"What are you doing like this?" Zhu Fan said with a smile. He vaguely noticed Zhu Su's inner apology, smiled and patted Zhu Su's shoulder.
Zhu Su also smiled back. Now that both of them are in charge of the government, there is no need to say more about some things. As for my brothers, just keep everything to yourself.
"At first I thought it was a charcoal problem." Zhu Fan continued. "So I invited myself out of Beijing. My original intention was to look around and see if I could find high-quality coal."
"So I looked around for suitable coal. When I arrived in Guangping Prefecture, I accidentally found a descendant of a blacksmith from the Song Dynasty. He had a secret method passed down from his ancestors, which could make the flames emitted by coals several times hotter than usual. In just a moment, a hundred steel can be melted and smelted.”
"Coke!" An idea flashed in Zhu Su's mind, and he finally understood the problem with his failure in steelmaking.
"You really know." Zhu Fan looked as expected.
Zhu Su slapped his head in regret. To put it bluntly, it was because he ignored the knowledge that when making steel, he must use good coke to provide a higher furnace temperature.
In the previous blast furnace steelmaking process, I only focused on building a blast furnace for steelmaking based on the knowledge of later generations, but forgot to build a coke oven for refining coke. After using the existing rough coal in the Ming Dynasty to refine it a little, it was used to make steel. It is strange that it succeeded!
To put it bluntly, I made the mistake of taking it for granted. After all, I had never refined steel myself. I thought that by building a blast furnace, I would be able to tinker with steel sooner or later!
"So, do you have a way to refine this so-called coke?" Zhu Fan asked tentatively.
Zhu Su, who became a little excited because he had figured out the key, did not feel the weirdness of Zhu Fan's tone at all. He immediately ordered someone to bring a pen and paper, and according to the impression in his mind, he copied the shape of a standard inverted flame coke oven. Design drawings were drawn. This kind of coke oven is extremely efficient and can even collect chemical substances generated during the carbonization of coal such as benzene generated during the coking process.
I am grateful to the apartment I rented next to the library in my previous life, and to the "Friends of Dual-Use Talents". All the books he read before traveling through time were deeply imprinted in his mind. This was the only golden finger he had after traveling through time.
"Your method is actually more perfect than that of the blacksmith's descendants." Zhu Fan looked at Zhu Su with a half-smile, and he also took out a "family secret method" with a kiln drawing. This secret method seems much inferior, it is just an ordinary earthen kiln.
"Uh...hahaha..." Zhu Su was stunned and had no choice but to laugh.
Our ancestors also had their own craftsmanship. During the Song Dynasty, some Chinese craftsmen had already learned how to refine coke. It was just that during the Yuan Dynasty, this technology, like many other inheritances, was lost due to the invasion of foreign tribes. It was not developed again until the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
In the excitement, I actually forgot that the descendant of this technology had been found by Zhu Fan...
Fortunately, Zhu Fan didn't pursue it too closely. He was already used to the sudden appearance of a lot of knowledge from his younger brother. It's just that now, he no longer believes that what Zhu Su said came from "lost ancient books". Now that Zhu Su had a better way to make coke, the two brothers immediately took action, commanding the craftsmen to build several coke ovens, and excitedly prepared to start a new attempt to mass produce steel in the Ming Dynasty.
This time, even the steel-making blast furnace was rebuilt by the two brothers, using the new refractory bricks recovered by Zhu Fan. The quality of previous furnace bricks was uneven, the insulation effect was limited, and there were even incidents of blast furnaces breaking and molten steel flowing out.
Using new refractory bricks, the two were full of confidence in this test.
Finally, after a lot of busy work, Zhu Su waited for the first batch of molten steel to come out. During these days, in addition to taking care of various matters in the Imperial College, he and Zhu Fan spent most of their time in the experimental base in the back mountain. Seeing the craftsmen carefully smashing open the many steel molds to reveal the cold-gleaming metal blocks inside, both brothers looked nervous.
Although each blast furnace has successfully produced metals, the quality of these metals cannot be known until they are tried.
"Dang!" There was just a crisp sound, and the craftsman used all his strength to chop a big knife on the refined metal block. The big knife was almost the highest standard of the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty, and it collapsed visibly to the naked eye. There was a gap, but the piece of metal was almost undamaged.
"Congratulations to your two highnesses! It's steel! It's hundred-refined steel!" The craftsman threw the knife away and knelt down with a plop. He cried with joy and burst into tears. "I have been working in iron for decades, but I have never seen such fine steel!"
"Is it really made of fine steel?" Zhu Su looked surprised, and Zhu Fan went limp and almost slipped off the chair.
He pushed away the guard who wanted to support him, and approached Zhu Su in two or three steps. "It is indeed fine steel, Lao Wu, God bless the Ming Dynasty, we are done!"
"With such good steel, I will be invincible in the future!" Zhu Su was also extremely excited.
Some people may think that it is just refined steel, so there is nothing strange about it. But Zhu Su knew the significance this furnace of steel brought to the Ming Dynasty. Traditional steelmaking requires craftsmen to continuously hammer and cast. Often just a sword requires several craftsmen to work around the clock for several days.
This blast furnace steelmaking method can produce such high-quality fine steel in batches, which means that the Ming Dynasty can even use standard weapons and armor made of hundreds of refined steel to equip the army. In the era of cold weapons, It’s simply a dimensionality reduction blow!
Just imagine, once the two armies came into battle, the weapons of the Beiyuan soldiers could not penetrate the Ming army's fine steel armor. However, the weapons of the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were extremely sharp, and ordinary armor could not withstand them...
How to fight this?
Moreover, Zhu Su also found that the knocking sound of steel produced from several marked blast furnaces was significantly duller. Before the steel in the blast furnace was refined, he specifically ordered it to go through multiple coal washing steps. The steel produced in these furnaces is obviously qualified low carbon steel!
Mild steel is the best choice for making flintlock barrels!
In other words, the basic conditions for the manufacture of more modern muskets and artillery are generally in place!
"Dog! Go get the gold and silver!" Zhu Su was overjoyed. "The king wants to reward the many craftsmen present! They are all heroes of my Ming Dynasty!"
"I'm going to meet my father right now and ask him to vigorously popularize this method of steelmaking!" Zhu Fan was also beaming with joy. Dad will be very happy if he and Lao Wu have accomplished such a great feat. But these words reminded Zhu Su of something. He grabbed Zhu Fan who was about to announce the good news: "Don't rush yet."
"Building steel furnaces on a large scale... I'm afraid the imperial court doesn't have the ability yet."
"My fourth brother and I have already gone to look for dad. Dad said that the government's treasury is now empty, and I'm afraid it will be difficult to have enough ability to allocate funds."
To put it bluntly, it’s still a matter of money... It’s hard to move without money, and it’s hard for a clever woman to make a meal without rice!
"What?" Zhu Fan was extremely unhappy. "The sooner you practice more steel, the stronger Ming Dynasty will be."
"This is a major military matter, how can we ignore it? I'm going to tell dad that even if we sell everything in the Zhu family, we still have to find ways to get money and build more blast furnaces."
"...I'll go with you." Zhu Su also gritted his teeth. Zhu Fan is right in saying that no matter what, investment in science cannot be lacking. "Dad said before that we already have a solution, but we just need to think about it for some time."
"Let's go and urge him. If he hasn't decided yet, we'll force him to make a decision on the spot!"
(End of chapter)
