With the help of the tribesmen, a large amount of sand was sprinkled on the burning charcoal storage room, and the terrifying smoke finally stopped spewing out.
The collapsed remains of the furnace were partially cleared, and the solidified pig iron was collected on a large scale.
Clavarson fulfilled his promise and paid the two silver coins agreed upon to the workers who helped with the smelting.
So far, the situation has turned around.
However, the messy debris has not been completely cleared, and the storage room in ruins still exudes a burning atmosphere.
In the evening, at Klavasen's house, the family sat together with mixed emotions. In front of them, they were doing Rurik.
Everyone sat on the wooden floor and discussed what to do next.
The oil lamp was lit pink, adding an important light to the dark room. The firelight shone on Rurik's young face. For the Klavasen family, their desire to make a big stove really had to rely on Rurik's help.
Some die-cast glass square plates held a bit of dried fish and a small bowl of oatmeal.
The blacksmith's stock of oats is almost gone, and the last bit of skill he has left is planned to be used by Lilia to replenish her health after giving birth. Now in order to get Rurik's help, Klavasen had no choice but to offer his own gift.
Rurik was not impressed.
The fact that the stove collapsed was so bad that, at first, the Clavarsons had nothing to say as they sat here.
"What? You're not talking anymore?" Rurik asked deliberately with a dull face.
"This... what can I say?" Klavasen said with a sullen old face full of beards, "I can only ask you to think of something. I hope we can still make a new big furnace."
Rurik smiled calmly, holding a nearly hemispherical glass bowl in both hands, and took a sip of oatmeal: "I thought your family had run out of oats, at least mine has run out."
Kawei forced a smile: "The little left behind is for Lilia, but..."
"I understand." Rurik put down the bowl, "Why are you so careful? I said it during the day. Now let's have a meeting, and I will tell you what to do next."
"What should we do?!" the Klavasen father and son raised their heads and said in unison.
"Are you anxious? It's okay."
"Sigh." Klavason patted his head, "I have seen the largest furnace in my life, and I have also seen the furnace collapse. In fact, I want to know more about how it collapsed. Of course, there is also the special one you mentioned. Iron, smeltiron, how it’s made.”
"Huh? Can't you two senior blacksmiths understand it?" Rurik shrugged, feeling that their confusion was ridiculous.
"If I could understand, I wouldn't let the stove collapse. Please tell me." Clavarson raised his head, looking like he was asking for advice humbly. Seeing this, Kawei also lowered his head.
The atmosphere became a bit strange.
Rurik smiled and said eloquently: "Normally when you smelt ore, the sponge iron and slag will only press the bottom of the furnace, which is the hard earth! But now the situation has completely changed. You throw them into the furnace You have purchased too much ore and are eager to complete a month's worth of sponge iron with just one smelting. You are too ambitious."
Klavason suddenly realized: "Ah! Shouldn't we put so much ore? Oh, it's our own fault."
"It's not just that." Rurik shook his head vigorously, "You have done a great thing. Your furnace completely melted the ore for the first time. However, your furnace can melt the ore, but it cannot carry it well. It turns into water. Iron is very heavy, much heavier than slag! That is smeltiron, and they are very heavy at the bottom of the furnace. Your furnace wall is still too thin, and it is completely broken by it. "
It would be a bit simplistic to expect two blacksmiths and blacksmith apprentices like Kamnier who were leaning against the wooden wall to have an abstract concept of mechanics in a short period of time.
They indeed need to spend some time to understand the "classical mechanics" discovered and summarized by Sir Newton, but this does not mean that they have not realized many truths in the complicated daily production work. For example, the Klavasen father and son have their own experience summarizing concepts such as pressure.
Klavason raised his head suddenly: "Oh! Then increase the thickness of the furnace wall."
"And don't put too much ore next time." Kawei added.
"Huh? That's all you have in mind?"
"Otherwise?" Klavasen asked.
"No." Rurik looked like he understood everything. He raised his chin and kept tapping the wooden floor with his fingers: "My friends, since you can completely smelt iron ore, just like smelting bronze, Everything has changed."
"Oh, then put in a large clay crucible." Kawei suddenly realized and consciously found a way to take out the molten iron.
Rurik slapped his little face with both hands. He didn't know whether to praise Kawei for his linear thinking or to judge him for being pedantic.
"Don't think about the crucible! Just listen to me. We will work together to build a brand new furnace, but the internal structure will be unprecedented. You must follow my orders to make it possible to succeed."
The Clavarsons looked at each other, and there was no objection between them.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Rurik immediately taught knowledge about blast furnaces to all the blacksmiths and apprentices present.
As for how Rurik knew this knowledge, he knew it quite well. This was the advanced theoretical knowledge he had as a time traveler. Thanks to old blacksmiths like Klavasen, Rurik trusted that the father and son could still Be able to continue to turn your theories into reality.
Here, Rurik also had to lament the Eastern ancestors' persistence in smelting.
Perhaps the ancestors of the East accidentally used copper ore in the process of making pottery. In the thousands of years of pottery making history, the mixed use of copper ore, tin ore and even lead ore enabled them to develop their own bronze smelting technology. .
In order to cast larger bronze vessels, a larger furnace must be used to smelt more bronze water. Increasing demand has forced continuous improvements in furnaces.
The furnaces were getting bigger and bigger. In order to facilitate the collection of bronze water and the disposal of slag waste, special discharge ports and slag discharge ports were set up.
In order to make the combustion more complete, high-quality charcoal was used together with a large animal-powered blower to inject more fresh air into the furnace.
Compared with the skins owned by the Russians, the East has already used more advanced bellows and wooden fans, and their blowing efficiency is amazing.
As more air enters the furnace, even charcoal can reach its calorific value limit. As a result, in the era of bronze smelting, Chu people could already reach the extreme high temperature of 1400°C. It is entirely due to the problem of ore selection that the Chu army's weapons contain a large amount of copper-iron alloy.
Smelting technology has reached an extreme height, and the urgent consumption of ordnance for the war has forced the East to have a huge demand for further improvements in iron smelting technology.
However, the Ross tribe does not have particularly huge war needs now, but the threat of war always comes to them. In a challenging era surrounded by powerful enemies and ambiguous allies, Rurik longed for a relatively peaceful development opportunity. However, the successive slaps in the face made him see a bloody reality - weakness is sin. .
Except for some twenty-year-old young men in the tribe who are eager to make a fortune through robbery under the banner of revenge, Otto and Rurik's attitude has been inclined to open up the wasteland to obtain new living space and produce all their own products. Supplies are needed, especially grains like oats and rye.
Now that a vigorous production movement has begun in many new settlements under Ross's rule, there is a huge demand for a large number of metal tools and weapons.
However, there are only five families in the Ross tribe who are professional blacksmiths, and the young blacksmiths are still a group of apprentices under the age of ten. It is still unknown when the men of the Steel Squirrel tribe will have excellent blacksmithing skills.
It was at this time of drought that the Ross tribe was quite weak.
Therefore, even if the Klavasen family did not take the lead in making a new furnace, Rurik still had to build a blast furnace. After all, compared to burning ore to make sponge iron, it was far less efficient than directly casting pig iron to make tools. Although the quality of pig iron tools and weapons is extremely worrying, it all depends on who you compare with. Since the opponent is usually wrapped in cowhide, and only the elite wear chainmail, to deal with such enemies, it is not a big deal to use a spearhead made of pig iron, which is thicker and heavier. As for using it to cast it into bones, gourds or war hammers, and crush the enemy's bones with blunt objects, that's even more problematic.
Therefore, the top priority of the new furnace mentioned by Rurik is naturally the thicker furnace wall!
In order to make the furnace taller and stronger, it of course needs to continue to be piled with clay and fired into a giant pottery. Its interior is preferably built with a fire-resistant layer of high-temperature-resistant chromite ore from Elon Orava Fort. Perhaps even after doing this, the furnace's ability to withstand pressure was still weak, so Rurik hoped that after the furnace was built, he would continue to pile sand and soil on the outside of the furnace, and finally pound it with a sledgehammer to form a solid mound in order to make the furnace stronger. Not collapse.
The structure of an earthen blast furnace is not complicated.
Since the furnace is designed to cope with the separation of molten iron and slag, the density of the two substances is very different, so it is not difficult to install the slag outlet and the discharge outlet at different locations.
The so-called difficulty probably lies in the blower.
Since the four leather bag blowers of the Klavasen family are continuously blowing air from a group of strong men with big muscles and waists, it seems that it is not a problem to promote the complete combustion of charcoal.
But wait! This blowing method itself is difficult to replicate, because it is impossible to always hire people as strong as bulls as labor.
Therefore, at this meeting, Rurik focused on two very important construction plans.
There was no paper to draw the design, so Klavasen provided a wooden board, and Rurik used the tip of a butcher's knife to draw the basic structural diagram of an earthen blast furnace on the wooden board. Because they also had a lot of experience in making utensils according to Rurik's drawings, Kravassin and Kawei's abstract understanding ability has greatly improved. They understood the blueprint of the blast furnace and couldn't help but applaud.
However, there was only one other design drawing. The two senior blacksmiths looked at it carefully with oil lamps, and they were still a little confused.
"What is this? I can't understand." Even the young Kawei was completely confused when faced with the "centrifugal blower" Rurik took out.
"This is a special blower. Although it is made of wood and belts, your carpentry skills are outstanding. I believe that if you follow the drawings, you will be able to make it."
In fact, the essential difference between the wooden "centrifugal blower" created by Rurik and similar products thousands of years later is probably only the difference in materials. Its essence is a turbocharging system. As long as its sealing is good, its performance is better than that of a bellows blower. However, its production requires mechanical knowledge.
It is precisely because its production is more complicated that the East is more willing to use cheap air boxes and exhaust fans, which are one-piece and one-piece blowers.
Although the centrifugal blower like the fan car is also used in smelting, its appearance is too rare. It is more of a simplified version used to shell rice and wheat.
The two people looked at each other with solemn expressions, and Rurik deliberately provoked him with words: "If you can't do it, I will have to hire a better carpenter."
"Then let me do it!" Clavarson gritted his teeth and sat up straight, and then gave some instructions to his son Kawei: "We will start taking action tomorrow. You take the children and hire another group of people. You To make a stove. And I, I also hired a group of carpenters to work together to make Rurik’s blower.”
Rurik was a little stunned: "Huh? Have you decided to hire someone?"
"Why not?" Clavarson opened his eyes in surprise.
"Oh! It's not surprising, it's just...nothing. Just do as I say."
After a meeting, Rurik returned to his home and was already in high spirits.
He was imagining a wonderful picture, while his family members were discussing the thrilling things that happened during the day.
Seeing her son return, Niya directly held his hand and asked about the situation of the blacksmith's family.
"Are you worried about them? Mom."
"Of course! They should be fine." Niya was a little confused by her son's disapproving expression, "Are they really fine?"
"They are all safe. The fire is out and the furnace will be rebuilt tomorrow."
"Oh, I hope the stove doesn't collapse again, it's so terrible."
"That's not true." After saying that, Rurik called all the women in the family to his side, especially Sister Carlotta.
"Not all the people in Ostara have moved to New Roseburg now. They must have settled down. I think they are not very willing to move again."
The words were meant for Carlotta to hear. As the leader of Ostara, she nodded: "You are right, although we agreed last year that we would all move out today. I am here, and of course everyone does not want to leave."
"Hey, you are their leader after all. But you are good at grazing. You need a warmer place to graze cattle and sheep. Roseburg is not very suitable here."
Carlotta was quite surprised, and she murmured weakly: "Rurik, I am obviously your woman, are you asking me to leave...leave."
"Huh?" Rurik hurriedly denied: "I just said that your people will leave Roseburg sooner or later. This place is too barren. I am afraid that I will have to leave this fjord in the future. New Roseburg is warmer and is suitable for grazing and planting. , the waters there are also suitable for fishing. Our destiny is to leave this fjord, so we need more tools."
The private owner said some nonsense himself, and Rurik clapped his hands hurriedly: "You just waited until the furnace collapsed, but you didn't know that the Klavasen family had completely smelted the iron ore into molten iron!"
Although Rurik's words were a bit exaggerated, they completely exceeded the understanding of the female family members. It’s not like the Carlotta sisters have never seen iron smelting before. Rumia and Saipolava are the only two girls here who accidentally understand the principles of iron smelting.
"If the ore turns into water, can it be cast?" Carlotta asked in surprise.
"Yeah, you're so smart."
Carlotta smiled shyly, and in just a moment, she finally understood all of Rurik's hints.
"Ah! We cast farm implements, we cast them out of the iron ore that is everywhere. Can each of us Ostarans have our own axe, shovel, and draft?"
"That's right." Rurik smiled and said, "Now that it's time to arrange for your tribe to open up wasteland, they will bring a full set of tools. By the way, there will also be heavy plows. At that time, I'm afraid I will have to inform the big leader. Arrange for you to lead your tribe to New Roseburg to build a settlement called New Ostara. Maybe you want to..."
Carlotta felt a little disappointed, but she also showed the temperament of a leader for the first time.
She puffed up her small chest and looked into Rurik's eyes: "Even if I am a child, I will revive my tribe. My destiny is to be your wife, and my tribe is also your tribe."
"Yes. But your people will have to pay taxes in the future. This is a contract. When the brand new furnace starts to produce tools in large quantities, I will give a large number of tools to your people, but they will give them to me for generations to come. Pay taxes. I think you know the concept of taxes! They must pay a part of the grain harvest and leather. In the final analysis, they are all for the expense of our Ross tribe."
Carlotta sighed silently. She felt that Rurik's words were offended: "Your tribe..."
For a moment, Rurik smiled consciously at his slip of the tongue.
"Well, maybe I should spread an idea."
"What idea?" Carlotta asked.
"What is Ross? Is it a tribe, an alliance, or everything we have? In my opinion, whether it is you, the Covin people, or the deer farmers, as long as they are in the same group as us Ross people, that is Ross. As long as he agrees that my father, me, and my descendants are the leaders, then he can call himself a Rus."
Rurik felt that what he said was very clear. Here, the four female relatives still felt inexplicable, or it could be said that Rurik's ideas were a bit ahead of his time, and the atmosphere was quiet.
What can Rurik do when faced with the embarrassment? He smiled awkwardly, gritted his teeth and said simply: "Forget it! Let me put it simply, many years later I succeeded the leader. As long as he agrees to be loyal to me, the great leader, and swears an oath to me, I will recognize him as a Russian. , he can also call himself a Rus’. From now on, Kovin people, deer herders, Ostara people, and Novgorod people, we are all Rus’ people.”
Rurik is crazily hinting at a concept called "nation", which is a "nation-state", in order to integrate multiple ethnic groups with different languages and cultures into a new national form, or to merge into a country that has many of the previous features. People with tribal culture.
The concept is too advanced and the atmosphere remains cold.
It's not that they express resistance, but in fact their concept of ethnic groups is very vague. Even the Ostara people never mind condescending to a strong man, all they need is a stable living space. They didn't even care about the concept of "Ostara", which was originally meant to describe an island. The survivors can only rely on the kind-hearted Ross tribe to support them. What else can they ask for?
The scene was too embarrassing, so Rurik simply waved his hand and said, "I'm tired. I just want to rest now."
"Then scrub yourself and go to bed immediately." After saying that, Niya immediately called the maid to prepare hot water.
I am afraid that Nina is the only one who understands what her son is saying. She marvels at his ambition, but is full of worries about the uncertainty of the future. However, I am really too old. The future should be bright, just like my son described how he smelted a large amount of molten iron to make iron tools with unprecedented efficiency. I am afraid that this is the only thing I can see in my lifetime.
