It is precisely because of these disadvantages of the jaw knife that some male ants are not very satisfied with this weapon. Its advantages and disadvantages are equally obvious.
The big-headed ant survivors did not inform the protagonist of the disadvantages of the jaw knife before. Of course, it may be that the big-headed ant survivors believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
In the previous battle to attack the main nest "Qingqiu City", such problems rarely occurred. This was because the battle time at that time was not long.
The battle in the Northeast lasted for more than a week, so it was normal for a large number of jaw knives to be damaged in the frequent battles. Many warriors who lost their jaws continued to fight with their chitinous jaws.
The reason is that on the one hand, the jaw knife itself has inherent flaws in its strength, and on the other hand, there is no spare jaw knife on the battlefield to replace it.
The protagonist plans to carry some spare jaw knives with the army in the future, but the required mixed glue is not easy to carry. Among these glues, ant glue can be produced by the ants themselves and is available at any time, but plant glue cannot be found at any time.
If you only use ant glue, the quality of the glue will be slightly poor, and it can only be used as an emergency measure.
In addition, it is already difficult for the soldiers of the Ant Legion to carry three slings by themselves. If they carry a spare set of jaw knives, it will greatly consume the soldiers' physical strength during the march and also affect their mobility.
The protagonist attaches great importance to this experience discovered in actual combat. In the past, the combat radius of the Divine Envoy King's legion was not far, and they often relied on nests to fight, and there were sufficient material reserves in the nests.
But in the future, there will be more and more battles like the expedition to "Hunting Ground City", and currently only "Dongyang City" in his territory can mass-produce slings and jaw knives, and the main nest "Qingqiu City" is currently only a small one. scale production.
If the Divine Envoy King's Legion stays away from these two military industrial bases in the future, it will be difficult to obtain timely military replenishment.
The solution is for the troops to carry sufficient supplies themselves and continuously replenish them from the rear according to war needs.
It is very uneconomical for the soldiers of the field legion to transport these materials by themselves, so the protagonist plans to recruit a group of baggage troops.
Unlike field troops, baggage troops do not need to recruit soldier ants. Workers are also capable of the job and are more hardworking and hardworking.
The baggage troops do not need to be placed under the field corps. They can be used as independent structures and directly controlled by senior commanders. Just like during the War of Liberation, the migrant workers at the front were directly under the command of the war zone.
With this idea in mind, the protagonist negotiated with other male ants and decided to start this work.
——I am the dividing line——
As for the strength of the stone jaw knife, even if spare parts were prepared, the jaw knife suddenly broke during the fierce battle and the soldiers could not replace it immediately.
The best way is to significantly reduce the damage rate of the jaw knife and improve its quality.
It is impossible to increase the strength of the jaw knife purely technically. This depends on the texture of the stone, and the ants obviously cannot detect in advance whether there are cracks or other hidden dangers inside the stone knife.
The protagonist wants to upgrade the material of the jaw knife to metal, such as copper.
Last winter, the protagonist had a plan to smelt copper. After recently conquering the main nest, he also specially sent troops to capture the "Malachite City" which produces copper ore.
Previously, an underground blast furnace had been dug out in "Dongyang City" for copper smelting.
This underground blast furnace is about half a meter high and about one centimeter in diameter. It is located more than one meter deep underground. It uses the surrounding soil as an insulation layer to increase the furnace temperature as high as possible with limited fuel.
Metal smelting, simply put, is the process of using high temperatures to reduce metal oxides into metals and precipitate them.
The melting point of copper is only a thousand degrees, which is not high among metals. If tin is added to make an alloy, the melting point can be lowered further.
Copper ores are not uncommon in nature, so copper is one of the earliest metals utilized by humans.
As early as prehistoric times, people began to mine open-pit copper mines and use the obtained copper to make weapons, tools and other utensils. This shows that the difficulty of copper smelting technology is not high and does not exceed the technical capabilities of ancient people in the Stone Age.
For example, the method of smelting copper in some ancient civilizations is crude. They build a large fuel pile on the ground. The fuel is mainly firewood, pile copper ore in it, ignite it, wait for the copper water to precipitate and solidify, and then process it after obtaining the copper. .
This method is almost the same as primitive pottery making. Therefore, some studies believe that the origin of copper smelting technology may have been inspired by the ancients accidentally roasting copper ore in pottery.
It's completely different when it comes to making iron. The melting point of iron is a full 1,500 degrees, which is 50% higher than the melting point of copper. It is impossible to melt iron simply by relying on the temperature generated by an open fire, so iron smelting must have a furnace that can increase the smelting temperature.
Due to the small size of ants, the scale of copper ore smelting is bound to be small and there is little fuel. The protagonist is worried that the smelting temperature is not enough, so he builds an iron-making standard blast furnace underground to smelt copper.
An experiment has been conducted on the copper-smelting blast furnace: a batch of specially prepared charcoal and finely crushed malachite were put into the blast furnace layer by layer. The walls of the blast furnace were smeared with wet yellow mud and dried, and there was a ceramic grate directly underneath. Used to drain copper juice and block impurities. Below the grate is a channel that guides the copper juice into the mold.
After the blast furnace was ignited and simmered for a long time, the thick black smoke was discharged to the ground through the exhaust vent. It looked spectacular from a distance. This was the smoke of technology and civilization.
But the final result could not be called a success. Although a large amount of copper was smelted, the ceramic grate not only blocked impurities, but also hindered the flow of copper juice.
Except that a small amount of copper is successfully exported to the mold and condensed into copper blocks. Most of the copper juice blocked the grate, eventually melting the pottery grate, and then a large amount of copper juice and impurities blocked the channel.
In the end, the big worker ants who participated in the experiment only harvested a blast furnace whose pipes were blocked by copper blocks full of impurities and a pitiful little copper.
With the construction ability of the ants, there was no way they could deal with this huge pile of copper blocks blocking the copper outlet. The blast furnace had to be abandoned after only being used once.
The obtained copper pieces were taken to the main nest "Qingqiu City" by the protagonist and decorated in his palace as a souvenir.
This experiment at least proved that in an underground blast furnace, a small amount of fuel can be used to obtain sufficient furnace temperature to smelt copper. The protagonist asked the scientific research team to study ways to improve the copper outlet, and he also made some suggestions.
According to the most optimistic estimates, the protagonist feels that he will be able to obtain important metal resources such as copper this year.
However, copper itself is soft and needs to be made into bronze to have better mechanical properties. The protagonist has not found tin ore yet.
Far water cannot quench the near thirst. At present, the Divine Envoy King's army can only use gravel to make stone tools and serve as tools and weapons. They are still some distance from the age of metal tools.
