece from the very center of the stone, examined it carefully, and then excitedly held it up. "It's iron! Our method was correct!"
Seeing Lin Baiyan so happy, Lang Cang's dark eyes softened for a moment. "Yes, Baiyan is really amazing!"
Xiong Fei and Zhu Shan, standing to the side, were speechless.
The eldest brother didn't say anything, so why does it feel so sweet and affectionate?
After confirming the presence of iron, they simply smashed all the stones into pieces. The pieces that couldn't be broken were the iron blocks. After collecting all the iron blocks from this furnace, Lin Baiyan estimated that there were about five pounds of them.
Lin Baiyan was very satisfied with the output. The ceramic furnace they made for firing iron was about half a person tall. The first experiment used iron and charcoal in a one-to-one ratio, each weighing fifty catties.
The iron produced is not pure iron. Although they have removed some of the impurities from the iron, simple firing cannot completely remove the impurities.
The iron must be hammered repeatedly during the reshaping and forging process to gradually reduce impurities, resulting in truly authentic iron.
Lin Baiyan did some mental calculations and figured that by then, only about half of the iron would be fully usable.
In this case, the ratio of raw materials to finished products would be 20 to 1.
But this also surprised him greatly, because this was their first time smelting iron, and once they became more skilled, the output might increase.
Lin Baiyan weighed the pig iron he had just smelted and instructed Zhu Shan and Xiong Fei to follow the same process and have a few more male beastmen work together to quickly forge a new batch.
"Could you help me find a few more strong male orcs?" Lin Baiyan looked expectantly at Lang Cang beside him.
Lang Cang smiled slightly, "I'll help you."
"Are you sure you can do it?" Lin Baiyan asked hesitantly. "You'll be hitting the iron block repeatedly with a stone hammer later..."
Hearing Lin Baiyan say that, Lang Cang's dark eyes narrowed slightly, and he raised his chin meaningfully, "Why don't we try and see if it works?"
Lin Baiyan met Lang Cang's gaze and, for some reason, suddenly shivered. He smiled ingratiatingly at Lang Cang, "Alright, alright, let's give it a try."
He picked out some of the smelted pig iron and poured it into a small ceramic cup. Then he put the cup into another furnace, surrounded it with wood and charcoal, and kept pulling the blower, adding a little charcoal every now and then to maintain the temperature.
The iron particles inside the ceramic cup slowly clumped together, and another long firing time ensued. By then, it was completely dark, and Lang Cang lit the brazier next to the ceramic furnace.
This was also Lin Baiyan's idea: to imitate the streetlights used in the 21st century by attaching a ceramic pot to a piece of wood and burying the wood deep in the ground. When night falls, simply placing a torch in the ceramic pot will illuminate the beastmen's night.
After dinner, the beastmen had nothing to do, so they gathered in twos and threes around the fire pit to chat or do crafts.
Lin Baiyan and Lang Cang sat beside the furnace, adding charcoal from time to time. With the help of the blower, the temperature inside the furnace quickly reached the melting point of iron.
All the iron had been melted into molten iron. Lin Baiyan stirred the molten iron with a wooden stick to make sure there were no broken pieces. Then, Lang Cang used the wooden stick as pliers to take the ceramic cup out.
"Quickly, quickly, pour all the molten iron into this mold," Lin Baiyan urged.
Once removed from the extremely high temperature, the molten iron will quickly solidify into an iron block. Lang Cang quickly poured the molten iron from the ceramic cup into a knife mold that Lin Baiyan had made in advance.
As the temperature slowly dropped, the molten iron in the mold gradually solidified into the shape of a knife. Lin Baiyan continuously poured water onto the mold to make the iron harder. Only after it had completely cooled did he remove the iron knife from the mold.
"Is this the iron knife you were talking about?" Lang Cang looked at the dark, hard lump in Lin Baiyan's hand with great interest.
Lin Baiyan shook his head. "No, that's not all. It needs to be hammered and polished many times before it can be considered an iron knife. Right now, it's just a prototype."
While Lin Baiyan and the others were melting the molten iron, Xiong Fei and Zhu Shan summoned Xi Zhao and Hu Qiu. The male orcs quickly opened a new furnace and smelted about five jin of iron.
The night was cool and still, and it was already late. Lin Baiyan hadn't expected that it would take so long just to smelt the iron block into iron. It seemed that he couldn't continue hammering it today. He urged them to go back and rest, "Go back quickly, we'll talk about it tomorrow."
Hu Qiu was very curious about the ironware Lin Baiyan mentioned. "Priest, can't we do it tonight? Even at night, we can still see clearly."
The other male orcs also looked at Lin Baiyan with expectant eyes.
They were genuinely curious about just how sharp the iron object in the priest's mouth could be.
Hearing Hu Qiu's words, Lin Baiyan rolled her eyes at them, "What's the rush? The iron is just there, it's not going to run away."
"Go back and rest now! You're too weak to forge iron. You'll have your turn to work tomorrow!"
Everyone had no choice but to obediently go back to sleep.
After a busy day, the Cangyan tribe gradually fell silent, with only the faint rustling sounds of small animals in the forest.