"Come and get a few people to hoist the ore and coke up."
In order to facilitate the feeding of materials, Fang Xiaoyue also built a staircase from high to low next to the small blast furnace, with a pulley on the top so that bamboo baskets filled with ore and coke can be easily hoisted to the blast furnace for feeding.
The first feeding was done by Fang Xiaoyue and his son-in-law Ding Shengming in person.
Put in a layer of ore, a layer of coke, and a layer of limestone, and cover them in a cycle to allow the iron ore to fully carry out the reduction reaction at high temperature.
As the furnace fire was ignited, the slag outlet and molten iron outlet were sealed, and high temperature began to penetrate from the inside of the blast furnace. Fang Xiaoyue, who was guarding the blast furnace and had been pulling the bellows, was also worried.
Well, although he has read a lot about this thing and probably understands how to operate it, this is still his first time.
Under such circumstances, he was still a little worried.
If he fails, he will lose not only his old face, but also the morale of the entire Taoyuan Valley.
After two days and one night of suffering, Fang Xiaoyue and the young men's faces were flushed with exhaustion.
Whether it works or not depends on this wave.
"Turn on the furnace!"
After Fang Xiaoyue gave the order, Ding Shengming immediately opened the molten iron hole with an iron hook, and then the white-red molten iron slowly flowed out of the hole, forming a fountain like sticky bee sugar or ice cream.
Several young men headed by Zhang Pingan immediately pushed the steel water tank made of refractory bricks forward to catch the extremely hot molten iron.
The women, young and old who came to watch the excitement were almost stunned when they saw the sparks of molten iron.
In the past, how could Ding Shengming's iron smelting have such momentum?
This is a symbol of industrial power!
"Stand back!! Pay attention to safety!"
Fang Xiaoyue could only loudly drive away the crowd.
No way, people here don't have much safety awareness at all. A child even wants to reach out and touch the hot and glowing molten iron. Isn't this seeking death?
Maybe he thought the molten iron was delicious sugar water?
As the small blast furnace began to operate normally, the young people in Taoyuan Valley became busy.
The quality of the first batch of molten iron was not bad, it even exceeded the hundred forged irons that Ding Shengming had forged before!
A small blast furnace operating normally needs to be recharged every eight hours.
In order to extract as much steel as possible, Fang Xiaoyue even led people to carry mineral materials and coal in the heavy snow for more than 20 days.
But this is still not enough to support this small blast furnace.
In just three days, more than 70% of the mineral materials and coke stored in Taoyuan Valley were consumed.
This forced Fang Xiaoyue to lead the team again, dragging horses and mules to transport mineral materials, coal and limestone.
However, manpower is always exhausted.
A week before New Year's Eve, the small blast furnace had to stop operating.
But the steel produced exceeded Fang Xiaoyue's previous expectations.
Most of the steel materials were directly stored in the stone chamber, while a small part of the steel materials were directly poured into agricultural tools, weapons, etc.
Even the oldest farmers had to admire the material of farm tools at this time, which was beyond their previous experience and imagination.
In the past, those sickles, hoes, etc. would need to be repaired or completely scrapped after being used for a year at most. Therefore, many farmers from relatively poor families often used wooden farm tools.
No way, everyone knows that wooden farm tools are not as useful as iron farm tools, but they really can't afford to use inferior iron farm tools.
In addition to steel materials, Fang Xiaoyue also collected and stored steel slag.
Steel slag is useful. In addition to being put into a small blast furnace as part of the refining raw material, it can also be mixed and calcined with limestone, coal, clay, etc. to make cement.
Of course, it is still very difficult for Fang Xiaoyue to make cement.
After all, just grinding cement raw materials into powder is a very troublesome matter.
Those time travels always describe how to make cement easily and sell it very cheaply.
But in fact, in ancient times, the labor cost just for grinding cement raw materials would make people jump off the building.
Before the advent of high-power steam boilers or gasoline engines, if you wanted to obtain cement powder by manual grinding, you could only say that it was a waste of money.
Therefore, Fang Xiaoyue kept the steel slag mainly for use in construction.
After all, steel slag has high strength, rough surface, good durability, and is not easy to crack at low temperatures. It is used as some special building materials and is much stronger than gravel.
As the small blast furnace shuts down, the daily rhythm of Taoyuan Valley turns to the festival.
In this dimension, celebrating the New Year is still an extremely important thing.
Everyone is preparing festival food, paper cutting, etc.
The only regret is that there are no firecrackers.
However, Fang Xiaoyue made some lanterns from bamboo, covered them with animal intestines and dried them, then dyed them with a kind of rouge, put a piece of rosin wood inside, lit them, and hung them on an upright wooden pole at the four corners of the house. Taoyuan Valley adds a lot of festive atmosphere.
Of course, before the New Year, the most important thing is to hunt as much as possible.
For this reason, Fang Xiaoyue even stopped the young men's daily swordsmanship practice and divided the young men into teams of ten, armed with scimitars and spears, to go hunting.
The wild animals within a radius of dozens of miles of Taoyuan Valley have suffered eight lifetimes of bad luck due to humans' desire for meat.
But this is not surprising. In this world, hundreds of countries are at war, the people are in dire straits, and animal husbandry is not developed. Many people obtain meat by hunting and fishing.
On the third day before the New Year, Fang Xiaoyue returned to Taoyuan Valley with the young men.
After the captured prey was simply skinned and fur removed, it was all buried in the snow. In this weather, it would only take a few hours for the meat to be frozen hard.
It was the New Year, and Fang Xiaoyue couldn't help but feel a little relieved when she looked at the bustling Taoyuan Valley, with the casing lanterns everywhere and the children flying around.
According to this progress, it will not be difficult to build this Taoyuan Valley into a real Taoyuan.
In this Taoyuan Valley, it is natural to eat big bowls and eat large pieces of meat during the New Year.
After the fresh rice is milled, it turns into snow-white rice, which is cooked into rice, plus a few slices of bacon and some fried nuts. It is a delicacy that is hard to eat for the villagers.
During the Chinese New Year, it has become a rule to drink nut porridge in the morning, white rice at noon, and barbecue in the evening.
But a week after the Chinese New Year, normalcy returned to Taoyuan Valley.
The young men practiced sword skills every other day and went out hunting the next day.
Ding Shengming took a few talented young men completely away from training and hunting, and was responsible for the production of iron tools, weapons, etc. in the valley.
